Art Talk
Teotihuacan at LACMA
Hunter Drohojowska-Philp says that City and Cosmos offers a sense of both at the ancient pyramids of Mexico.
By Hunter Drohojowska-Philp • • 3m ListenTeotihuacan meant City of the Gods and so it must have appeared to anyone from 2,000 years ago. Three giant stone pyramids erected for worship along with elaborately decorated compounds to house the ruling class were built on a site of some nine square miles in what is now central Mexico. With a population of some 100,000, it was the largest urban center in the Americas. The Sun Pyramid rises to more than 200 feet, as anyone who has climbed those narrow stone steps to the top can attest.
View of Teotihuacan, Photograph by Jorge Pérez de Lara Elías, © INAH
Flowering Tree, detail from Feathered Serpent and Flowering Trees Mural,Techinantitla residential compound, Teotihuacan, Mexico, 500-550, Earthen aggregate, stucco and mineral pigments, 13 x 21 1/4 x 1 3/8 in. (33 x 54 x 3.5 cm), Museo Nacional de Antropología/ INAH, 10-626966, Archivo Digital de la Colecciones del Museo Nacional de Antropología / INAH-CANON
Inside was the emulation of a cosmic underworld covered in reflective stone and containing small sculptures, mostly offerings to the Storm Gods, that had been preserved there for some 1800 years.
Standing Figure, Tlalocan [tunnel under Feathered Serpent Pyramid], Teotihuacan, Mexico, 200–250, Greenstone, 18 1/2 × 7 1/2 in. (47 × 19 cm), Zona de Monumentos Arqueológicos de Teotihuacán / INAH, [Proyecto Tlalocan], Photograph by Jorge Pérez de Lara Elías, © INAH
Mosaic Jaguar, Xalla residential compound, Teotihuacan, Mexico, 400, Volcanic stone, stucco, and pigments, 38 3/8 x 92 3/4 x 29 1/4 in. (97.5 x 235.5 x 74.5 cm), Museo Nacional de Antropología/ INAH (10-626269), Archivo Digital de la Colecciones del Museo Nacional de Antropología / INAH-CANON
Standing Figure, 500–550, Calcite marble, 50 3/8 × 18 1/8 × 7 7/8 in., Museo Nacional de Antropología/INAH, 10-642614, Archivo Digital de la Colecciones del Museo Nacional de Antropología/INAH-CANON
Around 550 CE, the ceremonial center of Teotihuacan was burned and many of the grand ritual objects were savagely destroyed including a very large marble marble figure found in the the Xalla compound, likely the location of workshops for craftsmen of all sorts.
