Maya
Art
|
Painter self portrait in a Vase,
Petén Classic Note the paintbrush in the head |
The art of the Maya, is a reflection
of their lifestyle and culture. The art was composed of delineation and
painting upon paper and plaster, carvings in wood,
Obsidian, bone, shells,
Jade
and stone, clay and stucco models, and terracotta figurines from molds.
The technical process of metal working was also highly developed but as
the resources were scarce, they only created ornaments in this media.
Music was very appreciated and there is also proof of Theater plays
being held in the public ceremonies. The Maya Kings commissioned finely
crafted works to furnish their palaces and attest to their sovereignty
and Warfare
victories,
among them, carved thrones and throne backs, where a king might reign
supported by depictions of ancestors or gods. Figural mirror holders
served as “perpetual servants” who revealed the king’s dazzling but
fractured image in polished mosaic mirrors, artists working in stucco
achieved realistic portraiture that captures age and wisdom. Painted
cups and vases for the elite depict scenes of court life, while clay
figurines portray members of the retinue that attended the king.
Representing servants, dwarfs, hunchbacks, musicians, messengers, and
priests, along with elegantly coiffed women, these figurines all come
from tombs, where they also served their lords in death. Although, The
Maya Art was not only for the royalty, as the multiple findings in
households shows.
Sculpture.
A common form of Maya sculpture was the stela.
The Maya somehow transported enormous stones through the jungle
from distant quarries, apparently without the aid of either wheeled
carts or beasts of burden. Artists then used only rudimentary stone
tools to execute the intricate carvings, before raising the
ponderous sculptures to their present vertical positions. The
largest in the Maya world is Stela E at
Quiriguá, that weighs an astonishing 65 tons and stretches 10.5
meters in length, with sculptures covering its 8-meter panels.
The Stelas were
large stone
slabs covered with carvings. Many depict the rulers of the
cities they were located in, and others show gods. The Stela almost
always contained hieroglyphs, which have been critical to determining
the significance and history of Maya sites. Other stone carvings include
figurines, and stone or wooden lintels (Left), with different scenes. The
Maya used a great deal of Jade and
Obsidian in their art. Many stone carvings had
jade inlays, and there were also ritual objects created from jade. It is
remarkable that the Maya, who had no metal tools, created such intricate
and beautiful objects from jade, a very hard and dense material.
In a workshop of Maya sculpture, the subject matter had to conform to
local tradition; elements of style such as viewpoint of the figures,
gesture, depth of relief, and the treatment of faces had to be
recognizable as local art, and the artists observed the specific regalia
worn by rulers. Subject matter and style were bound by tradition.
Ceramic
Unlike the monuments, whose royal proclamations were intended for public
view, the ceramic vessels are often very anecdotal and are where the
ancient Maya, in a sense, really let its feelings go free. One aspect of
Mayan art is often overlooked, and that is the tremendous variety of
excellence in style and design that it contains. Ancient Greek vase
paintings are equally excellent but in comparison to the Mayan are
mono-stylistic. Mayan art gave almost free reign to the artist, who was
not required to produce a product that fit "the canon of the culture" in
every way. In its encouragement of individual genius and its variations
from one workshop to another, the products of which were intended in
good part to be given or sold to the royalty of other cities, Mayan vase
paintings are more akin to the art of the modern period than the art of
any other pre-modern people. The principal valuation seems to have been
on artistic quality rather than adherence to standardized forms.
Furthermore, like Greek and Chinese artists, Mayan painters and
sculptors sometimes signed their work. Accordingly, their work was not a
"cultural product" or a "city's product" but a person's product. It
appears that literacy was confined to the elite (as in all pre-modern
cultures) and artists and the literate were of the same class; indeed,
it is probable that Mayan artists were often the younger sons and
daughters of the ahaw, the rulers, of Mayan cities,
as the Yaxhá case illustrates, as the minor
son of the ruler was known only after his paintings. One should look at
these paintings as an appreciator of art, not as an anthropologist. How
do the artists use color, or ignore it? How do they use line, thin or
thick, space human figures, show life and energy, incorporate
calligraphy into their work?. Of note is that: "After a
review of thousands of ceramic pieces and hundreds of thin section
examples of Maya ceramics from major lowland sites, we identified
the types of ceramics that had volcanic ash tempering added to the
clay paste and determined that volcanic ash made up more than 20% of
the ceramic paste matrix of the ash tempered ceramic collections.
The ash and assemblage of crystals (biotite, hornblende, hypersthene,
and zircon) all are consistent with
Guatemala Highland tephra" (Drexler
et al., 1980; Rose et al., 1981).
The pottery found in the Maya sites and caves, is the more common way to
date and identify the commerce between the different regions, The
archeologist divide the different styles in periods that share style and
features, the most beautiful is the polychrome specially the Codex
style, from the late Classic occupation in El Mirador,
the Ik site now known to be Motul de San
José and the Alta
Verapaz (Chamá) vases and plates that were exported all over the Maya world.
Most pieces of pottery were decorated with images of humans, animals ,
or mythological creatures. Many highly detailed clay figurines were made
by the Maya, portraying humans and gods. These were made with molds and
by hand. The Maya had every day and ceremonial pottery, and it was the
main sacrifice object used in the
Maya Caves rituals, the
destroying of the physical representation of an object is significant
because its destruction activates and brings the offerings spirit to the
world, allowing it to be used in the supernatural realm. Several
examples of offering destruction were also unearthed in the Caves. The
presence of obsidian blades, censers fragments, charcoal, and
fire-cracked rock all attest to bloodletting and a burning event, or
events. According to the Popol Vuh, humans were made from corn found in
a cave, and bloodletting was one of the obligations set out by the gods
when they gave people the world.
Painting.
The Maya excel in the painting mainly in Ceramics, but the murals both
in buildings and in caves, were also important to them, they use several
vegetal as well as mineral colorants to perform their masterpieces as
the brilliantly rendered murals at San
Bartolo, that constitute the most
elaborate mythological scenes known for the ancient Maya. The mural is
approximately 2000 years old, with more than 40 feet of this spectacular
painting exposed, we are given a unique glimpse into the ancient
mythology of the Maya. They also painted their Temples in red and white,
as well as the monuments and the Tumbs in Río
Azul are exceptional. The Maya word tz'ib refers to painting in
general, including both imagery and writing. The practitioners of these
crafts, called ah tz'ibob ('they who paint'), were both master
calligraphers and painters, which signed their work. The large corpus of ancient Maya painting
includes portraits and names of several ah tz'ibob, depicts them at
work, and presents their patron deities. The Vase rollout show below is
a very distinctive class named The Holmul Dancers. There is a lot of drawings and
Graffiti found in Maya sites such as Tikal and Nakum and
Caves, made by common people.
The bark paper was used since the early Classic to make books, of
those none is well preserved, but 4 Post Classic
codices survive today.
Music and Dance.
For the
ancient Maya, performance was integral at all levels of society, from
large state ceremonies involving hundreds of people to an individual
whistling on the way to the fields. Murals depict processions with large
bands of drums, flutes, and rattles. Performers in supernatural costumes
accompanied and reenacted mythical scenes. Royal participants donned
elaborate costumes and danced. Such large ceremonies would fill the
plazas with noise and spectacle, spreading onto the building platforms
above. The performances united the community as performers and audience
shared the experience. At the same time, participants were divided into
different social groups according to their roles. Taube points out that
"acoustics were clearly important to the Maya." Many of the cities
had open plazas for ceremonial dances where, as Mayan art
illustrates, kings and rulers performed in jade and seashell belts.
"These (belts) would have made a tremendous sound as they performed
dances in the ceremonial plazas," Taube says. As in Other aspects of
the Maya realm the gods enjoyed all these activities.
Musicians in Xibalbá
Music Was a cultural
activity that was performed by both child and adult, by commoners and
elite. However, music was explicitly divided between classes. Certain
musical instruments and instrumentation were limited to the elite class.
One function of music was therefore to indicate prestige through the use
of music
and musical instruments. Certain instruments were not available
to the common Maya because of the complexity involved in creating them.
There are three families of musical instruments that show how the Maya
created sound. Wind instruments are the most common musical artifacts.
Although ceramic ocarinas and flutes are the most abundant, the Maya also
played wooden trumpets, bone flutes, conch shells and reed flutes. The
second category of musical instruments are instruments that
produce sound by the vibration of a tightly fixed membrane. The ancient
Maya drums are the most frequent example of this instrument type,
including ceramic, (see rigth), wooden
and friction drums. The
last of the instrument families consists of rattles, turtle carapaces
and drums with no membrane. Children’s burials with “youth” instruments
may indicate music education initiated at childhood. Some ballgames were
reenactments of creation stories, while others were sporting events.
Music and dance celebrations surrounding the events varied according to
the type of ballgame played. On a much smaller scale, hundreds of
figurine whistles have been found at sites and were possibly carried
around to create impromptu music by individuals and small groups. The
Rabinal Achí
is a Musical Theatre Play, still represented by the Kek´chí in Baja
Verapaz, was declared
Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible
Heritage of the Humanity in 2005 by the UNESCO
