Wari: Lords of the Ancient Andes

Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth

Through Sept. 8

Here’s a chance to get “a tantalizing glimpse into a remote civilization, rich and strange,” said Scott Cantrell in The Dallas Morning News. So much remains unknown about the Wari, a people whose culture predated both the Incas and the arrival of Europeans in what is now Peru. Twelve hundred years ago, the Wari had created a vast empire along the Pacific coast and were producing “remarkably sophisticated pottery, mosaics, textiles, and metalwork.” The Wari lacked a written language, though, so modern scholars are still struggling to assign definitive context to the 145 artifacts now on display at the Kimbell. Were these religious relics? Tributes to rulers? Wandering amid the many treasures gathered for the first-ever North American exhibit of Wari art, “we can only guess at the import of often fantastic designs.”

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“What has been ascertained is that the Wari partied hearty,” said Gaile Robinson in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Among the many eating and drinking vessels here are 50-gallon urns apparently used at feasts for serving chicha, a beer brewed from corn. Single-serving vessels shaped like animals have been found in burial chambers, and some of them are adorable. But as striking as the ceramics can be, “the Wari textiles are breathtaking.” To begin with, the craftsmanship rises “well beyond European textile works from the same period”; one “extremely complex” tunic on display contains no less than 18 miles of yarn. Human and animal figures integrated into the patterns “look amazingly modern,” distilled into bold, colorful geometry. Clearly, the Incas borrowed from the Wari, but the Wari had no such artistic foundation. “What they did, they did without precedent.”