Andrew Finegold, “Dreams of Gold: Mesoamerican Metalwork and the Question of Form”
UIC Art History Colloquium
October 6, 2023
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Location
106 Henry Hall
Calendar
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Scholars have long noted that some of the earliest gold objects of Mesoamerican manufacture present formal similarities to adornments originating farther to the south, in what is now Costa Rica and Panama. While the interpretation of this situation as reflecting the original transmission of both the metal and the knowledge of how to work it from Lower Central America to Mesoamerica is undoubtedly correct, the persistence of previous forms in later objects has typically been characterized in passive terms. However, given the total deformation and reformation of the material during the lost-wax casting process, an explanation for such retentions as being intentional and motivated is required. In this paper, I will argue that, in contradistinction to the European orientation towards gold that values its fungibility and transferability above all else, in Mesoamerica gold (as with other materials) was conceived as being inextricably bound up with its history and social relations, associations that were understood to persist—and even to inhere—within the material and which were sometimes expressed through the forms that were given to it.
Andrew Finegold is an Associate Professor of Art History at UIC specializing in the cultures of the ancient Americas. He is the author of Vital Voids: Cavities and Holes in Mesoamerican Material Culture (University of Texas Press, 2021) and co-editor of Visual Culture of the Ancient Americas: Contemporary Perspectives (Oklahoma University Press, 2017). His current book project investigates the Temporalities of Mesoamerican Art.
Date posted
Sep 5, 2023
Date updated
Sep 5, 2023