Carlos Mérida and the Popol Vuh
Popol Vuh, the Sacred Book of the Maya, narrates the origins of the Maya-Quiché lineage and tells us about the genealogy of their gods. The text, transmitted orally until the 16th century when it was transcribed into the Quiché language with Latin characters, was divided into four parts when translated into Spanish.
The screen prints that make up the exhibition “American Abstraction: Carlos Mérida” belong to the album Un canto al libro sagrado (“A Poem to the Sacred Book”). The artist was inspired by a series of fragments taken from the first part of the version of the book translated by Adrián Recinos.
The first part of the Popol Vuh talks about the earth, plants, and animal life. It describes how Man was formed, as well as narrating the heroic feats of Hunahpú and Xbalanque.
The book begins by talking about the creation of the earth and the sky, along with all the plants and animals that live there. We hear how the Creator, the Former, Tepeu, Gucumatz and the Progenitors, creators of life, decided to create man because of their desire to be praised.
However, the first part of the Popol Vuh does not describe how man was created, but rather the unsuccessful attempts to do so. Neither mud, nor wood, nor tzité cork wood, nor bulrushes, were the right materials to make whole human beings. Some could not speak, walk, or reproduce, and others did not have the soul or consciousness needed to praise their creators. Therefore, they were all destroyed, other than some survivors of the tzité men and the bulrush women, who fled to the mountains. It is said that monkeys are their descendants.
The narrative continues with the heroic adventures of the twin gods Hunahpú and Xbalanque, who fought and destroyed the demonic Vucub-Caquix and his sons, Zipacna and Cabrakan.
Vucub-Caquix was a powerful being who posed as the Creator. He was covered in green stones, precious metals and jewels that granted him power. The twins Hunahpú and Xbalanque decided to destroy him, using a blowgun which they fired when Vucub-Caquix climbed a tree to eat. This shot caused him unbearable toothache, and the twins tricked the evil Vucub-Caquix, depriving him of his teeth and his eyes, stripping him of all his power and riches before eventually killing him.
Zipacna, the first son of Vucub-Caquix, who claimed to be the creator of the mountains, was destroyed by the twins Hunahpú and Xbalanque for having murdered 400 men. To do this, the brothers created a huge figure that was half crab, half turtle, placing it at the foot of a mountain. They took Zipacna there to set a trap for him, and his greed and ego led him to fall into it. He was buried by the mountain, which collapsed into the animal-shaped trap, killing him.
Vucub-Caquix’s second son was Cabrakan, who claimed to be the destroyer of mountains. The twins also managed to defeat him by challenging his vanity, telling him that there was a mountain that not even he could destroy. On the way to showing him where it was, they fed him a poisoned animal. Cabrakan was already weak and dizzy when he reached the supposedly indestructible mountain, making it easy for Hunahpú and Xbalanque to finish him off, burying him there and then.
Looking at the screen prints of Un canto al libro sagrado (“A Poem to the Sacred Book”) in this exhibition helps us recreate this fragment of Maya-Quiché mythology. However, it is important to remember that Carlos Mérida was committed to a type of non-mimetic art, which constructs reality from universal symbols and not the other way round. These works should be understood as visual poems, rather than as illustrations, as they reveal the essence of the text that makes up the sacred book.
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Un canto al libro sagrado I, 1978Carlos Mérida
Serigraphy on paper
76 x 56
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Un canto al libro sagrado II, 1978Carlos Mérida
Serigraphy on paper
76 x 56
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Un canto al libro sagrado III, 1978Carlos Mérida
Serigraphy on paper
76 x 56
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Un canto al libro sagrado V, 1978Carlos Mérida
Serigraphy on paper
76 x 56
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Un canto al libro sagrado VI, 1978Carlos Mérida
Serigraphy on paper
76 x 56
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Un canto al libro sagrado VII, 1978Carlos Mérida
Serigraphy on paper
76 x 56
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Un canto al libro sagrado VIII, 1978Carlos Mérida
Serigraphy on paper
76 x 56
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Un canto al libro sagrado IX, 1978Carlos Mérida
Serigraphy on paper
76 x 56
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Un canto al libro sagrado X, 1978Carlos Mérida
Serigraphy on paper
76 x 56
Silvia Sánchez Ruiz
Curator
