Ruth Leon recommends… Nayarit Houses – Met Museum
Ruth Leon recommendsNayarit Houses – Met Museum
Nayarit is a small state in western Mexico between the forested mountains of the Sierra Madre Occidental and the Pacific Ocean.
Here is Met curator Laura Filloy Nadal taking us on a tour through ancient Nayarit house models, offering a unique window into life in West Mexico between 100 BCE and 200 CE.
These little models explore detailed scenes of village life, feasting, and community gatherings, that share details of the traditions that shaped the lives of those who lived in what is now the state of Nayarit.
As part of this tour, she uncovers a previously “hidden” room—an element that reveals an important aspect of these models: they were built from the inside out. It does not matter that the viewer, ancient or modern, cannot see every element; it matters that they are there. These models reconstruct the world of the living, to create one for the dead.
Fascinating!
Fascinating and lovely. Thank you for sharing.
Comparable tradition in ancient Egypt: little statues hidden in the centre of pillars, invisible for the viewer, the idea was that it is important that it is there, not whether it can be known.
There is a parallel in classical music: there are structures in JS Bach’s work that cannot be heard as such, but yet he found it important that it is a fundamental structural element – like retrograde parts in the Four Duets for keyboard where it is impossible to hear that episodes are the same music backwards. Or important structural articulation points which go entirely unnoticed in Wagner, Brahms, Mahler, and in serial works where the entire structure is irrelevant in relation to the effect (sounds chaotic or ‘wrong’ while structurally it is ‘perfecty right’).