Circa 800-1400 AD
This exceptional grouping of painted textiles from the Pre-Columbian Andes most likely served as votive tools for shamanistic rites and as clothing designated for ceremonial use. The seemingly whimsical and spontaneous manner in which these works are executed may strike us as marvelously exuberant from our 21st-century perspective. In every painting, they set out to create a purely visual space where the imagination can thrive, and viewers can lose themselves in aesthetic wonderings.
There are few 20th-century Western artists who have transcended both traditional stylistic parameters and critical close-mindedness to achieve world recognition and inspire a movement that shares such aesthetic intimacy with these painted textiles. We could add Paul Klee with his Neo-primitivist style, Jean Dubuffet with his Art Brut style, and Jean-Michel Basquiat with his Neo-expressionist style. All of them recognized an aesthetic kinship with artists from remote cultures of antiquity. It is in the works of Basquiat that we find the strongest affinity to these painted textiles. His earliest figures are frontal, flat, and display a stick-figure simplicity that is very characteristic of Pre-Columbian Andean paintings and sculpture in their raw energy, directness, and playful spontaneity.
The Old ChapelChurch StreetMaiden BradleyBA12 7HW
