TOPICS: PRECOLUMBIAN ART in Spring 2020 (AH2091B)

This course explores the art and architecture of ancient Mesoamerica, a complex of civilizations that shared artistic, symbolic, and social practices across millennia, and which continues to inform the indigenous cultures of present-day Mexico and Central America. Our study will focus on the sculpture, ceramics, painting, book arts, writing systems, architecture and urbanism of - amont others - the Olmec, Maya, Zapotec, Toltec and Aztec peoples. We will also analyze relationships with the Pueblo Cultures of the US Southwest as well as the syncretic visual production of indigenous scribes and European ecclesiastical patrons in the immediate post-Conquest era. The course will close with a historiographic consideration of the study of Precolumbian art from the eighteenth century forward, and the remotivation of Precolumbian motif in the art of revolutionary and post-war Mexico. No pre-requistes are necessary.