Manuel Vilar, Tlahuicole

0:00(upbeat music) - [Steven] We're in the National Museum of Art in Mexico City, and we're looking at a really interesting sculpture. It's actually a plaster that was intended to be cast. What's fascinating is that it's taking this neoclassical tradition and adopting it to Mexican history.

0:23- [Lauren] The sculpture is by the artist Manuel Vilar, who was the Professor of Sculpture at the Academy of San Carlos, which had been established in 1785. The plaster cast that we're seeing here was created in 1851.

0:36- [Steven] And it represents something that we call the flower wars, and this comes from Aztec history. The Aztecs believed that they had to supply people for sacrifice on important days in the calendar, and these tended to be people that they captured from cities that they did not yet dominate.

0:52- [Lauren] One of the main rivals of the Aztecs, it was actually a place that they were never able to conquer, was the peoples from Tlaxcala, and this individual that we're seeing portrayed here was a general of the Tlaxcalteca, the Tlaxcalan people, who was named Tlahuicole, or Tlahuicole.

1:07He's been captured and brought back to the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, and he's going to have to engage in sacrificial combat.

1:14- [Steven] But at a major disadvantage. He's been tethered to a large sacrificial stone, and he's been given a club, but it's very likely that he's up against more than one opponent who are better armed, but this is all an opportunity by the artist to render the beauty and the heroic nature of the body, but here embodied by this native culture, and this is where the politics of art come to the fore.

1:37- [Lauren] And we're not seeing someone who seems to fear death, and he has this defiant look on his face. His body can faze his strength and determination to battle into the death. He's standing with his legs apart, and we're seeing all his muscles flexed and tensed as he's about to fight to the death.

1:53- [Steven] He's so idealized. He's so powerful. It is as if we're looking at an ancient Greek Hellenistic sculpture, something that is almost overwrought but with a tremendous knowledge of the body. What's so interesting is that you've got this modern European tradition, looking back to the ancient Roman and ancient Greek tradition, but then grafting that on to the history of Mesoamerica.

2:14- [Lauren] This is actually pretty early to begin seeing this classicizing of the pre-Hispanic past, because in 1851, Manuel Vilar is actually the first person to begin producing works that stray away from the Greco-Roman past, and in fact, when he creates this plaster model of this Tlaxcalan general, he similarly created other work of the Aztec ruler Mactezuma II or La Malinche.

2:38This is really something we begin to see only in the late 1860s.

2:41- [Steven] But this figure is nude, unlike the other two that you just mentioned, and that may have been a bit of a violation of the social norms of Mexico at this time. The artist is taking real Liberty and is clearly fascinated by the historical tradition of the heroic nude.

2:57- [Lauren] We mentioned that this was intended to be cast in bronze and probably placed somewhere for public display. Unfortunately, due to economic downturns and probably uprisings, these were never made into bronze.

3:07- [Steven] It is this amazing glimpse into a very specific historical and cultural moment in Mexican history.

3:13- [Lauren] This is the moment when you have this continuing emerging sense of what it means to be Mexican and to have this sense of a Mexican identity. (gentle music)