Palmer Museum Visit

Artist: Unknown

Title: Stirrup spout vessel

Year: A.D. 200-500

Materials: Earthenware

This stirrup spout vessel features a person with large, circular eyes, a white hat, and a flat grin. The person is looking straight ahead, holding some sort of writing in its hands. They’re engraved into the front of the stirrup sprout vessel, blending in well with the variety of brown, red, white, and orange on this piece of art. There is a good amount of white marks on it, including several around the person’s eyes.

This piece of art was created in A.D. 200-500 by the Moche culture, a South American society located in Peru. This was a society that stressed community over the individual. Some activities that show this idea are that they lived in the desert, and the rivers nearby them were dry for mainly the entire year. Being in the desert and having limited water sources meant that no one person could make it on their own and everyone needed to work together to survive. Their main food sources were fishing and farming which also required people to work together, further showing how this society stressed community over the individual. Another key aspect of the Moche culture was that they used art as a way to communicate with one another because their lack of a developed writing system.

After viewing this piece of art, I started to picture myself living in A.D. 200-500 as part of the Moche society and realized how different it would be from the world we live in today. It made me feel extremely fortunate. One reason it made me feel fortunate is because communicating in today’s world is so easy with cell phones, Facebook, Twitter, and email. I cannot imagine having to use things like art, symbols, and other signs to communicate because it would be much more time consuming and a lot more difficult than it is today. Another reason I feel fortunate is because the world is much more highly developed than it used to be. You can tell they lived somewhat of a poor life by just looking at their art and how it looks worn-out and dirty. I also felt curious after viewing this stirrup spout vessel. I wanted to learn more about the Moche culture, what their art meant, and what it was used for.

The artist of this stirrup spout vessel is unknown. However, it still creates credibility through the time period that it was created in. A.D. 200-500 was a time period that art dominated culturally as it was the main source of communication. The people of the Moche culture created art all the time and in many different forms such as ceramic pottery, textiles, and ceremonial centers decorated with murals. These different pieces of art all had a common goal of conveying their own, unique messages, all while showing how credible the Moche culture’s form of communicating was.

Although this piece of art can be interpreted in many different ways, I believe the claim it is making is to really think about your own life and how it compares to those of earlier generations. The figure is holding up a writing and looking straight ahead. In my opinion, the figure looking straight ahead is not just a coincidence. I believe it is looking at whoever views the stirrup sprout vessel and trying to send those people a message. It is saying to all future generations to never take things for granted and never forget the people before you. I believe this because life was an everyday struggle for people of that time period. Everyday was a new adventure and people did not know how much food or water would be available to them. Also, I believe it is saying never forget the people before you because as a general life lesson you should always be thankful for the people who contributed great things and paved the way for the world we live in today.

Overall, I enjoyed my first visit at the Palmer Museum of Art. I am definitely not a museum-goer but I thought it was cool to be in a new environment and see things that I have never seen before. I saw several that I liked, so it was actually kind of difficult to pick one I wanted to write about. I definitely could see myself going back because I did not see everything and I feel like every time you go to a museum you can find something cool that you did not encounter the first time.