Overview

This generously illustrated book explores the pottery of the Mimbres people and offers new insight into its imagery. Named after a valley in what is now Southwestern New Mexico, the Mimbres culture flourished between the 9th and 12th centuries. Through the exploration of paintings on Mimbres bowls, this book offers revelations about the culture's worldview based on the patterns and shapes depicted in their pottery. Drawing on extensive research as well as photography of the flora and fauna that still thrive in the Mimbres valley, the authors make the case that the pottery's beautiful black-and-white paintings and highly intricate designs are abstractions of visual experiences - some seen in the natural world and others generated by trance-like states brought on by ingesting the datura plant. Presenting a distinctive new interpretation of the iconography of ancient Mimbres painted ceramics, this volume addresses Mimbres culture and how this past civilization lived and communicated with the spirit world. AUTHORS: Tony Berlant is an artist and collector of Southwestern Native American art. He is a founding member of the Mimbres Foundation, a Los Angeles-based conservancy dedicated to protecting vulnerable Mimbres sites. Evan Maurer is Director Emeritus of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. He is the author of numerous exhibition catalogues and books on Native American art. Julia Burtenshaw is Assistant Curator in the Art of the Ancient Americas Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. SELLING POINTS: . Native American pottery: The book offers a distinctive new interpretation of the iconography of ancient Mimbres painted ceramics. . Illustrations: Generously illustrated with 112 colour illustrations. . Mimbres: The Mimbres people were a subgroup of the Mongollon culture, and at their height (825/850 - 1150 CE) lived along the Mimbres River and other tributaries in southwestern New Mexico along the borders with Arizona and Mexico. During the Classic Mimbres period (1000-1150), they developed distinctive black-on-white painted pottery and architecture. In about 1130-50, production of Mimbres pottery ceased, with a substantial depopulation of the area and adoption of neighbouring pottery styles by the remaining residents.

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9783791357430

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Centuries ago, Native American people in the Mimbres Valley of New Mexico produced fantastic pottery painted with human and animal forms and what appear to be geometric patterns. For a 2018 exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the artist Tony Berlant and the art historian Evan Maurer, took a long, imaginative look at these patterns and concluded that they aren't abstract at all. They depict real things: hallucinogenic flowering plants and a species of moth known to pollinate them. Suddenly, a ritual-intensive culture comes to life, and a trippy art is trippier than we ever guessed. The curatorial sleuth work, illustrated with fabulous Mimbres bowls, is detailed in the show's magical catalog. -The New York Times

Author Information

TONY BERLANT is an artist and a founding member of the Mimbres Foundation, a Los Angeles-based conservancy dedicated to protecting vulnerable Mimbres sites. EVAN MAURER is Director Emeritus of the Minneapolis Institute of Art. JULIA BURTENSHAW is Assistant Curator in the Art of the Ancient Americas Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

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