Mimbres Painted Pottery [cont.]

The geometric pottery paintings are usually center oriented and always have their own self-defined spatial reality. Because they are nonrepresentational, all viewing angles are equally correct and concepts of top, bottom, or side are irrelevant. Representational paintings, whether center focused or not, are implicitly or explicitly illusionistic. They refer to subjects that do exist in real space, and they assume correct or incorrect viewing positions. Concepts of top , bottom, and side not only are relevant but often are essential for the pictures to be intelligible.

The interior surface of a free-standing, movable, hemispherical bowl is the antithesis of a stable and horizontal picture space. Added to the visual problems of geometric painting was the necessity for representational pictures to have a consistent and stable orientation even when made on a surface that had neither attribute. Most often the Mimbres painters resolved [p. 157] this problem in the most expedient way possible, by ignoring it. For this reason, despite the charm that any Mimbres representational image might have, its effectiveness as a painting is often incomplete, and many paintings lack the total consistency of image that characterizes the nonrepresentational pictures. However, those representational artists who recognized the problem of orientation and developed solutions to it made pictures with a balance between content and decorative values that are among the most important ever made by native American artists during pre-Columbian times. [p. 157-158]

Pictorial Organization: Single-Figure Compositions. Most representational pictures have only a single figure placed in or near the center of a bowl. Except for the painted frame there are no lines other than those needed to describe the figure, and the organizational principle is simply that of vignetting a form against a blank background within a framed picture space. The figure is usually shown in profile, full face, or from above. Its posture is static, its position implies relationship to an invisible ground line or the surface of the earth, and top-bottom orientation is often explicit. The portable, concave, hemispherical surface was usually treated as though it were an immobile, vertical, flat rondo to be seen from only one viewing position.

Picture frames are often no more than one or several banding lines that are well isolated from the main figure, thus emphasizing the nonintegrative character of the representational paintings. Framing lines may have been painted after the illustrative picture was made. If so, frame [p. 158] and picture were conceived of as visually unrelated and the representational pictures were conceptually distinct from the organically organized, totally integrated nonrepresentational ones. A more complex frame was used in about one-third of the single-figure paintings, and this resembles a design zone that might occur in any of the nonrepresentational pictures. Rarely, the elaborate frame spilled over to integrate with the figure and the effect is that of a dynamic geometric picture that happens to include a life-form motif. Although these attempted to resolve the visual problems represented by their peculiar painting surfaces, the solution is often so decorative that representational meaning is lost and visual success was achieved at the expense of illustrative content.

A small minority of single-figure paintings deals with pictorial as well as representational problems by having the life-form manipulated to control all or most of its assigned space. This was sometimes done by twisting a body or one of its appendages into a spiral or S shape that rotated through or about the vessel center in order to cope with the requirements of the concave hemisphere. By attempting to avoid rigid, one-view orientations, the artists who adopted this solution echoed the characteristic geometric design systems. However, most single-figure paintings control so little of their space and so lack any semblance of the integration and balanced complexity of the nonrepresentational ones as to leave little basis for comparison. [p. 159-160]

Pictorial Organization: Multiple-Figure Compositions. In contrast to the static organizational system that characterized single-figure compositions, more than half of the paintings that have two or more figures are active and complex and have multipoint viewing positions. Most of the remaining multiple-figure pictures are at least partly integrated with their total space and are more satisfactorily adjusted to their concave ground than are most single-figure paintings. There are no substantial differences in the framing systems used for single- or multiple-figure compositions, but pictures with more than one figure are more often organized into overall design patterns. These integrate life-forms with complex geometric ones, and their figurative impact is overwhelmed by their decorative force. Other kinds of multiple-figure paintings are [p. 160] structurally similar to the geometric ones but retain their illustrative focus.

In the simplest type of integrated multiple-figure organization, the life-forms are analogous to the large motifs that dominate center-oriented geometrical pictures. They too are center oriented and often contort into S curves, scrolls, or other radial postures that cause them to circulate about an invisible point located in the middle of a bowl. They tend to be more passive than active and more decorative than illustrative and usually lack obvious narrative implications. As in similar nonfigurative structures, the picture space is divided into a series of equal-size wedges, but the division lines are usually implicit rather than specific. Other integrative characteristics of geometric paintings such as the positive-negative color distributions are also sometimes present in representational pictures.

A second organizational system is similar to the usual single-figure composition, with two or more life-forms vignetted in or near the center of a bowl. They are usually drawn in profile, static, and with top-bottom viewing orientation. Occasionally these figures appear to be in some sort of interactive relationship to each other. For that reason and also simply [p. 165] because two or several figures occupy more space than only one, these paintings appear to be structurally more complex and more tightly integrated than those with only a single figure. Their complexity is often as much a matter of subjective or psychological interaction as it is of pictorial integration.

A third compositional group includes fewer than half of the multiple-figure paintings and only one in six of all figurative ones. It is, however, by far the most important. Pictures in this group usually have some specific narrative content and the figures in them act in relation to this, to each other, to the framed picture space, and to an imaginary environment. In a sense all are vignetted since background details such as horizon lines, landscapes, or interiors are at most hinted at, never specified. Even so, a natural or artificial environment is usually understood because of the placement or the actions of the painted figures or objects. Most important, these pictures are composed with reference to illusionistic rather than geometric organizational principles.

In one example, a woman, a boy or man, and a dog are shown walking through an invisible landscape. By their attitudes and actions they occupy and visually control most of the space defined by the framing line at the bowl rim. Orientation is primarily of the top-bottom sort, but the man or [p. 167] boy is tilted and his relation to a horizontal plane differs from that of the other two figures. This difference acknowledges the concavity of the painting surface and suggests a variable viewing orientation that helps to bring large unpainted areas of the hemisphere under pictorial control. Active relationships among the figures are reasonably specific and define the character and dimensions of the spaces between them. Paint application is flat and without grays, but mass, volume, and spatial depth are indicated by perspective drawing, especially as applied to the positioning of the legs, the overlapping of arms, and body posture. Depth relationships between the two humans are not at all clear and their size difference can be read as either an effect of deep horizontal distance or the portrayal of larger and smaller individuals standing close to one another.

In the absence of horizon lines, landscape details, or other clues about the spatial environment, the illusion of real space is achieved solely by the interaction of the figures. The assumption that they are in narrative relation to each other creates the mental image of the space they occupy. Inconsistencies of draftsmanship and incomplete control of the pictorial space [p. 168] [particularly around the upper margins] are indications that the natural laws of this particular micro-universe were only partly understood by the artist, but the intent to create a self-contained, complex representational entity is clear. Other paintings that are similar in their attempts to develop self-contained environmental illusions were sometimes more successful.

Among these, a more complex grouping helps to demonstrate the correlation between subjective complexity and pictorial unity. In Figure 17 nine humans are arranged near the center and around half the perimeter of a bowl, with two others on its opposite wall facing the larger group. Posture and attitude vary from figure to figure, defining both personality and interaction, and these variations contribute to the illusion that each one occupies real space. Most figures were placed on the vessel walls and look inward, defining the parameters of the space they occupy and control. Illusory, pictorial space and real space trapped within the hemisphere of the bowl are one and the same thing. Each figure is flatly painted; perspective drawing was minimal but allusions to spatial depth are quite specific and a deliberate function of draftsmanship and figural placement.

Further use of the concave hemisphere is seen by the full development of a convention hinted at in Figure 113. Each figure is tilted along its own vertical axis, and these axes radiate from the center like so many steel needles pointing toward a magnetic pole. The central point functions as the equivalent of a horizon line drawn on a flat, rectangular surface for the purpose of establishing an environmental base. This kind of polar orientation, relatively unsuccessful when used with only two figures and a dog, is given credence by numbers, and the tilting relationships between all figures become a believable perspective device. As with any other one-point perspective system, illusion depends on consistency and failure occurs when the system is not followed. The figure in the box or basket seems to float uncertainly in space, disoriented because it is parallel to rather than tilted away from the figure nearest to it. Despite this, and even though no landscape or background details were drawn, the illusion that these figures occupy a real space is almost complete. Meanwhile, pictorial space is as fully controlled as in the most complex and geometrically formal of the nonfigurative paintings.

Most narrative pictures that use polar orientation have informal compositions. However, formal geometric structures that avoided the rigidity of geometrical painting could be adapted to the system. Four men are shown seated on a blanket in Figures 19 and 114. Each figure has an arrow in his hand and four others near by. The compositional structure is a [p. 169] center-focused, quartered pattern, identical to those used in many rotational nonfigurative paintings. However, all painted lines except for the frame are representational and the narrative content is strong and explicit. The characteristic play of dark and light and the geometric complexity of nonfigurative painting are entirely absent, and the decorative origins of the format do not inhibit anecdotal realism.

The figures and objects are on a blank white ground with no indication of specific background; none is needed, for the relationships between each figure and object define the operational space. The square mat or blanket in the center is the ground or base around which all figures squat. Each of the humans and most of the objects are on a polar axis, tilted to about a 90-degree angle in relation to all of the others. Seen from above, the angle is extreme and there is an apparent visual contradiction between the center mat, shown in plan, and the figures panted in profile and at right angles to it. From any other perspective the contradiction is denied, for each figure is placed on the upward-curving sides of the bowl, and, in real space, is actually at [or almost at] right angles to the center. The three-dimensional physical character of the picture surface reinforces a pictorial illusion that is best perceived when the surface is mobile and viewed naturally.

A flexible orientation system was also developed in relation to the frame rather than the center of a composition. Although pictures of this sort were generally developed along a vertical axis, their "bottom" was usually conceived of as any point along one-third or one-half of the outer circumference of a vessel. In some instances any part of the circumference served as a [p. 170] base point. In one example, a seated man wearing an elaborate headdress is in the act of decapitating another. The victim lies in front of the seated figure, his body and partially severed head curved with reference to the framing line. By this device, the framing line becomes a ground line along a substantial part of its length and the picture is made intelligible when viewed from any angle that includes part of the victim's body at the base. Thus, even though there is a top-bottom orientation, about one-half of the bowl can be read as the bottom and its potential mobility is controlled and incorporated as a visually active element.

A similar effect is achieved by different means in a painting of four men and a fish. In this, each figure is positioned in relation to a different point on the framing line so that even though all are upright and on more or less parallel vertical axes, a large segment of the framing line becomes a ground line. As in Figure 117 and Plate 11, the mobility of the vessel is incorporated as a compositional element, and any point along one-third of its outer perimeter provides an intelligible and "correct" viewing position.

In virtually all multi-figure paintings some attempt was made to cope with the visual problems presented by a picture surface that is in fact a three-dimensional, concave hemisphere. Formal solutions were sometimes borrowed from the nonfigurative painting system, and these could be modified without crippling the representational intention. Often, however, the powerful geometric logic of the nonfigurative tradition overwhelmed representational intent and life-forms were treated as though they were just another kind of decorative motif. At times also, multiple-figure pictures were given top-bottom orientations unsuitable to the hemispherical nature of the painting surface. Most often, then, the artists were unable to control the total pictorial space and draftsmanship was not enough to prevent these from functioning as vignettes.

The most successful of the figurative paintings were narratives that accepted the constraints of the bowl shape by either using the framing line as a ground line or adapting a kind of polar, one-point-perspective system to the vessel. Combined with a rough-and-ready linear perspective, these were perhaps unique solutions to a most difficult visual problem, one that gave the Mimbres artists an opportunity to use the peculiar shape of their painting surface as a positive visual tool. By working with the hemisphere they found that it could help to establish and define the physical and spatial relationships of their painted figures. The result was an inventive kind of picture making, far different from the systematic formalism of their geometric [p. 172] pictures and the static and casual structures of their figurative vignettes. It is the most expressive and inventive of all prehistoric southwestern pictorial traditions.

Pictorial Means and Subject Matter. Although there are significant differences in pictorial organization between the figurative and nonfigurative paintings of the Mimbreños, the technical means were about the same in both kinds of painting. Emphasis was placed on draftsmanship and on line, and the interior spaces of many representational figures were treated as though they were the interiors of nonfigurative design zones. Life-forms as well as geometric motifs were usually drawn in outline with their interiors left blank, filled solidly, or divided and subdivided by linear or triangular elements. Line was the primary visual element but many figures appear to be more massive than linear because of their isolation as black silhouettes against a white or gray ground or, rarely, as white figures against a black or hatchured ground.

Designs painted within life-forms were sometimes given illustrative meaning by association with some clearly drawn anatomical region of an animals such as its neck, tail, or belly. Nonfigurative motifs therefore could be made to carry objective messages, and intellectual as well as visual [p. 176] ambiguity became a constant feature of Mimbres painting. Fillers were also used to maintain the integrity of the picture plane; the geometrically decorated interior of an animal often admixes with its background space so that the animal motif becomes a part of as well as apart from its spatial environment. Spatial illusion was destroyed by this convention, but confusion of a life-form with its background may have been a visual and metaphorical expression of belief in the essential unity that exists between a being and its environment. Illusion was not the goal, and to the extent that a belief system will prescribe the kind of reality an artist chooses to depict, the ambiguity and visual puns used by Mimbres artists may be understood as deliberate metaphors.

The number of figures in a picture generally dictated its organizational complexity. Since certain subjects were more likely to be used in less complex paintings, the subject matter of single-figure paintings tended to differ from that of multiple-figure ones.

Nonhuman mammals or birds are the subject in about half of the single-figure vignetted pictures. Other common subjects in these are reptiles, insects, fish, mythic creatures combining attributes of two or more animals, and humans. Most two-figure paintings are only slightly more complex versions of [p. 177] single-figure vignettes with the same subject repeated on two halves of a vessel, but a substantial minority show two different animals interacting. The subject matter of the nonnarrative two-figure paintings is markedly different from that of single-figure pictures. About half of these subjects are mammals other than humans. Fish, mythic animals, insects, and birds appear with some frequency but humans and reptiles were seldom pictured.

Most multiple-figure paintings are complex narratives in which humans are the most common subject. Usually these are the center of action, both literally and figuratively. Other mammals and birds and fish appear fairly often in narrative paintings, insects and reptiles far less often, and mythic animals only rarely. The key to selection of subjects used in the more complex paintings appears to have been narrative interaction. Selection of a particular subject was probably made because of its association in some real or imaginary event with another being.

Identification of animal species is often problematical and usually depends on the rendering of some diagnostic detail such as posture, ears, horns, or tail. Only a few fish such as pike, gar, or catfish have enough such detail to permit even tentative identification. Most are shown in profile and are richly decorated with geometric motifs that sometimes conform to their anatomical parts and occasionally suggest scales or other observed details.

Frogs, toads, turtles, lizards, and snakes were usually shown from above, with emphasis placed on their bilateralism and some other obvious physical characteristic. For example, lizards might have their sinuosity emphasized by a series of S curves, and turtle carapaces have geometric fillers that suggest their natural patterning. All but snakes appear with about the same frequency.

Most mammals other than humans were shown in profile, sometimes with their heads turned, and usually with both eyes, ears, horns [if any], and all four legs visible. Species identification can be made for the majority. Rabbits and mountain sheep are proportionally the most common; deer, antelope, canines, and felines are less common but were used more often than other local species such as bears, raccoons, bats, and beavers. [p. 178]

More than with other animal classes, there was great diversity in the degree of realism of bird pictures. Some are so conventionalized as to be little more than a series of triangles organized to suggest a bird form; others are so detailed and their posture and attitude so lifelike as to evidence close observation and precise representational intentions. Most standing birds are shown in profile, but flying ones have their wings spread and are usually seen from below. Turkeys, quail, and cranelike waterbirds, all among the easiest to characterize visually, are the most common of the identified bird species. Parrots or macaws, crows, ravens or grackles, and swallows or swifts also appear with some regularity. Most unidentified birds appear to be small thrushes, wrens, or other field birds. On all, the geometric decoration usually conforms to some sort of feather patterning and often provides representational clues. Cranes, often shown interacting with fish, and parrots or macaws, usually associated with humans, are the birds most likely to appear in narrative settings.

Winged insects, caterpillars, ant-lion larvae ["doodle bugs"], and grasshoppers are among the identified insects or insect like animals that were represented with fair regularity. Few of these occur in narrative contexts, and, perhaps because of their decorative potential, they make up a substantial proportion of multiple-figure subjects.

Human beings were usually shown head-on or in profile, often with their heads facing front and bodies in three-quarter profile. Males [p. 184] were pictured far more often than females, and, except for their rare appearance as single-figure vignettes, humans of either sex were usually shown in some sort of active posture. When other animals or objects are associated with humans, the scale and relationships between figures is usually realistic, but on occasion another mammal, a bird, or most often a fish is shown disproportionately larger than the people in the picture.

Geometric elements painted within human forms sometimes suggest costumes and may be read as textile patterns. Other costume details, including belts, kilts, skirts, and leggings, were often specified, as were cosmetic features such as hair settings, necklaces, and other body adornment. Masks or facial paintings were also detailed regularly, with diamond-shaped spectaclelike eye coverings especially common.

Regardless of posture, all four human limbs as well as fingers and toes were usually indicated. Hands were sometimes cut off at the wrist but often in a context to suggest that this was a convention made to avoid drawing that most difficult part of the human anatomy. Swellings of the limbs to suggest calf, thigh, or arm muscles and heel protrusions, genitalia, and facial features are other commonly rendered human anatomical details. People were usually made as solid black silhouettes and sometimes as hollow outlined p. 191] figures, and the variety in degree of realism ranged from stick figures, that have almost no representational details to closely observed lifelike illustrations.

Most subjects that combine characteristics of different species have fish, human, or bird features often joined to those of one other mammal. Sometimes the intent may have been to record an [p. 194] event, such as the acting out by a person in animal costume of a representation of the animal, or of some supernatural or mythic being. However, many composite subjects seem to portray the being itself. Bears, mountain sheep, rabbits, felines, lizards, snakes, and insects are also among identified animal parts of compound, mythic beings. The birth of such personages may also have been pictured.

Except for the artifacts and costumes that are details in narrative paintings, nonanimal representations are rare. Glycymeris shell bracelets, prayer sticks, wands, and prayer plumes and celestial bodies are almost the only nonliving figurative subjects, sometimes shown as isolated motifs, at other times associated with an animal in a vignette. Vegetal and landscape forms are even less common. Petaled flowers were sometimes the motif in otherwise nonfigurative paintings, but these usually seem to be the by-products of geometric patterning rather than deliberate pictures of plants. Squashlike vegetables and cornstalks painted as background information in narrative pictures are rare, but, except for the flowerlike geometric motifs, are the most common growing plants painted by Mimbreños. [p. 195]