FUNNY SCULPTURE

When I first discovered the funny art of ancient Mexico I found myself wondering how it ever took root there. After all, the funny people had to live side by side with violent neighbors like the Mayans (above) and the pathologically aggressive Aztecs. But I checked and my timeline was off. The funny cultures thrived in the pre-Mayan, pre-Aztec era, before the time of Christ.

In that placid era they had time to play with their pets...

...and make fun of their goofy neighbors. 

Some of the caricatures were startlingly specific.

Pocket-sized joke sculptures were all over the place.

Every physical type was lampooned.

Women too, particularly women with thick legs. 

Of course males liked to sculpt sexy women. Who knows, maybe there was a religious reason for it. 

Haw! As time went by high-minded reasons might have become secondary.

My guess is that there was a thriving business in tiny porn sculpture. Was there a Hugh Hefner of that era? Were these figures sold "under the counter" in the marketplace?

I like the flat-on-their-backs, rigor mortis-type poses in this (above) example. Two thousand years later accountants may still be doing the deed this way.

Cultures that value comedy always strike me as being on the path to liberty and progress, but Mexican humorists lived in an increasingly rough neighborhood and, well...the rest was history.

WARLORDS OF ANCIENT MEXICO

Here's what I'm reading now, or rather will read when I finish Mike Barrier's book about Dell comics. I know nothing about the Aztecs but the illustrations in the book are so beautiful and the stories so enticing that I can't help but jump the gun and write about the subject anyway. 

You can't write about the Aztecs without mentioning human sacrifice (above). I'll return to that in a minute.

Just thumbing through the book has convinced me that my old understanding of Aztec architecture was flawed. The shapes of the structures were more varied than I expected.

The Mayan and Aztec cities were sometimes burned to the ground, indicating to me that there were more wooden and stucco structures than modern illustrators have indicated. You see lots of surviving stone building shapes (above) that only make sense if wood were part of the design.

Mayans and Aztecs made beautiful stone walls (above), probably the most beautiful ever seen, but you have to wonder if stone walls of that type were as common as we think. Wooden walls would have been easier to make and embellish. My guess is that elaborate wooden variants of the stone walls were all all over the place in old Aztec cities. They just didn't survive the Spanish conquest.

Amazingly the early Aztecs and Mayans were believers in relatively limited war. The nobles of each side would fight in a public place and the winners determined which side won the war.

BTW, the illustration above is a cheat, inspired by the later Aztecs who fought differently and massacred large numbers of captives. Amazingly we know the name of the man who convinced everyone to do that.

There he is (above). His name was Prince Tlacaelel, a warrior priest and mystic and...my guess...psychopath. The Prince convinced everyone that the god Huitzilopitchli would grant unlimited military success to the Aztecs provided they practiced ever-growing human sacrifices.

Let me digress to marvel at the beautiful clothes worn by well-off Aztecs. Fashion must have been a big deal in that culture. And look at the furniture in the background! It's like something out of "Dr. Caligari."

I wonder if fashion played an indirect part in the Aztec conquests. Aztecs were pretty good at undermining the confidence of their enemies with their sophisticated art and architecture. The Mayans pre-emptively defeated the Toltecs partly by encouraging Toltec tourism to their magnificent and intimidating cities.

BTW: I'll digress for a moment to marvel at the fact that the Aztecs enthusiasm for architecture never made its way into their drawn art. I'm not aware that any culture in the West thought landscapes were worth an artist's time. Maybe the Chinese and Japanese valued it but I'm not aware that anyone else in the ancient world did.

Anyway, thanks to Prince Tlacaelel an enormous number of prisoners of war were sacrificed over the years, so many that when Cortez and the Spanish arrived to plunder, a lot of the local tribes sided with the Spanish against their own ethnicity. The final battle was incomparably brutal, with genocidal atrocities being committed by Cortez's vengeful Indian allies.

If there were lots of beautifully carved wooden structures maybe they wouldn't have survived the conquest. Both the Spanish and their vengeful allies would have had reasons to destroy them. But this is conjecture. A counter argument might be that Mexico didn't have much hard wood.

MORE OF MY VIDEO GAME IDEAS

Another Theory Corner first: here's more of my video game sketches. In this drawing (above) I tried to give Aztec/Mayan motiffs a sort of Basil Wolverton sensibility.

 Above, some fake Aztec wall decoration (above).

I like the idea of sometimes finding yourself skating in cramped quarters. In a situation like this (above) the possibilities are endless. You can be crushed by the trolley or you can dive into manholes or open doorways that lead to other locales. You can also press yourself against the wall and accept the punches, slaps, kisses, cat scratches, farts, etc. of the passengers and pets leaning out the windows.

I love stuff like this (above).

This thought (above) would have required a total redo if it had been accepted. I was trying to make fun of traditional Japanese furniture which is very low and close to the ground, but the idea doesn't come across here.

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