Liz Moran, Art

Food and the Cosmos in Aztec Art
Walden Inn
11/10/06 4 p.m.
 

The sixteenth century Aztecs depicted eating and foodstuffs in an array of mediums. They painted images of people preparing foods, transporting and storing foods, and the foods themselves. The Aztecs also created stone and clay images of deities that were connected to foods, such as their sculptures of maize deities. There are countless images of teeth and mouths devouring, as in canonical works like the Sun Stone and the monumental sculptures of the earth goddess Coatlicue. Food was an integral part not only of the Aztec's daily subsistence, but of the ways in which they viewed their larger world. This presentation explores the way representations of foods and eating were used by the Aztecs and what these particular images say about the Aztec view of the cosmos and their place in it.