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Maya Art
Ancient Maya art comprises the visual arts of the Maya civilization, an eastern and south-eastern Mesoamerican culture made up of a great number of small kingdoms in what is now Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras. Many regional artistic traditions existed side by side, usually coinciding with the changing boundaries of Maya polities. This civilization took shape in the course of the later Preclassic Period (from c. 750 BC to 100 BC), when the first cities and monumental architecture started to develop and the hieroglyphic script came into being. Its greatest artistic flowering occurred during the seven centuries of the Classic Period (c. 250 to 950 CE). Maya art forms tend to be more stiffly organized during the Early Classic (250-550 CE) and to become more expressive during the Late Classic phase (550-950 CE). In the course of history, influences of various other Mesoamerican cultures were absorbed. In the late Preclassic, the influence of the Olmec style is still discernibl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Visual Arts
The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics (art), ceramics, photography, video, image, filmmaking, design, crafts, and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile arts, also involve aspects of the visual arts, as well as arts of other types. Within the visual arts, the applied arts, such as industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, interior design, and decorative art are also included. Current usage of the term "visual arts" includes fine art as well as applied art, applied or decorative arts and crafts, but this was not always the case. Before the Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain and elsewhere at the turn of the 20th century, the term 'artist' had for some centuries often been restricted to a person working in the fine arts (such as painting, sculpture, or printmaking) and not the decorative arts, crafts, or applied visual arts media. The distinction was emphasized by ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Kubler
George Alexander Kubler (July 26, 1912 – October 3, 1996) was an American art historian and among the foremost scholars on the art of pre-Columbian America and Ibero-American Art. Biography Kubler was born in Hollywood, California, but most of his early education was in Europe. He attended high school at Western Reserve Academy, a private, coeducational boarding school in Hudson, Ohio. He then went to Yale University, where he earned an A.B. (1934), A.M. (1936) and Ph.D. degree (1940), the latter two under guidance of Henri Focillon. From 1938 onwards, Kubler was a member of the Yale University faculty and was the first Robert Lehman Professor (1964-1975), Sterling Professor of the History of Art (1975-1983) and after his retirement, a senior resident scholar. He received several awards, including three Guggenheim Fellowships, an American Council of Learned Societies Grant-in-Aid for research in Mexico and the Order of the Aztec Eagle by the Mexican Government. He a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mesoamerican Ball Court
A Mesoamerican ballcourt () is a large masonry structure of a type used in Mesoamerica for more than 2,700 years to play the Mesoamerican ballgame, particularly the hip-ball version of the ballgame. More than 1,300 ballcourts have been identified, 60% in the last 20 years alone. Although there is a tremendous variation in size, in general all ballcourts are the same shape: a long narrow alley flanked by two walls with horizontal, vertical, and sloping faces. Although the alleys in early ballcourts were open-ended, later ballcourts had enclosed end-zones, giving the structure an -shape when viewed from above. Ballcourts were also used for functions other than, or in addition to, ballgames. Ceramics from western Mexico show ballcourts being used for other sporting endeavours, including what appears to be a wrestling match. It is also known from archaeological excavations that ballcourts were the sites of sumptuous feasts, although whether these were conducted in the context of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North Acropolis, Tikal
The North Acropolis of the ancient Maya city of Tikal in Guatemala is an architectural complex that served as a royal necropolis and was a centre for funerary activity for over 1300 years. The acropolis is located near the centre of the city and is one of the most studied of Maya architectural complexes. Excavations were carried out from 1957 to 1969 by the University of Pennsylvania, directed by Edwin M. Shook and William Coe.Martin and Grube 2000, p. 43. The first traces of human activity at the site date to approximately 800 BCE, with the first structures being built about 350 BCE. Around 250 CE the complex underwent a major redevelopment with the construction of a massive basal platform that supported a cluster of temples; this was followed around 450 CE by the addition of a row of four pyramids on a terrace to the south of the main platform. A number of royal tombs have been excavated that have been identified with named kings, including the tombs of Yax Nuun Ayiin I (r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theatre State
In political anthropology, a theatre state is a political state directed towards the performance of drama and ritual rather than towards more conventional ends such as warfare and welfare. Power in a theatre state is exercised through spectacle. The term, coined by Clifford Geertz (1926–2006) in 1980 in reference to political practice in the nineteenth-century Balinese Negara, has since expanded in usage. Hunik Kwon and Byung-Ho Chung, for example, regard contemporary North Korea as a theatre state. In Geertz's original usage, the concept of the theatre state contests the notion that precolonial society can be analysed in the conventional discourse of Oriental despotism. In 1966, Ben Anderson, a scholar of Indonesian culture, explicitly compared the Japanese occupation of Indonesia to ''Kabuki''. Anderson argued that the Japanese government used the elements of ''Kabuki'', including, “mysterious silences, lightening changes of mood, terrifying grimaces, spectacular ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sacbe
A sacbe, plural sacbeob (Yucatec Maya: singular ''sakbej'', plural ''sakbejo'ob''), or "white road", is a raised paved road built by the Maya civilization of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. Most connect temples, plazas, and groups of structures within ceremonial centers or cities, but some longer roads between cities are also known. The term "sacbe" is Yucatec Maya language, Yucatec Maya for "white road"; white perhaps because there is evidence that they were originally coated with limestone stucco or plaster, which was over a stone and rubble fill.Roys and Shook 1966, 43 Although great progress has been made on determining the roles of sacbeob in Maya society, the decision to construct sacbeob as opposed to smaller, less complicated paths is puzzling to experts. Without a profound reliance on beasts of burden to transport goods, it remains partially unclear why the Maya decided to expend so much labor constructing these impressive roads. However, it remains a very plausible theory tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Acropolis
An acropolis was the settlement of an upper part of an ancient Greek city, especially a citadel, and frequently a hill with precipitous sides, mainly chosen for purposes of defense. The term is typically used to refer to the Acropolis of Athens, yet nearly every Greek city had an acropolis of its own. Acropolises were used as religious centers and places of worship, forts, and places in which the royal and high-status resided. Acropolises became the nuclei of large cities of classical ancient times, and served as important centers of a community. Some well-known acropolises have become the centers of tourism in present-day, and they are a rich source of archaeological information of ancient Greece, especially, the Acropolis of Athens. Origin An acropolis is defined by the Greek definition of , ; from () or () meaning “highest; edge; extremity”, and () meaning “city.” The plural of () is , also commonly as and , and in Greek. The term acropolis is also used to de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maya City
Maya cities were the centres of population of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Mesoamerica. They served the specialised roles of administration, commerce, manufacturing and religion that characterised ancient cities worldwide.Sharer & Traxler 2006, p.71. Maya cities tended to be more dispersed than cities in other societies, even within Mesoamerica, as a result of adaptation to a lowland tropical environment that allowed food production amidst areas dedicated to other activities. They lacked the grid plans of the highland cities of central Mexico, such as Teotihuacán and Tenochtitlan. Maya monarchs ruled their kingdoms from palaces that were situated within the centre of their cities.Martin & Grube 2000, p.15. Cities tended to be located in places that controlled trade routes or that could supply essential products.Sharer & Traxler 2006, p.85. This allowed the elites that controlled trade to increase their wealth and status. Such cities were able to construct temples for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karl Taube
Karl Andreas Taube (born September 14, 1957) is an American Mesoamericanist, Mayanist, iconographer and ethnohistory, ethnohistorian, known for his publications and research into the pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica and the American Southwest. He is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, University of California, Riverside.Board of Regents, UC (2006) In 2008 he was named the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences distinguished lecturer. Family background Karl Taube's father, Canadian-born Henry Taube (d. 2005), whose parents were ethnic Germans, was the recipient of the 1983 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Education Taube commenced his undergraduate education at Stanford University, Stanford, relocating to University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley where he completed a Bachelor of Arts, B.A. in Anthropology in 1980. He enrolled in graduate studies in Anthropology at Yale University, Yale, where he comple ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mary Miller (art Historian)
Mary Ellen Miller (born December 30, 1952) is an American art historian and academician specializing in Mesoamerica and the Maya. Academic career A native of New York State, Miller earned her A.B. degree from Princeton University and her Ph.D. from Yale in 1981 with a thesis titled ''The Murals of Bonampak, Chiapas Mexico''. Miller joined the Yale faculty in 1981, and in 1998 was appointed as the Vincent Scully, Jr. Professor of the History of Art. Miller served as the master of Saybrook College from 1999 until the autumn of 2008, when she was both appointed as Sterling Professor and named the replacement of Peter Salovey as Dean of Yale College. She was the first woman to hold Yale College's highest office, and served as dean from December 2008 to June 2014. When Yale University President, Richard C. Levin, announced Miller's appointment as dean, he had nothing but praise for her: "Mary is the embodiment of what you look for in a Yale College dean," Levin said in an intervie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
