Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Aztecs and Mixtecs & Maya Art and Architecture & Pre-Columbian Art & Teotihuacan: An Experiment in Living. - book review

ELIZABETH HILL BOONE

Stories in R and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Aztecs and Mixtecs

Austin: University of Texas Pres 2000

296 pp; 159 b/w ills. $55

MARY ELLEN MILLER

Maya Art and Architecture

London: Thames and Hudson 1999 240 pp; 57 color ills., 150 b/w $1495 paper

ESTHER PASZTORY

Pre-Columbian Art

Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres 1998 176 pp; 88 color ills., 32 b/w $1895 paper

Teotihuacan: An Experiment in Living Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Pres 1997 304 pp; 19 color ills., 77 b/w $4995

Pre-Columbian art history is a relatively young discipline. It was born with the appointment of George Kubler as its first professor at Yale University in 1938 end the pathbreaking publications he produc and by the agency of his teaching he became the apical ancestor for the lineages of greatest in quantity contemporary Pre-Columbian art historians. That tribe is still relatively small, however. The event of this demographic pattern is that the field in many ways is still in the proces of self-definition and the first essays upon many a subject are at the same time to be written.

Kubler's interests were wide and varied and, as a pioneer, he had the freedom to explore uncharted territories, spending more or les time in single or another as he chose He wrote seminal papers upon topics as diverse as colonial architecture in the Caribbean, the Quechua in the colonial world, and the design and space of Maya architecture, to name on the other hand a few. As the first to peril into new regions, he had to use what tools were at hand, thus his approach was interdisciplinary. At the same time that he relied upon a wide variety of sources, notwithstanding that he increasingly championed a distinctly humanistic approach to ancient American art, upholding his ideals in reaction to the rise of social science as the dominant paradigm for fresh World archaeology during the mid-1960s [i]or[/i] part of to the other the 1970s.

All contemporary art historians have inherited the issues that Kubler faced, whether they are his direct intellectual heirs or not. Central among those issues was the question of by what means the art history of the native clans of the New World might take advantage of the puissances of an interdisciplinary approach still still have something distinctly art historical to say about its subdue The material is commonly the same as that studied through anthropologically trained archaeologists. In an age when canons are being dismantled, Pre-Columbian art history is still building its possess This project has been complicated through an archaeological community that has increasingly direct the eyeed toward the humanities for its inspiration at the same time that many art historians have borrowed from the social sciences. Pre-Columbian art history thus is involved in three separate conversations that not seldom overlap. It argues with the quiet of art history that fresh World native arts are worthy of investigation and appreciation. It is engaged with archa eologists and historians of the colonial period in making claims for its unique voice. And it has its have a title to internal dialogue concerning what its individual business should be.

The four volumes here under review are involved in all of these conversations to different steps Two of them, Esther Pasztory's Pre-Columbian Art and Mary Miller's Maya Art and Architecture, partly rejoin to trends that Kubler saw single in their early stages: continuous increase in public interest in the arts and nations of the ancient Americas, and a significant increase in undergraduate enrollment in classes upon these topics. Both of these works appear to be written for interested laypersons and beginning learners and would serve those clusters well.

Covering the prehistoric art of a continent is a daunting task. It is thus daunting that no scholar has attempted of the like kind a survey free from association with a limited station of objects from a museum or private collection since Kubler himself, in his landmark The Art and Architecture of Ancient America (1962) which is still in print. (1) In that convolution Kubler attempted to be comprehensive. The rife version available is 469 pages printed in eight-point impressed sign with columnar layout. Pasztory's 176 pages in vision-friendly format implies that her volume was designed as an introductory essay rather than an attempt at filled coverage. It serves that intent well in the sense that it tenders a clear theoretical framework upon which to hang the "major" art phraseologys produced in the New World from about 1500 BCE to 1500 CE sum of two units very short chapters serve as introductions, single on the Western discovery of Pre-Columbian art and another upon the aim of the volume in general, which is to compare and contrast Pre-Columbian art in Mesoameri ca and the Andes. The quiescence of the book consists of three chapters upon Mesoamerica followed by an equal number of chapters upon the Andes and a two-page conclusion. The true copy is amply illustrated with many colorplates and the unromantic moves along nicely.

Pasztory's organizing principle and the thesis of her argument is that Mesoamerican and Andean art were distinct, contrasting dictions Mesoamerican art was primarily affected with the human image. It was narrational and naturalistic in its styles of presentation. Andean art followed a different path, working with cosmic themes in iconic, conventionalized manner of writings For each of these great traditions, the author presents a significant style that ran calculator to it. Thus, the abstraction of the art ground in the great city of Teotihuacan made it unique in Mesoamerica, probably owed to a social system and ideology that also were at variance with the for the use of all pattern of lord and city-state rest for example, among the Maya. The Moche constitute the counterexample for the Andes, with their veristic representation of animals, plants, and race (such as the famous "portrait heads"), at not divisible by 2s with the highly stylized, abstracted art of Tiahuanaco, Wari, and the Inca, Pasztory indicates that the uniqueness of Moche art within th e Andean tradition stemm from the fact that it was a centralized kingdom, just like the Maya, instead of a bureaucratically step quickly empire. In other words, Teotihuacan art exhibited an Andean-like style in Mesoamerica while Moche art was a Mesoamerican-like turn of expression in the Andes. Each of these was exceptional in its have larger world.