Unseen Art : : Making, Vision, and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica / / Claudia Brittenham.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE Arts 2023
• VerfasserIn: Brittenham, Claudia,
• Place / Publishing House: Austin : : University of Texas Press, , [2023]; ©2023
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (184 p.) :; 127 color and b&w photos, 36 color and b&w illustrations, 4 maps

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- LIST OF TABLES AND ILLUSTRATIONS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION: SEEING AND KNOWING -- CHAPTER 1 MAKING Building Community at La Venta -- CHAPTER 2 VISION Seeing Maya Lintels -- CHAPTER 3 POWER Carving the Undersides of Aztec Sculpture -- CONCLUSION: THE LANGUAGE OF ZUYUA -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX