Bowl Depicting a Figure Wearing a Headdress Containing Fish and Small Beings c. 180 - 500

Curator: Today we're looking at a ceramic bowl made by the Nazca people sometime between 180 and 500 AD. The piece is entitled "Bowl Depicting a Figure Wearing a Headdress Containing Fish and Small Beings," and you can find it here at the Art Institute of Chicago. Editor: Whoa, that's a mouthful of a title! My first thought is this bowl has got some serious personality. The figures painted on it, they've all got these wide eyes and solemn, almost grumpy expressions. I feel like I just interrupted a very important meeting. Curator: Well, look at the iconography. Water was crucial in the arid landscape of the Nazca civilization, so aquatic beings carried considerable symbolic weight. The figure's headdress bursting with fish—and who knows what those smaller beings are—signals a connection to the life-giving forces of nature, and potentially spiritual power. Editor: Spiritual power, got it. And look at the geometry of the design, these dark horizontal bands creating neat layers of underworld, middle-earth, and sky realms? I am just guessing, but it feels cosmically organized, the earth bound to these different dimensional plains in time and out of it, with the fish at the top. Curator: Exactly! The Nazca often depicted their world this way on pottery like this, so what appears like design or decorative is, in fact, so rich with cultural narratives and belief systems. The colors, too, are significant, likely derived from minerals available in their region, each color resonating with specific meanings we’re still piecing together today. Editor: I love that each color potentially represents meaning we do not fully know in today’s vernacular. Gives me some artistic liberties in appreciating their craftsmanship and intention, because, look at this portraiture? The way the artist depicts each face with such individual character in a world lacking high speed mass production… this bowl isn’t just utilitarian; it’s an entire story. Curator: A functional art object embodying a profound relationship with the natural and supernatural world. What more can art aspire to be? Editor: Pretty much! Food for thought and the body! Thanks for pointing all this out—suddenly this little bowl seems enormous.