Chuyển sang chế độ ngoại tuyến với ứng dụng Player FM !
Claudia Brittenham, "Unseen Art: Making, Vision, and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica" (U Texas Press, 2023)
Manage episode 358828123 series 2421502
In Unseen Art: Making, Vision, and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica (U Texas Press, 2023), 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.
Sarah Newman (@newmantropologa) is an archaeologist and Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. Her research explores long-term human-environmental interactions, including questions of waste and reuse, processes of landscape transformations, and relationships between humans and other animals.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies
761 tập
Manage episode 358828123 series 2421502
In Unseen Art: Making, Vision, and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica (U Texas Press, 2023), 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.
Sarah Newman (@newmantropologa) is an archaeologist and Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. Her research explores long-term human-environmental interactions, including questions of waste and reuse, processes of landscape transformations, and relationships between humans and other animals.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies
761 tập
모든 에피소드
×Chào mừng bạn đến với Player FM!
Player FM đang quét trang web để tìm các podcast chất lượng cao cho bạn thưởng thức ngay bây giờ. Đây là ứng dụng podcast tốt nhất và hoạt động trên Android, iPhone và web. Đăng ký để đồng bộ các theo dõi trên tất cả thiết bị.