''The Olmec-Maya and Now'' (1981–1985) is a series of large, oil-on-canvas paintings by

Aubrey Williams Aubrey Williams (8 May 1926 – 17 April 1990) was a Guyanese artist. He was best known for his large, oil-on-canvas paintings, which combine elements of abstract expressionism with forms, images and symbols inspired by the pre-Columbian art o ...

. The series grew out of Williams' enduring interest in

pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, th ...

cultures of the

indigenous peoples of the Americas The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the European settlers in the 15th century, and the ethnic groups who now identify themselves with those peoples. Many Indigenous peoples of the A ...

(he himself claimed Carib ancestry). It explores parallels between

Olmec The Olmecs () were the earliest known major Mesoamerican civilization. Following a progressive development in Soconusco, they occupied the tropical lowlands of the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco. It has been speculated that t ...

and

Maya Maya may refer to: Civilizations * Maya peoples, of southern Mexico and northern Central America ** Maya civilization, the historical civilization of the Maya peoples ** Maya language, the languages of the Maya peoples * Maya (Ethiopia), a populat ...

civilizations and contemporary global culture, focusing in particular on the threat of rapid demise and self-destruction.

Background

Williams' interest in the pre-Columbian cultures of the Americas first developed while he was living and working among the Warao people in the north-west region of

Guyana Guyana ( or ), officially the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, is a country on the northern mainland of South America. Guyana is an indigenous word which means "Land of Many Waters". The capital city is Georgetown. Guyana is bordered by the ...

(now Region One) in the 1940s. Although he had been painting and drawing for many years, he claimed that it was among the Warao that he "discovered imelf as an artist" and "started to understand what art really is". This experience triggered an involvement with pre-Columbian art and artefacts that he described in 1987 as "the core of his artistic activity". Williams found a precedent for the kinds of abstraction he used in his own paintings in pre-Columbian arts and, across the years, repeatedly incorporated images,

iconography Iconography, as a branch of art history, studies the identification, description and interpretation of the content of images: the subjects depicted, the particular compositions and details used to do so, and other elements that are distinct fro ...

and motifs drawn from these arts into his work. By 1981, Williams was working mainly in a studio in

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

, while maintaining bases in the United Kingdom and

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...

. He was working towards the completion of another large series of paintings, ''Shostakovich'' (1969-1981), which was exhibited for the first time in October of that year.

Style and themes

The paintings in ''The Olmec-Maya and Now'' combine

abstract expressionism Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

with figurative depictions of

and

icons, symbols and artefacts. Williams' re-introduction of figurative elements into his paintings marked an important stylistic departure from his earlier work, such as the ''Shostakovich'' series, which was entirely abstract. Art critics Mel Gooding, Reyahn King and Leon Wainwright have noted that the fusion of abstraction and figuration challenged viewers, artists and critics, who were used to "artistic rules" that kept them apart. Williams himself described this stylistic change as a "wonderful artistic jump". In an interview in 1987 he explained that approximately ten years earlier, around 1977, he had felt himself to be at risk of "only ''making'' paintings ..like making wall furniture" and of hiding within "borrowed" forms. He therefore decided to "go right back" – to go back to doing figurative work which incorporated "the symbolic artefacts of isown past culture" – so that his work was "no longer recognisable". Thematically, the series explores parallels between what Williams describes as "Maya mistakes" and comparable developments in "modern humanity". In a note composed for the first exhibition of the series, he explained:

The Maya, the greatest Civilization of their time ..a people who produced a technology from which we are still learning today; these people vanished in a very short space of time .due, I feel, to their inability to cope with their technology and the changes their achievements engendered within the metabolism of their living environment and ecology; exactly the position we find ourselves in today.

In 1987, Williams added that everything else in his art was "ancillary" to "the burning urge" to express these parallels.

Exhibitions and collections

''The Olmec-Maya and Now'' was first exhibited at the

Commonwealth Institute The Commonwealth Education Trust is a registered charity established in 2007 as the successor trust to the Commonwealth Institute. The trust focuses on primary and secondary education and the training of teachers and invests on educational pro ...

in London in June 1985. In 1989, the artist Denis Bowen remembered it as "a major exhibition with a significant body of work of the highest calibre" which "assure illiams'place in the British art scene". The exhibition was opened by

Terry Waite Terence Hardy Waite (born 31 May 1939) is an English humanitarian and author. Waite was the Assistant for Anglican Communion Affairs for the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, in the 1980s. As an envoy for the Church of England, he ...

. One of the paintings in the series, ''Olmec Maya—Now and Coming Time'', was presented to

the Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

by the Aubrey Williams Estate in 1993.

References

Notes

Sources

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External links

Image of ''Olmec Maya - Now and Coming Time''
at the Tate website {{DEFAULTSORT:Olmec-Maya and Now 1985 paintings Modern paintings