Ancient Maya Paintings of Bonampak Mexico
Author: Carnegie Institution of Washington
Publisher:
Published: 1955
Total Pages: 52
ISBN-13:
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The Murals of Bonampak
Author: Mary Ellen Miller
Publisher:
Published: 1986
Total Pages: 176
ISBN-13: 9780691040332
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Description for this book, The Murals of Bonampak, will be forthcoming.
The Spectacle of the Late Maya Court
Author: Mary Miller
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2013-07-01
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9780292744363
DOWNLOAD EBOOKLocated within the deep tropical rainforest of Chiapas, Mexico, the Maya site of Bonampak is home to the most complete and magnificent mural program of the ancient Americas. In three rooms, a pageant of rulership opens up, scene by scene, like pages of an ancient Maya book. Painted c. AD 800, the murals of Bonampak reveal a complex and multifaceted view of the ancient Maya at the end of their splendor during the last days of the Classic era. Members of the royal court engage in rituals and perform human sacrifice, dance in extravagant costumes and strip the clothing from fallen captives, acknowledge foreign nobles, and receive abundant tribute. The murals are a powerful and sophisticated reflection on the spectacle of courtly life and the nature of artistic practice, a window onto a world that could not know its doomed future. This major new study of the paintings of Bonampak incorporates insights from decades of art historical, epigraphic, and technical investigation of the murals, framing questions about artistic conception, facture, narrative, performance, and politics. Lavishly illustrated, this book assembles thorough documentation of the Bonampak mural program, from historical photographs of the paintings—some never before published—to new full-color reconstructions by artist Heather Hurst, recipient of a MacArthur award, and Leonard Ashby. The book also includes a catalog of photographs, infrared images, and line drawings of the murals, as well as images of all the glyphic texts, which are published in their entirety for the first time. Written in an engaging style that invites both specialists and general readers alike, this book will stand as the definitive presentation of the paintings for years to come.
Maya Art and Architecture
Author: Mary Ellen Miller
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Published: 2014-06-17
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 0500204225
DOWNLOAD EBOOK“In addition to serving as an introduction to Maya art, the book communicates enthusiasm for the art’s aesthetic power and grace.” —Choice Rewritten and updated to include the discoveries and new theories from the past decade and a half, this classic guide to the art of the ancient Maya is now illustrated in color throughout. World expert Mary Miller and her co-author Megan O’Neil take the reader through the visual world of the Maya, explaining how and why they created the paintings, sculpture, and monuments that intrigue and compel people the world over. With an array of new material, including the newly found La Corona panels, Waka’ figurines, and the Dz’ibanche’ staircase; studies of the monuments at Palenque, Zotz, and elsewhere; and paintings discovered in recent years; this new edition will be essential reading for students and scholars—and for travelers to the cities of this mysterious civilization.
To Be Like Gods
Author: Matthew G. Looper
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2010-01-01
Total Pages: 295
ISBN-13: 029277818X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWinner, Association for Latin American Art Book Award, 2010 The Maya of Mexico and Central America have performed ritual dances for more than two millennia. Dance is still an essential component of religious experience today, serving as a medium for communication with the supernatural. During the Late Classic period (AD 600-900), dance assumed additional importance in Maya royal courts through an association with feasting and gift exchange. These performances allowed rulers to forge political alliances and demonstrate their control of trade in luxury goods. The aesthetic values embodied in these performances were closely tied to Maya social structure, expressing notions of gender, rank, and status. Dance was thus not simply entertainment, but was fundamental to ancient Maya notions of social, religious, and political identity. Using an innovative interdisciplinary approach, Matthew Looper examines several types of data relevant to ancient Maya dance, including hieroglyphic texts, pictorial images in diverse media, and architecture. A series of case studies illustrates the application of various analytical methodologies and offers interpretations of the form, meaning, and social significance of dance performance. Although the nuances of movement in Maya dances are impossible to recover, Looper demonstrates that a wealth of other data survives which allows a detailed consideration of many aspects of performance. To Be Like Gods thus provides the first comprehensive interpretation of the role of dance in ancient Maya society and also serves as a model for comparative research in the archaeology of performance.
Maya Color
Author: Sally Jean Aberg
Publisher: Abbeville Press
Published: 1997
Total Pages: 188
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKColor-and the symbolic ways that the Maya of Mexico and Central America paint their homes, places of worship, and dwellings for their dead-is the focus of this breathtakingly beautiful and achingly poignant new book. No one who picks up this volume will ever again think of the region solely for its sunny beaches and ancient ruins, nor picture the Maya as a vanished people of the distant past. Through dazzling photographs, vivid travel tales, and the Mayas own poetic voices, readers will come to know the modern Maya as remarkable survivors who continue to sow their deified corn, commune with their gods, and paint life into their color-drenched village walls. Nearly a decade ago Jeffrey Becom (author and photographer of Mediterranean Color) turned his attention from the Old World to the New and together with his wife, Sally Jean Aberg, discovered a realm where color is not merely a matter of preference but a powerful statement of belief. Come along as the pair trek through a steamy jungle in search of ancient murals, join a highland shaman giving birth to the soul of a house, and crisscross the parched Yucatán Peninsula as villagers celebrate the Days of the Dead with dynamite, incense, flowers, rum, prayers, and paint. In the process they discover that the colors of a corn yellow house, a blood red altar, and a jade green tomb serve as a connective cord stretching back to the painted pyramids. Maya Color is a visual and verbal feast. New York Times critic Paul Goldberger calls Becoms images "poised between the making of art and the documentation of architecture. . . . He takes a tiny swath of the vernacular landscape and makes of it a composition with the brilliance and intensity of an abstract painting."
The Madrid Codex
Author: Gabrielle Vail
Publisher:
Published: 2009-03-31
Total Pages: 472
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis volume offers new calendrical models and methodologies for reading, dating, and interpreting the general significance of the Madrid Codex. The longest of the surviving Maya codices, this manuscript includes texts and images painted by scribes conversant in Maya hieroglyphic writing, a written means of communication practiced by Maya elites from the second to the fifteenth centuries A.D. Some scholars have recently argued that the Madrid Codex originated in the Petén region of Guatemala and postdates European contact. The contributors to this volume challenge that view by demonstrating convincingly that it originated in northern Yucatán and was painted in the Pre-Columbian era. In addition, several contributors reveal provocative connections among the Madrid and Borgia group of codices from Central Mexico. Contributors include: Harvey M. Bricker, Victoria R. Bricker, John F. Chuchiak IV, Christine L. Hernández, Bryan R. Just, Merideth Paxton, and John Pohl. Additional support for this publication was generously provided by the Eugene M. Kayden Fund at the University of Colorado.
Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya
Author: Carla McKinney Brenner
Publisher:
Published: 2004
Total Pages: 20
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA Maya Universe in Stone
Author: Stephen Houston
Publisher: Getty Publications
Published: 2021-12-28
Total Pages: 194
ISBN-13: 1606067451
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe first study devoted to a single sculptor in ancient America, as understood through four unprovenanced masterworks traced to a small sector of Guatemala. In 1950, Dana Lamb, an explorer of some notoriety, stumbled on a Maya ruin in the tropical forests of northern Guatemala. Lamb failed to record the location of the site he called Laxtunich, turning his find into the mystery at the center of this book. The lintels he discovered there, long since looted, are probably of a set with two others that are among the masterworks of Maya sculpture from the Classic period. Using fieldwork, physical evidence, and Lamb’s expedition notes, the authors identify a small area with archaeological sites where the carvings were likely produced. Remarkably, the vividly colored lintels, replete with dynastic and cosmic information, can be assigned to a carver, Mayuy, who sculpted his name on two of them. To an extent nearly unique in ancient America, Mayuy can be studied over time as his style developed and his artistic ambition grew. An in-depth analysis of Laxtunich Lintel 1 examines how Mayuy grafted celestial, seasonal, and divine identities onto a local magnate and his overlord from the kingdom of Yaxchilan, Mexico. This volume contextualizes the lintels and points the way to their reprovenancing and, as an ultimate aim, repatriation to Guatemala.
The Ancient Maya
Author: Heather McKillop
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Published: 2004-08-19
Total Pages: 472
ISBN-13: 1576076970
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThanks to powerful innovations in archaeology and other types of historical research, we now have a picture of everyday life in the Mayan empire that turns the long-accepted conventional wisdom on its head. Ranging from the end of the Ice Age to the flourishing of Mayan culture in the first millennium to the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, The Ancient Maya takes a fresh look at a culture that has long held the public's imagination. Originally thought to be peaceful and spiritual, the Mayans are now also known to have been worldly, bureaucratic, and violent. Debates and unanswered questions linger. Mayan expert Heather McKillop shows our current understanding of the Maya, explaining how interpretations of "dirt archaeology," hieroglyphic inscriptions, and pictorial pottery are used to reconstruct the lives of royalty, artisans, priests, and common folk. She also describes the innovative focus on the interplay of the people with their environments that has helped further unravel the mystery of the Mayans' rise and fall.
