Inka Art PDF

Inka Art 0 T. Cummins What does art tell us about the Inkas and their world? Thomas B. F. Cummins Introduction Inka art and architecture are an expres...

Inka Art 0 T. Cummins What does art tell us about the Inkas and their world? Thomas B. F. Cummins Introduction Inka art and architecture are an expression and manifestation of Tawantinsuyu. They are based on an aesthetic used throughout the Inka empire. That aesthetic does not depend on realism in the sense of mimesis or copying, rather it imagines and gives image to the ordered universe of Tawantinsuyu. Nor does architecture have sculptural decoration to any great extent. The Inka instead created a sophisticated and coherent body of works in architecture, ceramics, metal, and textiles that gave visual expression physical presence to religious, political, historical, and social concepts of the Inka (see chapters by E. Phipps and S. Nair). By and large, the images and objects the Inka created were based on ordered and systematic abstract geometric forms. Even the figural forms in ceramic, metal or the few stone sculptures are reduced to highly geometrically schematized forms. For example, the stone offertory bowls (conopa) in the shape of a llama (Fig.1), are carved using straight lines and right angles. Many boulders in the countryside around Cusco and at ceremonial sites are carved in geometric shapes (Fig. 2). Ceramics occasionally have slip painted figures that depict animals, fish, insects, and humans. The most realistic and therefore identifiable in terms of species etc. are insects, birds, and fish, especially suche or catfish in Lake Titicaca. Nonetheless they maintain a rather schematic linear form, similar to the formation of the conopa. Most often, animals are seen from a bird’s eye-perspective so that one looks down on them and sees the most important features. Birds and camelids are depicted standing, in profile and most often in repeated sequence. On some plates, the figures are arranged within a dynamic composition. On a shallow plate, for example, five suche fish appear to swim around the outer rim in alternating curved movement while pairs of black flies are depicted between the head and tail of each fish (Fig. 3). In the center, framed by two black lines that suggest an inner circumference or border, a composition of flies and snails creates an alternative dynamism that moves inward and outward rather than around the plate as the outer figures do. The individual four snails are modeled in low relief and are slip painted brown. They are paired and placed horizontally opposite each other forming a quadripartite division. Between them are pairs of black flies that face each other. To offset the inherent static quality of the quadripartite composition, the flies are not symmetrical to each other. Each pair is slightly different in terms of the placement of each fly to the other, as if they are in movement. The human figure is the most schematic. The head is usually an inverted triangle with eyes, nose and mouth indicated by simple geometric shapes. The torso is a tubular form representing the dress (acusa) and shawl (lliqlla; pronounced as "yikuya"). The arms and legs are the most schematically rendered and are simple, thin, single lines, drawn much like a stick figure. The figure stands rigidly erect with the feet splayed in either direction placed upon a narrowly drawn ground line. The figures are repeated several times giving a sense that they are performing some ritual. What is significant in the depiction of the human as well as the animal figures is that the composition is the determining element of visual emphasis. That is, the disposition of the figures, rather than the pictorial elements of the figures (features, anatomy, color, shading etc.), 1 is what is important. No sense of narrative is attempted; no placement within a scene of action is implied. Rather it is the relationship of the parts to the whole that gives coherence to the overall image. Hence, while representational figures do occur, they are certainly not a necessary condition for, nor primary interest of Inka ceramic surface painting/drawing. It is the design composition that is critical, which when it is drawn or painted on a surface, be it figural or abstract, is designated in Quechua by the term quilca. There are also occasional monumental or at architectural stone images such as at Huánuco Pampa (a major provincial administrative center in the central highland of Peru) where a profile pair of heraldic, horizontal, bi-laterally symmetrical felines (pumas) is carved below the outer lintel of a double jamb entrance that leads into the vast plaza. Around Cusco, pumas and amaru (large snakes) are carved in low relief at the entrances of caves. As at Huánuco Pampa these figures are schematically depicted with a strong outline basically being defining characteristic. Most two-dimensional images and three- dimensional sculptures are conceived within a visual idiom of pure geometry that emphasizes design and the relationship of parts to a whole. For example, the individual abstract geometric images to be discussed later (tocapu) on the Dumbarton Oaks tunic, are organized on a grid that relates the discrete image (tocapu) to the whole design (see chapter by E. Phipps). The stones in Inka walls such as at the Coricancha (Temple of the Sun in Cusco) were fitted together precisely so as to be able to see the relationship between one stone and the other (see chapter by R. Mar et al.); the slopes of rugged landscape were transformed into visible hemispheres that extended into the air; and cities and ritual centers were laid out in systematic order. Ritual objects were created in matched pairs thereby manifesting physically and visually the underlying binary set of 2 relationships that are critical to Andean expression. For example, a set of binary relationships is one of the first things used for encoding information in Inka notational object called the khipu (see chapter by M. Medrano). That is, the fibers are twisted together in one of two directions just as the knots are tied either to the right or the left. The knots themselves were arranged along the string such that their proximal relationship to each other manifested a decimal ordering by which information could be encoded and extracted. Inka style The forms and images of geometric and numeric order are the underlying basis of how the Inka visually represented themselves, easily identifiable in the planning of centers, architectural principals of Inka buildings (see chapter by R. Mar et al. and S. Nairs), and the two-dimensional designs of textiles and vessels. Inka images and objects therefore exhibited an intended uniformity. Not only does one immediately recognize almost all Inka planning and stonework at first glance, but there are also signature architectural elements that clearly re-enforce this impression. The most notable feature is again a geometric form, the trapezoid, which is used to mark the penetration of the solid, stonewalls. Trapezoidal forms are the only ones used for both interior and exterior niches as well as windows. One can see magnificent examples of these niches and windows in the interior walls of the Coricancha, Machu Picchu, Pisac (Fig. 4) and elsewhere. Whether or not the trapezoid has any structural utility for the stability of buildings in a land of earthquakes is debatable. However, we can suggest that this geometric form is in- 3 and-of-itself important visually to the Inka because when the Inka wished to mark an especially important entrance, such as at the Coricancha in Cusco or the entry leading into the sacred centers of Machu Picchu, they built a double trapezoidal door jamb. There is no structural value here; rather, the recursive geometric form calls attention visually to and manifests physically the liminal or transitional place where one passes from the quality of one space to another. One can call this precise and uniform style an imperial art style in the sense that one Inka style as viewed against that which was local and different. Tawantinsuyu, the Inka Empire, was and still is often compared to the Roman Empire, although their artistic forms are very different. For example, the Inka army arrived at a frontier arrayed in tunics of a geometric abstract red, white, and black checkered-board design (uncu). As some of the very first Spanish chroniclers write, the image of these thousands of men, dressed as one and armed with slings, gave an image of a single, coordinated, and powerful whole that was led by the Sapa Inka (Unique Inka, the unquestioned paramount ruler). These military tunics were no less venerable as an object than Roman armor, and they were also carefully kept in communities. They were brought out in rituals in which songs were sung that recounted historical events. As we shall see, the presence of these precious Inka textiles was not merely because they were considered heirlooms but because they were considered as testifying witnesses to the events of past deeds and their appearance at these times made the songs truthful as a first-person narrative account. The Inka promised a kind of Pax Inka not unlike the Pax Romana of antiquity. That is, the Inka offered to those who entered their domain a peaceful and ordered world, one that suppressed local rivalries and disputes. And, this promise was more than just 4 creating a peaceful environment or access to foods and other resources stored throughout Tawantinsuyu, to be distributed when there were local scarcities from floods, droughts, or war. The Inka were able to do this because they harnessed the great labor force of the Andes, which also meant having access to a vast force of artistic talent. These included weavers, wood carvers, stonemasons, ceramicists, and many other artisans. There are of course regional styles, a local inflection of what one might call “pure” Inka style; however, what is significant that craftsmen from all over the Andes in one way or another were directly influenced by what they saw. And in many cases reproduced it precisely. Weaving may be the most valued medium of Andean expression, but metalsmiths and gold and silver objects make up the overwhelming number of references to craftsmen and media in the chronicles. This difference is probably due to Spanish interest in gold and silver. Spanish authors mention that Andean goldsmiths fashioned a variety of objects for the Inka, including the small gold and silver statues that were buried with the sacrificed children of the capacocha rituals (see examples in the exhibit), which provide us today with the overwhelming number of precious metal Inka objects. These are rather simple figurines, either cast or hammered, give an idea of the kinds of life-size images that were made and placed in the legendary garden of the Coricancha. It is said that all species of animal, plant and man were represented. Almost all these images and objects were melted down for their metal content, either in Peru or soon after they reached Spain. Listed among these figural sculptures were also large vessels of gold and silver that amazed the conquistadores when Atahualpa’s ransom was collected. Intimately related to these vessels were the cups for drinking the beer, which were called aquilla (see examples in the exhibit). Their importance for the Inka is underscored by the fact 5 that the metalsmiths in Cusco who forged the legendary life-sized gold and silver garden in the Coricancha are described in general as Santillán wrote "artisans who were in Cusco serving to make cups of gold and silver.” The very gold and silver taken from the mines was said to have been dedicated to making these cups: "where the [Sapa] Inka had mines he ordered as he wished that they mine the gold and silver for his cups and other things of his set of plates". The importance of making these vessels for the Inka is underscored by the duties of the metalsmiths working on the south coast where the Sapa Inka commanded... that the Indians who were metal smiths were to be relieved from giving tribute and they did not have to do anything else but make the vessels for his service or for whom he commanded…. Most chroniclers state that the Sapa Inka had dominion over all gold and silver, but whether or not the above statement is accurate, what becomes clear is that vessels had as high a value as figural sculpture within an Inka aesthetics. And as we shall see these vessels had a very important place in religious ritual and social interchange, so we should not think of them as merely mundane utilitarian object. Artists and craftsmen were put to work throughout Tawantinsuyu to make other beautiful things, be they gold and silver vessels or figurines, fine cloth, high quality ceramics, or exquisite masonry buildings. The production and distribution of these things was a sign of the political and social order that the “Pax Inka” offered. The massive finely built walls so carefully pieced together seem almost to be a congealed form of the vast labor that this system could now command. However, it would be very wrong only to see Inka artistic production within the willful material terms of a political state. The order the Inka offered was also a metaphysical one, an order that was not all cynical (see 6 chapter by F. Acuto). It was a metaphysical order that was embodied in the objects, images, architecture, and rituals. The objects they produced were given as gifts to the deities as well as to each other so to consecrate favorable relations in a binding form. As we shall see relationships and the expression of them constitute an overriding concern in Inka art and architecture, in part because these forms also helped to structure how one conducted oneself as an integrated part of a social and metaphysical existence. Space, objects, and ritual No Andean lived alone. One not only lived in a conceptual world of binaries, straight lines, squares, rectangles, and circles that were repeated, combined, and nested within themselves, but every runa (person) performed them on both as daily practice and in ritual performance. These conceptual ideals have a long history in the Andes; however, the Inka used them to create a visual culture that distinguished them as a unified whole in relation to local expressions. Yet all that they built and created was something that was understandable within Andean aesthetic and ethical codes. It is the expression of an aesthetic in which the notion of beauty is tremendously complex and ambiguous in terms of its nature. The relationship between organizational ideal, imperial culture and artistic expression can be first glimpsed by the very term that names the vast expanse of the Inka Empire, Tawantinsuyu. It can be translated as meaning “four (tawa) parts (suyu),” and indeed the empire was divided and administered in four parts: Antisuyu, Collasuyu, Chinchasuyu, and Contisuyu. Modern maps tend to try to show this quadripartite 7 division as an administrative, ethnic, and economic division that was territorially distributed in a markedly unequal way. However, conceptually these four suyu were distributed equally in a sacred spatial relationship to the center, which was Cusco. We have no known Inka representation of Tawantinsuyu; however, the conceptual organization of Tawantinsuyu finds a visual correspondence with the quadripartion of a square or rectangle, which is a common design element of the Inka tocapu. Moreover, a colonial illustration (Fig. 5) painted by the Andean artist and author, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, is the only known colonial pictorial representation of Tawantinsuyu, and it suggests how this sacred and geographic entity was spatially conceived by an Andean artist and how it best could be represented both within Andean and western conventions. Guaman Poma de Ayala’s watercolor illustration is not like a modern map of how archaeologists think about and represent Tawantinsuyu , which is a much more “rational” or “empirical” mapping of the territory based on Spanish chronicles. Rather, his illustration is an image of what Tawantinsuyu was conceived as within the cognitive experience and imagination of an Andean. The watercolor is based on a quadripartite composition similar to what is seen in certain tocapus, but here in a colonial illustration instead of pure geometric forms, there are five stylized cities distributed within a stylized European landscape. The center is represented by the imperial city of Cusco and the four cities representing the four suyu, each identified by their written name, are placed equidistant from Cusco. This colonial-era illustration gives a pictorial image of an ordered empire and universe that for the Inka could be expressed best by geometric composition. In other words, in the physical world of an extremely rugged landscape, an Andean could imagine 8 a completely ordered geometrical world. It was a world in which one could imagine travel across it in a straight line returning to one’s place of origin after participating in a ritual that took place in Cusco’s plaza. One could perform rituals at the different huacas (sacred entities or places) distributed along the imagined ceque (lines) radiating out from the Coricancha with the understanding one traveled in straight paths even as one traversed the countryside in a decidedly meandering fashion. Phenomenological experience gave way to the mental constructs of a rigidly ordered world. Thus, it is important to emphasize that Inka expression is imbued with the sacred, a sacrality that trumps experiential action. The act of making fine objects, as we shall see, was most emphatically as much a sacred act as it was a craft performance. Materials and making: Ritual embodiment of the Inka aesthetic How did the material make the sacred of the Inka manifest? Let us return first to plaza of Cusco, where all major Inka rituals were initiated and where the Inka feasted every day to the sun, offering a toast to their deity and then to each other. The plaza where the Inka feasted was physically and materially transformed so as to be a pure and holy space by digging up the earth that was there and then refilling the excavated with fine white sand. There is no archaeological evidence for this transformation because in 1558 the Spanish governor of the City of Cusco ordered that the sand be removed and used for the foundation of the new cathedral. The plaza was a sacred space for Inka celebrations in all the centers they built throughout Tawantinsuyu, some of which were extremely capacious as at Huánuco 9 Pampa. The plaza in Cusco, however, was the most important, and it continued to be revered into the early colonial period as the early chronicler Juan Polo de Ondegardo tells us: “The Indians would have paid any price that we could have asked if we had left the plaza as it were, but I deemed it better that the sand go to the building of the cathedral … the principal reason of which was that it was removed the great reverence that they held for the plaza.” He tells us that the fine white sand in the plaza was brought from the Pacific coast by order of the Inka and that gold and silver statues of men, women, and animals were buried in the sand, which they found when the sand was removed. The transportation of the sand by the Inka was not only an incredibly labor- intensive act, a manifestation of political will and power, but the material itself, the sand, was sacred and its placement was meant to transform and sanctify the plaza. The place from where it came, the Pacific, was called mamacocha, or “mother body of water,” and she was worshipped just as the mountains, the sun, and the moon were. The sand therefore was not merely used to convert the original swampy area of the plaza into an even and visually purified surface, but the plaza itself became a more scared space, a kind of cocha, in which the waters of the ocean and Lake Titicaca were mingled by being poured into the sand during different rituals. Moreover, the earth that was originally in the plaza was removed and taken to Inka sites throughout the Empire thereby sanctifying/replicating each as another Cusco. The white sand therefore not only made the plaza a more beautiful place, it imbued the plaza with the telluric materiality of the sacred. Moreover, the plaza was also a conceptual as well as material space. In fact, many of the design elements that one sees in Andean textiles and ceramic decoration are also present in the plaza in terms of how it 10 was conceptually divided. Here the social and political divisions of Tawantinsuyu were spatially realized and used to organize Inka rituals that took place there. Material and space were united in an even more profound way so that this architectural form marked the physical and metaphorical center of Tawantinsuyu. The plaza, understood as uniting the physical and the ideal, can be imagined therefore as the ideal template for the binary and quadripartite divisions that organize many Inka forms, such as tocapu images, architectural structures and almost everything else. This is because, in part, there is a recursive component to all Inka imagery and architecture, as also mentioned in terms of Inka trapezoidal doorways. Another example of the recursive is seen in a very common geometric design used on Inka gold, silver (aquillas) and wooden (queros [keros - see examples in the exhibit]) drinking vessels. These objects were used in rituals conducted in the plazas built throughout Tawantinsuyu and the design on them is composed of a set of nested or concentric rectangular forms (Fig. 6) This recusiveness does not only occur within a particular image (quero) or architectural form (dooway). It occurs across media including ritual space in conceptual ways as we can see if we return to the conventions embedded in Cusco’s plaza. We see first that it was physically divided into two parts: one called Huaycapata and the other Cusipata. In all ritual celebrations, this physical division was used such that the Inka of Cusco occupied Huaycapata and all non-Inka, many of whom came from all over the empire and lived in the areas surrounding the sacred city, occupied the Cusipata (see chapter by R. Mar et al. and their illustrations). The two plazas were physically separated by one of the two rivers, the Huatany, that defined the western border of the sacred center of Cusco. The other river, the Tullumayo, defined the other, eastern border of the city. 11 Both rivers have their source above and behind Sacsahuaman, coming out from either side of the hill where the magnificent temple/fortress was built. Where the rivers joined together below formed the southern limit of the sacred center of the city (puma chupan) as well as a ritual site of joyful and competitive synthesis or tinku. The plaza also marked the social division of the Inka city, which was divided into two parts, Hanan and Hurin Cusco, or upper and lower Cusco. Here, the division was not marked by any physical feature, such as a river, but rather by where one lived in the city, above or below an imagined line running through the center of the plaza. This division therefore ran perpendicular to the socio/political division that was marked by the river that divided the plazas. More important, this second division demonstrated how the Inka residents (Hanan and Hurin) arranged themselves in the plaza during daily ritual feasting and all other major religious celebrations. The feast was organized around the seating of the mummies of Sapa Inkas of each of the ten royal families. Five mummies were of the Inka clans from Hanan or upper Cusco and the other five mummies were from Hurin or lower Cusco. They sat facing each other in two rows such that the Hanan row was in the upper part of the city facing south and the Hurin faced them toward North. The reigning Sapa Inka sat in a wooden seat covered with gold at the head of the two rows. Finally, the plaza was understood to be where the division of Tawantinsuyu into four parts originated. Again, there was nothing that marked this division other than the roads that went out from the city, yet everyone was aware of this division. In other words, one might look today at the space of the plaza as a void, but in reality, it embodied the various social, cultural, and political divisions by which Tawantinsuyu was organized geometrically. 12  While the divisions were not laid out in the plaza in any obvious physical form other than the river running through it, they were enacted by those who came to celebrate in this space. As already mentioned, the arrangement of the mummies of the past Inka rulers determined the division between Hanan and Hurin that organized the entire city and all other Inka centers. Furthermore, the obligatory ritual exchange of maize beer by a series of toasts in matched cups that each participant brought to the feast and that acknowledged all of these divisions and their unification. The sacred union of the plaza was recognized by the first toast, which was exchanged between the Sapa Inka and his divine father, the sun (inti). Then the Sapa Inka toasted with his kinsmen who offered a toast with one vessel and drank from the other. The mummies are said to have drunk with each other through their proxies, a relative who acted as their voice. The toasts brought the two parts of Cusco (Hanan and Hurin) together in amicable fashion, but they also acknowledged their division by always using matched cups aquilla (either of gold or silver) and queros (wooden cup). The exchange of cups expressed the underlying binaries of Andean social relations. Thus, someone of higher ranks offered a drink in the right hand and it was received by the inferior in the left. Both then drank to each other. The toast was then reciprocated in the second pair of queros. Equals offered and received the vessel in the right hand and an inferior offered a reciprocal toast in the left hand that was received by the superior in the right hand. These exchanges demonstrate the embodiment of many of the principals and paradigms that underlie Inka artistic material and design production; they repeat and alter and in doing so signify very powerful concepts about religious, social, and political relationships. Just as important, the paired vessels and their use had widespread Andean 13 understanding and acceptance both geographically and historically. The early chronicler, Juan de Betanzos who married into the Inka royal family of Atahualpa, the Inka ruler captured and killed by the Spaniards in 1533, tells us that this system of reciprocal toasting with a pair of vessels was used throughout Peru to establish and maintain amicable relations. Such relations were not just personal between local neighbors, but also between differing nations and ethnic groups. The exchange of toasts was also made between Andeans and their deities. The time depth of this embodied expression can be seen in many of monolithic sculptures at Middle Horizon (600-1000 CE) site of Tiwanaku. This was a ruined ceremonial city at the time of the Inka but they claimed it as a part of their own mythic history and considered it as their place of origin place and venerated by them because it was created by Virachocha, the paramount creator deity who gave ordered life to the world. The sculptures (Fig. 7) hold a quero-shaped vessel in one hand as if in offering it to this generative and powerful deity who the Inka believed had created the sculptures themselves. The amicable and reciprocal exchange of toasts between Andean lords and the great Andean gods was widespread both in time and space, and if we look at the East and West tombs found at the temple mound of Huaca Loro at the Middle Sicán capital of Sicán of rich and powerful Sicán complex on the north coast circa AD 1000, we can see a literal representation in tomb sculpture of what Guaman Poma depicts in his drawings. The dead lords were buried in a seated and cross-legged position as if they were alive, just as the Inka royal mummies were seated on their tianas (small stools that were seats of power) in Cusco’s plaza and where they exchanged toasts with each of and the Andean sun God Inti each day. The principal personage in East Tomb was positioned 14 looking west toward the Pacific. He held one high-karat gold (and silver rattling bottom) cup (aquilla) in the left hand of a long artificial arm that was attached to his mummified and bundled body. The body of the West Tomb principal personage was placed in the same burial position and form and had his tumbaga (low-karat gold-silver-copper alloy) cup held in the right hand of a long artificial arm that was also attached to his mummified and bundled body (Fig. 8). At the very least these burials suggest that these mummies were offering a perpetual toast (not unlike the Tiwanaku sculptures) and that this act was intensified or at least stressed by the large artificial arms of each. Moreover, the clearly differentiated right and left arms as well as the material difference between the high-karat gold and tumbaga vessels suggest a venerable Andean symbolic articulation of status differentiation. The exaggerated act of toasting also manifests the importance of such an offering, an act that still today initiates a set obligations and relations. The Inka were drawing on long-standing and widely used forms of material and ritual expression. The Inka used a very precise and differentiated vessel form and design similar to but distinct from all other ones. The regularity of Inka queros is in keeping with the Inka creation of a unified visual and material culture experienced throughout the administrative/ritual centers of Tawantinsuyu. Visual uniformity, intensified by abstraction, was, as already mentioned, an exercise of Inka political power on culture. The geometric motifs cut into the quero's surface manifest this aesthetics of politics. The designs are immediately recognizable as Inka and distinct from local traditions. Yet Tawantinsuyu was not just a secular political apparatus meant to extract local resources. Power itself was divine and in the first instance the divine was substantiated in the person of the Sapa Inka. The manifested presence of the sacred was revealed in many other 15 ways and forms and it can be argued that the incised method of decorating the quero's surface may have also referenced this quality of the Inka aesthetic. Inka quero designs do not lie on the surface. They are revealed by being cut into the wood (see Fig. 6). The design is therefore always latent within the wood just as the vessel form is latent in the block of wood. Pairs of queros that have been tested come from a single wood block so that each vessel is materially as well as conceptually related to its partner. This is at least indicated by the mestizo chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega who writes that "they had... cups for drinking all in pairs: be they big or small they had to be of the same size, the same form, of the same metal, gold or silver or of wood." Production in pairs is thus an intrinsic attribute of queros and aquillas. Although aquillas are made differently than queros, their production is linked in that they are always made as pairs. Equally important, the pair must be made from the same material and perhaps from the same source. As Garcilaso de la Vega makes clear, the production in pairs is based upon the social relations that are enacted through ritual drinking. That relationship is, predicated upon the moiety division of ayllu communities into hanan and hurin such that each pair of vessels is a materialization of this social division, just as we have seen amongst the Inka in their celebrations in Cusco’s plaza. The pair is even personified as “hermanos” (brothers) by Garcialso de la Vega. And although one could believe that Garcialso de la Vega is using the Seventeenth-century understanding of the word hermano, he is actually referring to the Quechua term “yanantin yanantillan,” which Holguin translates as “dos cosas hermanadas” (two joined or twinned things). Yanantin is a term and a concept that is critical to social identity in the Andes, and it finds its materialization in the production of aquillas and queros. 16  The querocamayoc (quero maker or specialist), in this sense, releases the quero from its natural state bringing both the object and its image into being simultaneously. The vessel and its design are interdependent in relation to their substance. The geometric abstraction of the motifs visually heightens this relationship. The intricate spacing of line creates a pattern of light and shadow such that one first recognizes forms embedded in the material, as part of the wood itself, something that is not only visual but tactile, and sensed as one holds the vessel. There is an indissoluble integrity between appearance and substance. Similar concepts operate among the various media of Inka visual art. Inka stone sculptures found around Cusco and other Inka centers are, as mentioned, often carved in a highly abstract, geometric style. These are sacred sites (huacas) in the landscape and the stone is cut in situ to reveal that sacredness. The stone is rarely sculpted into the likeness of something seen elsewhere (Fig. 9). The act of cutting the stone alters its natural state, but it never loses the material appearance as stone. The geometric abstraction emerges from the natural rock formations of which it is a part. The sun casts shadows emphasizing the sharp angles and straight lines of the sculptural forms, but this only intensifies the integrity between the material and its worked appearance. The sculpture manifests a highly charged place in the socio-religious world of the Inka, a place where ritual attention is focused. The visual nature of this manifestation does not disassociate the sacredness from the substance from which it is produced nor the natural environment that encompasses it. Again, an illustration by Guaman Poma depicts pictorially the concept of camay, discussed below, as it exists within the natural state of the stone (Fig. 10). He depicts the 17 myth of a large stone that was being dragged from a quarry to an Inka center so as to be formed into an ashlar block for building. At a certain point the stone becomes too tired, weeps blood and eventually comes to rest where it is. That is, the boulder is attributed with a will and animacy that it exerts on its own behalf. Guaman Poma illustrates this by painting first the irregular surface of the stone, suggesting its natural form. However, he sketches within this natural rough surface a regularized geometric form of an ashlar block, the state into which it would be carved once it reached its destination in Cusco. Furthermore, he animates the block by depicting a pair of eyes. In other words, the form of what the stone is to become is already existent (i.e., latent) within its natural state. What is visually expressed in this colonial image is the Quechua idea of camay, or the potentiality existent within any natural state to be realized as a metaphysical presence of the sacred, as discussed below. This notion is intensified by the anthropomorphism of the stone itself. Guaman Poma endows it with a pair of eyes that look forward and in the direction it is moving. Inka tapestry weave textiles (cumpi) also have geometric abstract designs similar to those on queros and stone sculpture. More importantly, like the queros, the designs do not lie on the surface but are embedded within the object itself, are a part of the textile's structure. Appearance and object emerge simultaneously in the generative act of weaving. The abstract designs are even more intrinsic to the cumpi cloth than the quero designs are to the wood. There is no physical distinction between surface and image in cumpi, rather they are structurally integrated at the moment of their mutual production. The quero, cumpi, and stone huaca are not the same things and they operated variously in Inka culture. Moreover, abstract motifs such as tocapu signified concepts 18 external to the object on which they appear. Yet abstraction can also be seen to call attention to the object itself and what it is, what it consists of, how it is used. Inka abstraction therefore may be more than just the visual expression of the aesthetics of cultural uniformity by a political entity. Abstraction may also be an index of a type of referentiality existing within the Andean cosmological concept of camay. Camay can be considered the supernatural vitalization of all material things for which there is a supernatural prototype, camac. The generative capacity of camay is not restricted, however, to just the great Andean deities such as Pachacamac which was worshipped at a venerable pilgrimage complex where the Inka built their own sun temple and filled the plaza with the same while sand as filled the plaza in Cusco. Lesser earthly manifestations such as local huacas could animate smaller entities such as stones left or placed in the middle of a field. Even the master craftsmen of Tawantinsuyu through their special skills are associated with the capacity to infuse the objects of their production with this essence of being. Titles such as cumpicamayoc, (weaver) refer to a master artist or specialist and implies "possessor of a specific force or energy (camay)." The past made present: Style and form in Inka art The relationship between the craftsman and the object implied in titles such as cumpicamayoc and querocamayoc may have suggested more than knowledge or capacity to physically produce a cultural object. It may also have been understood as imbuing the object with its essential properties. The Inka concept of the object, its ontology, exceeds 19 utilitarian function. Each object substantiates camay in a material, visual form. Each object is brought into being and exists with all others, participating phenomenologically in the events of the world. Often, the object is the only material participant of what otherwise cannot be experienced directly through the sense of sight. For example, a vessel is revered and kept because either the Inka or a deity has drunk from it. That is, the vessel is a tangible manifestation of the exchange, an exchange that can be replicated through the use of the object. Other objects, including bodies of the dead, are kept in Andean communities not as heirlooms. They constitute participants in and therefore "witnesses" to past events. Their existence potentially allows a speaker to recount the past as something known firsthand. Equally the body of an ancestor can speak for the will and decision of the dead through the voice of a living descendent. The social life of an Andean thing begins with the creative act, just as it does for the human being and seemingly everything else. In this sense, the object can be an intermediary of social relations, perhaps even participating equally in the formulation of those relations. This does not mean that every type of object has the same social and aesthetic effect or value. Some things are more significant than others. Cumpi cloth (tapestry weave) was one of those types of things and so were aquillas and queros. Aquillas, queros, and cumpi cloth, for example, were the first gifts offered to the curacas (leaders) of a community by the Inka when they appeared at the border expressing the peaceful intent to incorporate them into the “Pax Inka” of Tawantinsuyu. For those who accepted the gifts and made peace with the Inka, the vessels and tunics became witnesses of this agreement, and they were kept in the local communities, venerated almost as sacred relics because they had touched the hand of the Sapa Inka, the 20 son of Inti, the sun god. At the same time these valued gifts, kept in different and unconnected communities, created a great uniformity of Inka material and sacred presence throughout the Andes, as they continued to be given in state rituals. Moreover, the Inka required that their most important calendric rituals be carried out simultaneously throughout Tawantinsuyu and the uncus (tunic) were worn and the vessels (aquillas/queros) were used in ceremonial feasting, as described above for Cusco. The chronicler Cristóbal de Albornoz says that such rituals continued into the colonial period in which the military feats of the Inka were recalled through song, and the tunics with a checkered board design were brought out and the queros were used to offer reciprocal toasts. He ordered these things to be burned, as they were objects that aided memory, recalling not only historical events, but also the divinity of the Inka. These uncus and vessels (aquillas/queros) are the same items that the Inka offered as gifts to the curacas (local ethnic leaders) when they accepted the Inkas’ offer to become part of Tawantinsuyu, and they acted as another type of mnemonic device. The precious objects given by the Inka to the local curacas became a part of their ritual and political display after their death. That is, not only were they used in rituals while they were alive, but in certain regions of Tawantinsuyu, they were incorporated into funerary structures that represented the new affiliation with the Inka. These structures, called chullpas, were stone and adobe above-ground tombs that were built in the southern area of Tawantinsuyu. The chullpas of the Aymara-speaking Carangas are still visible. Many of them are painted on the exterior with designs that are clearly derived from Inka uncu designs (Fig. 11). One chullpa is painted with a design that is very similar to the uncu of Tupac Inka Yupanqui, the “tenth” Inka ruler who conquered the territory, as depicted in a 21 late sixteenth-century portrait. It is suggested that the painted designs of the Carangas's chullpas are to be identified with the Aymara mallcus ( local ethnic leaders) who had accepted Inka rule and who were buried in the structures. The abstract designs may have signified, among other things, the political alliance that had been historically forged between the Inka and the ancestors placed within. Moreover, a pair of queros was embedded in the walls, placed over the entrance to the chambers, queros that were most likely also presented by the Inka. The structures therefore became more than local ethnic burial places. It may be suggested that the painted chullpas, perhaps, became emblematic beacons of the Inka, emblazoned like a patchwork of three-dimensional tocapu on the landscape of Tawantinsuyu. They and the bodies of the ancestors inside and draped with Inka uncus helped to recall, or better instantiate, a number of local mytho-historic narratives that linked them to the great history of Tawantinsuyu. Just as important, we can see how the tocapu design, which is so often only associated with Inka textiles, becomes almost an insignia of the Inka and their presence in a specific geographic place, marked by the painted walls of chullpas. The painting of the chullpas with tocapu coincides with what can be gathered from the only real textual identification of tocapus and what they signify in a specific context. Inka art and architecture therefore is not a passive or contemplative art. The abstract designs in textiles, sculpture, buildings all have resonance in terms of the social formation of the individual. That is, the geometric shapes are embodied within the patterns of thought about space and movement as well as social relations. Thus, the concept of the recursive has a broader context. 22  Inka art and architecture therefore actively engages men and with their world in various, overlapping and re-enforcing ways. For example, the beautifully rounded walls at Machu Picchu, the Coricancha at the center of Cusco, and the sun temple at Inkapirca in the southern highlands of Ecuador have stones uniquely cut so as to articulate precisely their curvature. The curving wall breaks the rectangular regularity of almost all other Inka buildings and therefore visually marks the structures heightened sacrality. The double-jamb doorway calls attention to the door itself through its formal repetition. The entrance is the double-jamb and it means that it is not just a door, but it is a door that requires interpretation on the part of users. In this case, as one first sees and perhaps passes through this type of door, one must understand that it marks a passageway that is beyond the normal. Just as important and in connection to creating ritual spaces, Inka walls and buildings were also meant to recall the Inka’s religious and cultural origins at Tiwanaku. The Spanish Jesuit chronicler, Bernabé Cobo writes that the great Inka leader, Pachacuti, was the Inka who transformed Cusco into being a great city, filled with magnificent buildings. He says that what Pachacuti experienced at Tiwanaku inspired him to build as he did. Whether or not the walls of Cusco really copied what the Inka saw at Tiwanaku is not important. Rather, it is their assertion that this is what Pachacuti ordered and did. It is the claim to this historical connection that is crucial. The mythic past, represented by the existing ruins at a sacred place, is understood as being generative for what the Inka built in the present. The style of Inka walls and architecture did make some visual analogy in the mind of the Inkas to Tiwanaku as a real locus of their mytho-history. More 23 important, this historical analogy allows us to understand that Inka walls, were imbued with great significance. One of the Inka’s great aesthetic and technical achievements of Inka planning and architecture is how it was animated by channeled water flowing through it. Sites such as Tipón south of Cusco and Machu Picchu to the north have beautiful waterways and canals that rhythmically separate into sections of two or three streams and then rejoin as one, coursing through them in a cosmic circulation of life giving liquid. As already mentioned, two rivers rushed from the hills above Cusco to form the sacred limits of the city. These flowing waters were used in Inka rituals, the most important being the December (when the regular annual rain season begins in much of the Peruvian Andes) ritual sacrifice called Mayucati when all the remains of the year’s sacrifices were gathered together. At the same time a series of dams were built in the rivers. When the first dams were broken, the water rushed forward, bursting through all the other dams built below, thereby picking up an ever increasing force until the water rushed though Cusco carrying the residue of all the year’s sacrifices with it. The place where the damn in the Huatanay/Saphi was built can still be recognized by a boulder in the river that has a step-fret design carved in relief (Fig. 12; see chapter by R. Mar et al.). Where the Huatanay/Saphi joined the Tullumayu was called Puma Chupan, and it was a joining of the two rivers to make the one, which is a tinku, a concept that expresses the underlying conflictive competition of a society and its resolution, and which is an underlying principal of the Andean aesthetic of beauty. The related aesthetic concept is expressed by yanantin. Yanantin implies the necessity for two things because the telos of each is only fulfilled by being together and thereby being made complete. This concept goes against the notion of the 24 unique or individual as a quality of beauty, and it is one of the underlying expressions of the duality that structures so much of Andean thought. González Holguín gives the mundane example of shoes or gloves for yanantin. One shoe or glove is insufficient; there must be the other for the purpose to be whole or complete. Yanantin is not simply about a mundane pairs of things. It implies the fundamental importance of mirrored opposites, rather than identical things. One’s competitor in a game or ritual battle and one’s companion in drinking embody both yanantin and tinku. The flow of water and other liquids is not just an animating feature that is built into the Andean landscape and Inka sites. Many Inka ceramic vessels, and really the only figural ceramics made by the Inka, are pacchas. One example is a carefully modeled life- size ceramic right forearm and hand that reaches forward to offer a drinking cup (Fig. 13). This Inka ceramic piece is very similar to the two artificial arms attached to the mummies found at Sicán on the north coast, each of which held a metal drinking cup (aquilla) in their outstretched hand. The ceramic sculpture of the hand with a quero was found at Machu Picchu and was most probably made by Chimú (north coast polity that was conquered by the Inkas) artists who had been brought from the north coast to Cusco; and thus it belongs to the traditions of that area. Nonetheless, it was incorporated by the Inka as it expresses succinctly the importance of Inka ritual exchange as enacted through offering a ritual drink of maize beer, in a special vessel. It also evokes one of the aesthetic principals ordering the production and use of some of the most important ritual drinking vessels that is articulated by the Quechua term yanantin. If we regard the ceramic sculpture from Machu Picchu, we see held in the hand one of the most important Inka ritual objects: the drinking cup. The sculpture implies its partner, as there is no such 25 thing as an individually produced quero or aquilla or a single arm. Each has its mirrored opposite because no one ever drinks alone. The liquid that pours from this paccha instantiates the reciprocal toast with pachamama, mother earth. Another implies this exchange with pachamama by depicting the instruments of agricultural work, the fruits of that labor, and ritual offering. The plasticity of clay permits the combination of an urpu (aryballoid-shaped ceramic jar for transporting maize beer; see examples in this catalogue), an ear of maize and the digging end of a chakitaclla (a wooden footplow) into a single sculptural composition (see examples in this catalogue). An offering of maize beer is first poured into the urpu, then passes through the chakitaclla, and finally empties into the ground, thereby completing a cycle of planting, harvesting, fermentation and consumption as understood through these “utilitarian objects.” The agency of Inka prestigious objects, be it stone masonry, textiles, gold and silver objects, wooden thrones, or cups, ceramic pacchas was more than representation of the Inka power, religion, and culture. As mentioned in relation to the camay, their creation manifested the divine and intercourse with it. But further, their presence also brought the past forward to the present. Objects and the buildings, whether broken, in ruin, or in good condition, could recall the past for a speaker as if they had been present when events occurred. One could speak as if one were an eyewitness to ancient or mythical events if one were in proximity to an object or a building that had been present when the event occurred. The material presence of these things had the capacity to change the condition of knowledge, moving from expressing what one knew as being based on hearsay to being able to express it as absolute knowledge through experience. 26  The Inka understood the value of the places and people they conquered. They not only built new centers, such as Huánuco Pampa, but they incorporated themselves into important existing, more ancient ceremonial sites. They did not destroy and then build over the religious sites. They assimilated into the empire (see chapter by F. Acuto). These were venerable places filled with the knowledge of the ancestors and their deities. The Inka either visited venerable oracles such as Chavín de Huántar, or they built own their temples alongside them. For example, the Inka built their temple of the sun at Pachacamac, the great coastal pilgrimage site near the main pre-Inka temple, but they did not built on top of it. The Inka were said to have brought the portable huacas of the peoples they incorporated into the empire to Cusco. However, the most sacred things in the Andes were not small devotional images, but were unmovable places, a part of the landscape such as the high Andean shrine of Paricaca, the principal huaca, east of Pachacamaca. In truth, Pariacaca was understood as the Central Andean supreme mountain deity and was worshipped in relation to Pachacamac (literally world/earth creator) on the coast. Together they were the reigning gods of the central Andes before the Inka domination. Conclusion If then we take stock of Inka art and architecture, there can be no doubt that the Inka created a distinctive style and set of forms. While they were distinctive from all local forms, they could be appreciated and understood at a profound level by most communities because the Inka forms tapped into long held traditions and beliefs. More importantly, perhaps, Inka forms of artistic expression were not, by and large, about 27 projecting some fearsome image of the state. There are no horrific fanged deities as once roamed the sculptures and textiles of ancient Peru. Nor are their images of defeated warriors. Even the human sacrifices of their most beautiful children was done so as to suggest an image of eternal repose, and they were given gifts of textiles and aquillas and queros to feast with the gods. What Inka artistic expression meant to accomplish was to animate the world of Tawantinsuyu through the agency endowed in the objects and images they created. That this cosmic animation also coincided with political power and social control is without doubt; however, this was not cynical manipulation through image. It was a desire for cosmic order and its expression, the accomplishment of which was nonetheless to the great material benefit of the Inka in Cusco. Suggested Readings Carolyn Dean, Carolyn. 2007. The Inka Married the Earth: Integrated Outcrops and the Making of Place,” Art Bulletin 89.3: 502-518. Cummins, Tom B. 2007. Queros, Aquillas, Uncus, and Chulpas: The Composition of Inka Artistic Expression and Power. In Variations in the Expression of Inka Power, edited by Craig Morris and Ramiro Matos, pp. 266-309. Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks. Paternosto, César. 1996. The Stone and the Thread: Andean Roots of Abstract Art. Austin: University of Texas Press. Stone-Miller, Rebecca. 2002. Art of the Andes: From Chavín to Inca. London: Thames & Hudson. Hamilton, Andrew J. 2018. Scale and the Incas Princeton: Princeton University Press. 28 Biography of Thomas B. F. Cummins Tom Cummins is Dumbarton Oaks Professor of the History of Pre-Columbian and Colonial Art at Harvard University and Director of Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. His 2022 publications are “’They Value Emeralds Even More than Gold’: Muiscas, Spaniards, and Objects of Value." In Portable Universe. LACMA; “Writ Large: Printing, Painting and Conversion in Sixteenth-Century America.” In Typography, Illustration and Ornamentation in the Early Modern Iberian Book World, 1450-1800. Brill Press; “Sacrifice and Idolatry in Pre-Columbia and Colonial America: ‘Because the Worshipping of Abominable Idols is the Cause and the Beginning of All Evil.” In Sacrifice and Conversion between Europe and the New World. I Tatti. Figure Captions Fig. 1: Stone conopa (stone receptacle for offering)in the shape of a stylized llama. Inka Museum, National University of Cusco. Photo courtesy of Yutaka Yoshii. Fig. 2: Intihuatana, sun stone/huaca, ca. 1500 C.E. Machu Picchu. Photo by T. B. Cummins. Fig. 3: One of a pair of Inka shallow dishes with suche fish, flies and snails. Photo by T. B. Cummins. 29 Fig. 4: Interior trapezoidal wall niches, ca. 1500 C.E. Pisac. Photo by T. B. Cummins. Fig. 5: Schematic representation of Cusco and the four suyu. Color wash by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, from Martin de Murúa. Historia del origen y genealogía real de los reyes inkas del Piru (1590) folio 82. Photo by T. B. Cummins. Fig. 6: Quero with rectangular cut design, excavated at Huánuco Pampa. Photo courtesy of Craig Morris. Fig. 7: Standing sculpture of figure holding a quero in the left hand, known as el “fraile,” Tiwanaku, ca. 700 C.E. Photo by T. B. Cummins. Fig. 8: A high-karat gold (and silver rattling bottom) aquilla held in the left hand of a long artificial arm that was attached to the mummified and bundled body of the Middle Sicán male personage buried in the East Tomb at the Huaca Loro temple, site of Sicán, ca. 1000 C.E. Photo courtesy of Izumi Shimada. Fig. 9: Stone “seat” (huaca) carved in the rounded hill behind Sacashuaman, ca. 1500 C.E. Photo by T. B. Cummins. Fig. 10: Stone being transported by Inka for building, color wash by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, from Martin de Murúa, Historia del origen y genealogía real de los reyes inkas del Piru (1590).Folio 37. Photo by T. B. Cummins. Fig. 11: Chullpa (funerary structure) with painted tocapu design similar to the diamond waist tocapu design, Carangas, near Sajama Volcano, Oruo, ca. 1520 C.E. Photo courtesy of Teresa Gisbert. Fig. 12: Boulder in the Saphi/Huatanay River above Cusco with sculpted chakana design, ca. 1450 CE. Photo by T. B. Cummins. 30 Fig. 13: Paccha in the form of a forearm and hand offering quero excavated at Macchu Picchu by Hiram Bingham, ca 1500 C.E. Excavated at Macchu Picchu, Ht. 3.1. Yale Peabody Museum 16962, Photo courtesy Richard Burger. 31