The Chimerical Age: Revolutionary Change in the Visual Culture of the Ancient Andes

Darryl WILKINSON, PhD

Assistant Professor of Religion, Dartmouth College

Abstract:

From the perspective of the longue durée, the visual culture of the Andes is very unusual. On the eve of European colonization, most of the Andes was under the political dominion of the Inkas, an empire with which many will already have some familiarity. Yet what is less well known is that Inka visual culture represents a radical rejection of almost everything that preceded it. In many ways, the material culture of the Inkas was profoundly divergent from that of their predecessors, and so deliberately spurned almost three millennia of artistic tradition. Most notably, prior to the Inkas, almost every Andean state and empire was heavily invested in representing chimeras; that is, composite beings that amalgamated elements from a variety of human and nonhuman species. But with the rise of the Inka Empire, the chimeras were for some reason almost entirely extinguished. What should we make of this remarkable—perhaps even revolutionary—shift in Andean visual culture? In this talk I will argue that we need to be consider how the face of the Andes was repeatedly altered by far-reaching metaphysical shifts during the pre-colonial era. Specifically, the fall (and rise) of the chimerical age will be analyzed as a window on such metaphysical tumults. 

Date
Thu October 20th 2022, 5:00 - 7:00pm
Speaker
Darryl Wilkinson