69 late Formative Period (1200–200 BC) cultures and sites. A wide variety of artistic creations is included: stone sculptures, gold crowns and jewelry, textiles, turquoise bead necklaces, engraved bone objects, Strombus shell trumpets, and, lastly, the characteristic stirrup-handled vessels that are known from all northern Peruvian cultures until the time of the conquest. The presentation of these works is efficiently and attractively executed, and it succeeds in striking a balance between the aesthetic experience that contemplation of the artworks inspires and the profusion of accompanying documentation and information, which allows better understanding of them. In the first gallery, the visitor is confronted by the striking spectacle of a series of important objects that provide a panorama of the cultures of the North Coast’s Formative Period, which shared artistic and cultural traits with Chavín de Huántar. Several unique works are among those shown, each itself worth the trip to Zurich: the sacrifical altar from the Museo de la Nacion; the vessel representing the jaguar/man duality from the Museo Larco; the ex-Rockefeller Collection vessel from the Metropolitan, whose jaguar head is one of the most extraordinary stylizations ever produced. The installation continues with an archaeological section largely devoted to Kuntur Wasi, a site in the Cajamarca range, which had seemed relatively unimportant until 1988, when a Japanese archaeological expedition discovered eight tombs containing astonishing gold and silver pieces, including the three crowns included in the Rietberg show. The next gallery features two textiles painted with designs reminiscent of those seen in Chavín art, as well as a Carhua panel with representations of the Staff God, borrowed from the Fundacion Museo Amano. These objects were found in the Ica Valley on the South Coast, but it is probable that they are originally from Chavín de Huántar or another North Coast site in Peru. After these textiles, a display of objects found specifically at Chavín de Huántar through archaeological excavations performed by Julio Tello and Luis Lumbreras really brings the exhibition to the heart of its subject. It is a triumph of stone sculpture, featuring the famous tenon heads, embedded in the walls of the Late Temple, as well as engraved slabs sculpted in bas-relief with images of Chavín deities. But it is also remarkable for its terracottas, which, fired in a thin atmosphere, sometimes have such a smooth appearance that one might think them to be stone. The exhibition concludes with a final gallery devoted to Paracas culture, an extension of the Formative Period on the South Coast, and to Moche culture which, on the North Coast, supplanted the Formative Period cultures, FIG. 6 (top): View approaching the Chavín de Huántar site. © Museum Rietberg. Photo: Peter Fux. FIG. 7 (above): Reconstruction schematic of the Chavín de Huántar Temple. Graphics: Museum Rietberg and ArcTron 3D . borrowing several of the latter’s cultural traits. Before entering this last display space, however, one passes by a small but effective model reconstruction of the subterranean galleries inside the Old Temple, which led to the Lanzón, a nearly fifteen-foot-high knife-like monolithic sculpture, a veritable axis mundi planted vertically in the soil. While reconstructions and replicas in high-level exhibitions seldom work well, in this case, given the impossibility of moving the Lanzón, the Rietberg made the right choice. This replica not only succeeds in giving the viewer an idea of what the Lanzón looked like but also provides a coherent impression of the labyrinths probably intended for shamanic initiation rituals performed in front of the remarkable sculpture.
I-IVCoverE_CoverF Vuvi
To see the actual publication please follow the link above