Pre-Columbian Art: A Selection from the John B. Elliott Collection

Abstract

Given the range and quality of this small group of preColumbian objects selected from the John B. Elliott bequest, it is regrettable that he did not collect more actively in this area. He responded to objects with highly animated designs, whether narrative, as in the Late Classic blackware beaker from the Pacific Coast of Guatemala, or animistic, as in Cocle ceramics from Panama. While the figures on the Maya Chama ceremonial vessel are more iconically composed, they are painted in a vigorous style; and a fierce energy is barely contained in the dark serpentine head, a fragment of an Olmec transformation figure. The three remaining works in the group, however, are very different in spirit.The design of the hacha from Guatemala is rigorously spare and contained; the life-size Teotihuacan jasper mask, while fleshier, is more serenely transcendent than the more characteristically gaunt, attenuated masks from that culture; and the Mezcala model of a temple is magically imbued with a monumentality and quiet grandeur that belie its diminutive scale and simplicity of form.While one cannot draw any meaningful conclusions about John Elliott's taste in pre-Columbian art from this small, eclectic group of objects, they all testify to his lively imagination and his great feeling for quality, and are distinguished and distinctive additions to the art museum's collection.