Peru III: aesthetics and religion

The second-most awesome piece of art I saw in Peru I didn't actually see. I mean, what I saw was awesome, but it wasn't the original piece, it was a life-sized ink rendering in a museum of the carving on a standing stone that is presumably at its original site or perhaps another museum. You can see a line drawing of the carving here to give you an idea of what it's like, but that little drawing totally fails to capture the perfect balance of the thing, the fill of the space... I'm really into that kind of art, like the space-filling knots and spirals in Celtic art, but this was one of the most beautiful things like that that I had ever seen. I couldn't stop looking at it.

The peak aesthetic moment of the trip, though, was walking through the main gate of Machu Picchu, which frames the peak of Huayna Picchu behind it - Machu Picchu was a sacred city/royal vacation house, and the whole layout and construction were very carefully planned for aesthetics as well as stability/water management. It sits in a sort of saddle between two mountain peaks, and the Incas would arrive from a pass on the shoulder of one of them and go down and enter through this main gate, which was situated to frame the peak behind the city just as you pass through. It's an amazing work of art, that very specific intentional... "view" doesn't do it justice. It wasn't even the view, exactly, but the act or experience of passing through the gate. I can't seem to find a picture of this online and I'm not sure that we got one either... I'm not sure a picture *could* capture it.

I'm thinking about both of these things because I just had a conversation with my mom regarding some art from my grandparents' house that I put my name in for in the divvying, specifically a drawing done by my great-aunt, who was an artist until she retired. My mom was really weirded out by my wanting this drawing because of the religious theme, my great-aunt is Catholic and the drawing shows the church, a priest, and a nun (or possibly Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, depending on how you interpret things). I like it not because I'm so devoted to the church (I'm not a Christian) but because of the composition and line weights and stuff. I just thought it was interesting that nobody would think twice about me appreciating Andean religious art without having any Andean religious beliefs (it seems pretty likely that there was a sacred aspect to both the carvings on the Pucara stele and the view of Huayna Picchu, which was a *holy* mountain), but it's weird for me to appreciate a Catholic work of art as a non-Catholic. I suppose, had I bought a poster of the Pucara stone and put it up in my house, which I absolutely would have done if they had had such a thing, it wouldn't have occurred to anyone to wonder whether I was now worshipping ancient Andean serpent deities, whereas there are a number of cross-and-Mary worshippers around and cross art raises genuine questions. Still, it really seemed to bother my mom that I wanted this drawing, and she went through a whole list of pieces my great-aunt had done with secular themes (teapots and trees and such) expecting that I'd really rather have one of those.

I'm sorry if this post is boring. I know talking about art without pictures is sort of lame. I've been trying to think of things to say about Peru where I actually have something to say other than "we did this and that and this other thing". Hopefully pretty soon I'll be doing some Peru posts linking to pictures we took and that will be exciting.