Olmecs Invade Los Angeles

On Saturday, 8 January 2011, a colleague and I had the good fortune to visit the exhibit Olmec: Colossal Masterworks of Ancient Mexico at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) one day before the exhibit closed. The very well-attended exposition culled pieces from the major anthropology museums in Mexico City and Xalapa as well as the Smithsonian and other collections.

The to-scale drawing below, of the extant examples of the famous colossal heads, was a well-conceived way to contextualize the two heads on display at the exhibit.

The following photos show details from an augmented mural. I had not previously seen any example of two-dimensional Olmec art. The accompanying text explained that the mural depicts, as on the shell of a (cosmic) turtle, the life and death of the maize god.

Another exhibit wall displayed a further example of Olmec graphic design, reproduced from a cave in an area--Guerrero state--that I believe is not usually associated with the Olmec. My colleague and I agreed that the image (below), whose composition is assigned to the 1st or 2nd century AD, looks strikingly modern.

In my non-specialist view, the exhibit was a commendable effort, with plenty of examples of three-dimensional art both large-scale and small. I wished, though, for a bit more contextualization: it's fine to let the works speak for themselves, but more visual information could have been provided for the visitor, such as, perhaps, photos or a diorama of the tropical Gulf lowlands of present-day Veracruz and Tabasco; an artist's rendering of how the Olmecs would have moved the massive heads into place; and flat reproductions, in color, to accompany the bas-reliefs, since the imagistic detail, because monochromatic as well as unfamiliar, is often difficult to discern.