Art and Writing in the Maya Cities, AD 600-800: A Poetics of Line | 
| Author: Adam Herring
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $101.00
Buy New: $71.48
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Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 1345446
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 340
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.3
Dimensions (in): 10.1 x 6.8 x 1.3
ISBN: 0521842468
Dewey Decimal Number: 709.728109021
EAN: 9780521842464
ASIN: 0521842468
Publication Date: May 31, 2005
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Condition: BRAND NEW
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Product Description
Art and Writing in the Maya Cities, AD 600-800 examines an important aspect of the visual cultures of the ancient Maya in southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. During a critical period of cultural evolution, artistic production changed significantly, as calligraphy became an increasingly important formal element in Maya aesthetics and was used extensively in monumental building, sculptural programs and small-scale utilitarian objects. Adam Herring's study analyzes art works, visual programs, and cultural sites of memory, providing an anthropologically-informed description of ancient Maya culture, vision, and artistic practice. An inquiry into the contexts and perceptions of the ancient Maya city, his book melds epigraphic and iconographic methodologies with the critical tradition of art-historical interpretation.
Book Description
Examines important aspects of the visual cultures of the ancient Maya. During a critical period of cultural evolution, artistic production changed significantly, as calligraphy became an increasingly important formal element in Maya aesthetics and was used extensively. Adam Herring's study analyzes art works, visual programs, and cultural sites of memory.
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| Customer Reviews:
deciphering complex Mayan art work October 16, 2005
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The complex, seemingly highly stylized Mayan figurative and symbolic art work and calligraphic art work of the late, most advanced period of Mayan civilization was not merely, or even mainly, decorative; nor was it iconographic. Although for its skillfulness, composition, and prevalence, it is often presumed to be either. Rather, the Mayan visual art of this period "offered an expansive discourse of culture and power," mainly to the elites in the urban centers in what is today the Yucatan Peninsula and adjacent Central American countries. This art based on calligraphic tools, techniques, and intentions is known as "ts'ib'", a term which can be translated variously as line, painting, brushwork, and design, among other terms. As Associate Professor of Art History at Southern Methodist U. author Herring demonstrates, ts'ib' "was not so much a term of Maya calligraphy as it was a mode of visual attention and moral valuation within the sensory regime of Maya sociability." The discourse contained within this Maya art reflected values, concerns, and situations of the past while giving cautious, coded, guidance in changing circumstances of the evolving society, fading even as it was coming into its highest powers. Herring's treatment of the diverse, interrelated cultural and artistic matters ranges from broad historical views to analysis of minutiae of Mayan relics. At times he makes use of approaches and perspectives from the contemporary field of cultural studies.
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