Art 207-01: Pre-Columbian Art

Fall 2008, MWF 11:30am-12:30pm, Fields 207

Professor Matt Johnston

This course is an overview of Pre-Columbian art in Central and South America, focusing on the principal civilizations of the Aztec, Maya, and Inca, but also covering major earlier cultures, especially those that were influential in shaping the artistic customs of the region. When the Spanish arrived in the New World, they discovered impressive organized societies, complete with a rich artistic tradition in architecture, sculpture, ceramics, and painting. Much of that tradition was extinguished over the course of the next several hundred years, but archaeological work in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has done much to recover it, including the deciphering of Maya glyphs and the rediscovery of important palace and temple complexes such as Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztecs. Perhaps most exciting is the growing recognition that Pre-Columbian societies had a highly sophisticated sense of their own history, grounding the legitimacy, organization, and customs of their cities and empires by connecting them to previous ones. This class will focus on identifying how the development of the arts played a key role in this process, through monumental decorative projects in palaces, temples, and whole cities, mass production of ceramics and other wares, and royal funerary art.