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The Ancient Americas: Art from Sacred Landscapes
Richard F. Townsend (Editor)
Marking the Columbus quincentennial, this catalog of a traveling exhibition explores the common threads in fourteen pre-Columbian cultures, from the Olmec, Maya, and Aztec of Mexico and Guatemala through the Chavin culture (900–200 B.C.) of the Andes to the Moche, Chimu, and the Inca empire. The book contains essays from 26 scholars examining sacred geographies, myths, and ancient beliefs as they are transmitted through visual arts and architecture.
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PublisherArt Institute of Chicago
Print publication date December 1998 (in print)
Print ISBN 9780865591042
Copyright© 1992 The Art Institute of Chicago
Illustrations 427
Print Status in print
Publisher (out of print)
Ancient West Mexico: Art and Archaeology of the Unknown Past
This volume documents the splendid accomplishments of Ancient West Mexico, and brings together some of its finest examples of sculptural art, including representations of people, animals and plants, as well as vessels and models of houses, ceremonial centres, ball games and ritual scenes. All the extraordinary earthenware figures illustrated here have been recovered from burial sites and shaft tombs. They represent a wide range of subjects — warriors, chieftains, ladies, acrobats, shamans, musicians, ball players, festival couples and bound prisoners — in a variety of styles from about 200 BC to AD 800 — that compose the artistic canon of Ancient West Mexico, a region encompassing the modern states of Colima, Jalisco and Nayarit.
Print publication date January 1998 (in print)
Copyright©1998 by The Art Institute of Chicago
The Art and Architecture of Ancient America: The Mexican, Maya and Andean Peoples
Yale University Press/Pelican History of Art
This important book examines the development of the principal styles of ancient American architecture, sculpture, and painting until the end of the Aztec and Inca empires in the sixteenth century. Written by esteemed scholar George Kubler, the volume aims to explain works of art as such, rather than dwelling upon those ideas about civilization that art is often made to illustrate in books of a more archaeological character. The Art and Architecture of Ancient America is arranged by geographical regions in three main divisions: Mexico, Central America and western South America. Architecture, sculpture, and painting occupy most of the volume, but town planning, pottery, textiles, and jewelry are also discussed. Many of the illustrations portray little known sites, buildings, and objects.
PublisherYale University Press
Print publication date November 1992 (in print)
Copyright© George Kubler, 1962, 1975, 1984, 1990
Art and Myth of the Ancient Maya
Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos
This nuanced account explores Maya mythology through the lens of art, text, and culture. It offers an important reexamination of the mid-16th-century Popol Vuh, long considered an authoritative text, which is better understood as one among many crucial sources for the interpretation of ancient Maya art and myth. Using materials gathered across Mesoamerica, Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos bridges the gap between written texts and artistic representations, identifying key mythical subjects and uncovering their variations in narratives and visual depictions. Central characters—including a secluded young goddess, a malevolent grandmother, a dead father, and the young gods who became the sun and the moon—are identified in pottery, sculpture, mural painting, and hieroglyphic inscriptions. Highlighting such previously overlooked topics as sexuality and generational struggles, this beautifully illustrated book paves the way for a new understanding of Maya myths and their lavish expression in ancient art.
Print publication date April 2017 (in print)
Copyright© 2017 by Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos
Publisher (in print)
Casas Grandes and the Ceramic Art of the Ancient Southwest
Richard F. Townsend
In the flourishing ancient Indian communities of the American Southwest and northwest Mexico, master potters created ceramic arts that are considered among the most accomplished in the world. The symbolic imagery and distinctive local styles of the region are unmistakable—simple volumetric shapes covered with complex, interlocking geometrical designs that are sometimes combined with bold abstract animal, human, and composite figures. Within this shared tradition are clearly identifiable local styles and symbolic vocabularies, and this lavishly illustrated book focuses on one of them: the ceramic works of the Casas Grandes-Paquimé area of northwest Mexico and adjoining parts of New Mexico and Arizona, c. A.D. 1200–1400.
For the first time on a comprehensive scale, expert art historians and an artist-teacher discuss the complex imagery of approximately ninety Casas Grandes vessels with fifty pieces representing other major styles of the Greater Southwest. Superb examples show polychromatic designs of real and mythological animals, together with abstract human figures and remarkably varied geometries, demonstrating the imaginative complexity and exceptional achievement of the Casas Grandes potters. Certain motifs reflect affinities with distant Mesoamerica, yet the authors show that these forms were absorbed into a visual vocabulary that reflected the unique artistic and cosmological outlook of Casas Grandes, within the native Southwestern cultural tradition.
Print publication date October 2005 (in print)
Esthetic Recognition of Ancient Amerindian Art
In this book one of the pioneering thinkers in the history of Pre-Columbian art considers the varying esthetic responses of Native Americans, Europeans, and Americanists to indigenous art of the Americas. George Kubler chronicles the lives and writings of seventy historians, explorers, missionaries, archaeologists, anthropologists, and art historians who lived between 1492 and 1984 and who devoted sustained attention to Amerindian art. His "biographical surroundings" focus on how these individuals differed in their ways of evaluating Amerindian art forms and what this reveals both about the art and about the development of esthetic thought.
Drawing on such sources as writings about Renaissance travels and military actions, the records of church missionaries in converting and resettling native peoples, statements by native and European historians in the seventeenth century, debates in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries about the worth of America to the world, archaeological and anthropological research since the mid-nineteenth century, and recent esthetic theories about ancient American art, Kubler presents the impressions of individuals form Columbus to Diego de Landa to Charles Darwin to Alfred Kroeber and Alfonso Caso. The book also includes and discusses drawings and photographs by travelers and explorers. Kubler's historiographic approach allows us to view Amerindian art from a fresh and challenging perspective.
Copyright©1991 by Yale University
Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand: American Indian Art of the Ancient Midwest and South
Along the Ohio, Tennessee, and Mississippi Rivers, the archaeological remains of earthen pyramids, plazas, large communities, and works of art and artifacts testify to Native American civilizations that thrived there between 3000 B.C. and A.D. 1500. This fascinating book presents exciting new information on the art and cultures of these ancient peoples and features hundreds of photographs of important artworks, artifacts, and ritual objects excavated from Amerindian archaeological sites.
Drawing on excavation findings and extensive research, the contributors to the book document a succession of distinct ancient populations in the pre-Columbian world of the American Midwest and Southeast. A team of interdisciplinary scholars examines the connections between archaeological remains of different regions and the themes, forms, and rituals that continue in specific tribes of today. The book also includes the personal reflections of contemporary Native Americans who discuss their perspectives on the significance of the fascinating and beautiful prehistoric artifacts as well as their own cultural practices today.
Copyright© 2004 by The Art Institute of Chicago
The Life Within: Classic Maya and the Matter of Permanence
Stephen D. Houston
For the Classic Maya, who flourished in and around the Yucatan peninsula in the first millennium AD, artistic materials were endowed with an internal life. Far from being inert substances, jade, flint, obsidian, and wood held a vital essence, agency, and even personality. To work with these materials was to coax their life into full expression and to engage in witty play. Writing, too, could shift from hieroglyphic signs into vibrant glyphs that sprouted torsos, hands, and feet. Appearing to sing, grapple, and feed, they effectively blurred the distinction between text and image.
In this first full study of the nature of Maya materials and animism, renowned Mayanist scholar Stephen Houston provides startling insights into a Pre-Columbian worldview that dramatically contrasts with western perspectives. Illustrated with more than one hundred photographs, images, and drawings, this beautifully written book reveals the Maya quest for transcendence in the face of inevitable death and decay.
Print publication date May 2014 (in print)
Copyright© 2014 by Stephen Houston
Place, Nations, Generations, Beings: 200 Years of Indigenous North American Art
Katherine Nova McCleary, Leah Tamar Shrestinian, Ned Blackhawk, Summer Sutton, Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel
This important publication is the first from the Yale University Art Gallery dedicated to Indigenous North American art. Accompanying a student-curated exhibition, it marks a milestone in the collection, display, and interpretation of Native American art at Yale and seeks to expand the dialogue surrounding the University's relationship with Indigenous peoples and their arts. The catalogue features an introduction by the curators that surveys the history of Indigenous art on campus and outlines the methodology used while researching and mounting the exhibition; a discussion of Yale's Native American Cultural Center; and a preface by the Medicine Woman and Tribal Historian of the Mohegan Nation. Also included are images of nearly 100 works—basketry, beadwork, drawings, photography, pottery, textiles, and wood carving, from the early 1800s to the present day—drawn from the collections of the Gallery, the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The objects are grouped into four sections, each introduced with a short essay, that center on the themes in the book's title. Together, these texts and artworks seek to amplify Indigenous voices and experiences, charting a course for future collaborations.
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PublisherYale University Art Gallery
Print publication date June 2019 (in print)
Copyright© 2019 by Yale University
Pre-Columbian Art of Mexico and Central America
This handbook serves as the first comprehensive publication of the Yale University Art Gallery's distinguished collection of Precolumbian art, which features notable pieces from throughout Mesoamerica and from every period. The nearly 300 object entries are arranged by region and include historical, iconographical, and structural information. A mineralogical study of the collection includes an explanation of the methods used to make the attributions, as well as a description of the minerals themselves. Clearly organized and thoroughly researched, this publication is an essential reference for scholars, students, and collectors of Precolumbian art.
Print publication date January 1986 (out of print)
Copyright© 1986 by the Yale University Art Gallery
Illustrations 270 Images
Print Status out of print
The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things
First published in 1962, The Shape of Time presented a radically new approach to the study of art history. Drawing upon new insights in fields such as anthropology and linguistics, George Kubler pursues such questions as the nature of time, the nature of change, and the meaning of invention. The result is a view of historical sequence aligned on continuous change more than upon the static notion of style—the usual basis for conventional histories of art. Since its publication, the book has become a classic in the field.
Print publication date September 1962 (in print)
Small-Great Objects: Anni and Josef Albers in the Americas
Jennifer Reynolds-Kaye
Small-Great Objects presents a remarkable look into the art-collecting practices of two of modern art's most widely influential figures, Anni (1899–1994) and Josef (1888–1976) Albers. Their impressive collection of over 1,400 objects from Latin America, namely Mexico and Peru, represents a conscious endeavor that goes well beyond that of a casual hobby, displaying a deep appreciation for the art, textiles, and overall ingenuity of the ancient American world. This insightful book draws on primary-source materials such as the couple's letters, personal papers, and archival photographs—many never before published—and demonstrates their conviction that these Prehispanic objects displayed a formal sophistication and bold abstraction that defy the prevalent conception of the works as "primitive." Moreover, it shows how the Alberses spread their appreciation of the ancient world to others, through their teachings, their writings, and their own art practices.
Print publication date March 2017 (in print)
Illustrations 56 color + 18 b/w illus.
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