New Discoveries in the Art of the Ancient Maya

April 17, 2004
East Building Auditorium
Held in conjunction with the exhibition
Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya

Welcome
Ana Maria Zavala, Department of Academic Programs, National Gallery of Art

The Memory of Bones: Body and Experience among the Courtly Maya of the Classic Period
Stephen D. Houston, Brigham Young University

The human body can be understood in two fundamental ways, as an object that inspires intuitive empathy, regardless of setting, and as the focus of ideas that can only be accessed by considering history and local meanings. This talk focuses on three topics that relate to the Classic Maya body: (1) bodies that sense the world around them; (2) bodies that serve as vessels of emotion and restraint; and (3) bodies that indirectly express notions of "good pain" and trampled honor. By looking at these topics we can decode categories of experience among those who lived in Maya courts of the Classic period.

Walking the Ruins: Early Travelers and Explorers in Palenque
Roxanne Dávila, Brandeis University

Palenque has always occupied a central position in the history of travel and exploration of the Maya area. This talk examines the trajectory of travelers and explorers who ventured to this ancient Maya site between 1784 and 1900. The lecture aims to provide a broad historical perspective geared toward understanding the fervent interest in Palenque in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The focus is on written descriptions of the ruins, as well as drawings, paintings, and photographs of Palenque created by these early explorers; attention is devoted to well-known explorers and less familiar travelers.

Pakal at War: Recovering the Political History of Seventh-Century Palenque through Its Art and Writing
Simon Martin, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

The most famous of all Maya kings, Pakal the Great of Palenque, is primarily known for his remarkable tomb and the unique and finely wrought artworks it contains. But in life Pakal, like all Maya kings, was a political leader: responsible for diplomatic and military affairs, for battling rivals and manipulating weaker neighbors. This talk takes a single structure, House C of the Palenque palace, and re-examines both its sculpture and inscriptions in pursuit of their political message--in the process painting a new picture of Pakal as a historical figure.

Sacrifice and Creation: New Views of Ancient Maya Mythology from Palenque and Beyond
David Stuart, Harvard University, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology

Newly discovered inscriptions at Palenque and other sites are radically changing our view of ancient Maya mythology, especially the theme of world creation. Many of the sources show how historical rulers were very adept at linking their own lives and social standing to the narratives of creator gods and other cosmic entities. This talk presents many of these ideas through new translations of important texts and analyses of religious art from the pre-Classic and Classic periods.

How did Maya painters manage to create the splendid murals in the city of Bonampak? How did the artists overcome the challenges and restrictions imposed by the environment? Answers to these questions lie in an interdisciplinary study combining modern analytic techniques, methods of observation and characterization used in the discipline of conservation, and the research tools of art history.

This work describes in detail the materials, techniques, and procedures followed by the artists of Bonampak. The Maya painters of Bonampak went to great efforts to prepare different suspensions of pigment, allowing them to imitate different qualities of objects. With exquisite detail, the polychrome palette imitates the special transparency of green jade and the sheer qualities of cotton, the opacity of masks and bodies, and the immateriality of the blue sky. Remarkably, the painting layers have survived the devastating effects of the hot and humid rain forest. The paintings' visual and material qualities, together with specific geographic and environmental requirements, defined the Bonampak mural painters' techniques and placed them in a technical and artistic rank of the first order.

Battle and Glory: the North Wall of the Bonampak Murals
Mary Miller, Yale University

For the ancient Maya, warfare was a two-step process: warriors captured the enemy on the battlefield and then brought the victims back to the court for royal presentation. No images convey the drama and pageantry more eloquently than the murals of Room 2, Bonampak, where the sequential narrative dominates four walls of paintings. The North Wall may be the single most powerful composition to survive from the ancient Maya: mighty warriors master abject and nearly naked captives, in whose dress and demeanor one sees defeat yield to death. Painted in brilliant pigments at the end of the eighth century, the Bonampak murals also open a window on the collapse of Maya society itself in this era.

Panel Discussion

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