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"Aztec sculpture."
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Unseen Art
In Unseen Art, Claudia Brittenham unravels one of the most puzzling phenomena in Mesoamerican art history: why many of the objects that we view in museums today were once so difficult to see. She examines the importance that ancient Mesoamerican people assigned to the process of making and enlivening the things we now call art, as well as Mesoamerican understandings of sight as an especially godlike and elite power, in order to trace a gradual evolution in the uses of secrecy and concealment, from a communal practice that fostered social memory to a tool of imperial power.Addressing some of the most charismatic of all Mesoamerican sculptures, such as Olmec buried offerings, Maya lintels, and carvings on the undersides of Aztec sculptures, Brittenham shows that the creation of unseen art has important implications both for understanding status in ancient Mesoamerica and for analyzing art in the present. Spanning nearly three thousand years of the Indigenous art of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Belize, Unseen Art connects the dots between vision, power, and inequality, providing a critical perspective on our own way of looking.
eBook
MATLATZINCO BEFORE THE AZTECS: JOSÉ GARCÃA PAYÓN AND THE SCULPTURAL CORPUS OF CALIXTLAHUACA
This article studies the sculptural corpus of the Matlatzinca state before it was conquered in the mid-1470s by the Aztec Empire. Previously, Matlatzinco had been an independent polity in the northern part of the Valley of Toluca surrounding the traditional center of government, which was also called Matlatzinco. After invading the area, the Aztecs renamed this city Calixtlahuaca and established their own provincial capital at nearby Tollocan (modern Toluca). Making Calixtlahuaca a symbol of control over the area, the Aztecs raised new architecture phases in the ancient city center and installed Aztec-style deity images.
Journal Article
The Archaeology of Tula, Hidalgo, Mexico
The site of Tula, Hidalgo, Mexico, is well known for its distinctive architecture and sculpture that came to light in excavations initiated some 70 years ago. Less well known is the extensive corpus of archaeological research conducted over the past several decades, revealing a city that at its height covered an area of c.16 km 2 and incorporated a remarkably diverse landscape of hills, plains, alluvial valleys, and marsh. Its dense, urban character is evident in excavations at over 22 localities that uncovered complex arrangements of residential compounds whose nondurable architecture left relatively few surface traces. Evidence of craft production includes lithic and ceramic production loci in specific sectors of the ancient city. Tula possessed a large and densely settled hinterland that apparently encompassed the surrounding region, including most of the Basin of Mexico, and its area of direct influence appears to have extended to the north as far as San Luís Potosí.Tula is believed to have originated as the center of a regional state that consolidated various Coyotlatelco polities and probably remnants of a previous Teotihuacancontrolled settlement system. Its pre-Aztec history exhibits notable continuity in settlement, ceramics, and monumental art and architecture. The nature of the subsequent Aztec occupation supports ethnohistorical and other archaeological evidence that Tula's ruins were what the Aztecs called Tollan.
Journal Article
'Now the void': reconsidering Giacometti's 'Hands holding the void: invisible object'
This article discusses the sculpture \"Hands holding the void: invisible object\" (1934) by the Swiss artists Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966). The author argues that this work occupies a pivotal place in Giacometti's oeuvre, representing the culmination of both the artist's engagement with Surrealism and his long-standing preoccupation with Mesoamerican art. He goes on to examine in detail the key role that the art, mythology, and culture of Central American societies played in the inception and execution of the sculpture, shaping its themes of fertility, maternity, birth, and death. The author suggests further that the work can also be seen to represent a new departure for Giacometti, towards a fundamental concern with the nature of human existence in a manner that bears a relation to the thought of the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, with whom Giacometti was to form a close friendship.
Journal Article
The Maize Goddess in the Teotihuacan pantheon
El artículo propone una nueva interpretación de la diosa representada por la gigantesca escultura teotihuacana conocida como \"Diosa del Agua\". Analizando las dos esculturas conservadas de la diosa y el Mural de las Ofrendas del Templo de la Agricultura, se llega a la conclusión de que es probable que se trate de la Diosa del Maíz de Teotihuacan, deidad vegetal vinculada fuertemente con el agua. La comparación con la iconografía de las diosas del maíz aztecas, Chicomecóatl y Xilonen, refuerza esta propuesta. Der Beitrag schlägt eine neue Deutung der gigantischen Teotihuacan-Skulptur vor, die als „Wassergöttin“ bekannt ist. Die Analyse der beiden bekannten Skulptuen dieser Göttin und des „Mural de las Ofrendas“ vom „Tempel der Landwirtschaft“ führt zu dem Ergebnis, dass es sich möglicherweise um die Maisgöttin von Teotihuacan handelt, einer Vegetationsgottheit, die eng mit dem Wasser verbunden war. Ein Vergleich mit der Ikonographie der aztekischen Maisgöttinnen Xilonen und Chicomecóatl bestätigt diese Interpretation.
Journal Article
Spengler's Philosophy and Its Implication that Europe has \Lost Its Way\
Like individual people, cultural organisms differ in character, ability, and aptitude. [...]calculus and the theory of mathematical functions, soaring Gothic cathedrals and a music based on fugai composition all express characteristically Western passions, which include a love for vast wide-open spaces as well as an intense interest in the distant past and concern for the far future. 7 In a contrasting manner, geometry, statistics and sculpture were all creative expressions of a mind obsessed with the corporeal and with here-now - that which produced the Ancient Greek Culture. 8 Similarly, algebra, alchemy and arabesque were all manifestations of another unique culture-personality, as also were acupuncture, Taoism and Chinese art. A culture's \"summer\"' is an era of great creativity: in Europe, this witnessed the crystallization of a totally new concept in mathematics (calculus) simultaneously in the minds of two people working quite independently - Newton and Leibniz. 10 The same centuries saw the birth of oil painting and the flowering of a style of music completely unknown before the advent of Western Culture.11 During \"autumn,\" life becomes dominated by materialism and by purely rational thought; n Spengler uses the term \"Civilization\" to denote this particular phase.
Journal Article
Spider Monkey with Wind God Regalia
The sculpture of a spider monkey with Wind God Regalia by Maxica artist of the Aztec Empire is presented.
Trade Publication Article
The Dumbarton Oaks Tlazolteotl: looking beneath the surface
The Dumbarton Oaks Tlazolteotl: looking beneath the surface. Some of the earliest and most revered pre-Columbian artifacts in the world’s major museum and private collections were collected prior to the advent of systematic, scientific archaeological excavation, and have little or no reliable provenience data. They have consistently posed problems for researchers due to anomalies of theme, material, size, technical virtuosity and iconography. This paper offers a historical and scientific approach to objectively determining the authenticity of unprovenienced pre-Columbian artifacts. Using the Dumbarton Oaks Tlazolteotl sculpture as a case study, the article presents the results of archival research to flesh out the object’s acquisition history and analysis using scanning electron microscopy to determine whether pre-Columbian lapidary technology was used to fashion the artifact, or whether it was carved or reworked in modern times.
Journal Article
The Aztecs in London at the Royal Academy, Piccadilly, London 2003
James focuses on the museums displaying Aztec art at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Craftsmanship is the idiom for quality among the Aztec while their art present distinct themes such as antecedents, human form and nature, Gods of life and death, and more.
Journal Article