Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:26:45.857Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Representation of Space and Form in Maya Painting on Pottery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Terence Grieder
Terence Grieder*
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin, Texas
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Maya imagined both the visible and the conceptual in three-dimensional form. Thus their painters had to represent the third dimension on flat surfaces. Seven ways of showing solid form were invented: combined front and profile views, overlapping, foreshortening, “half-view,” variations in line weight, arbitrary shading, and detached contour lines. Two ways of showing spatial depth were invented: overlapping and raising the level in the composition. Pottery painters never attained perfect command of space representation. Representation of space and form in art is a product of the same kind of speculation and experimentation which produces geometry and philosophical conceptions of space. The Maya lacked the conception of dimensions and never formulated the relationship between even length and width. This restricted their arts; in painting, for example, representations of space and form could not be formulated but had to be reinvented each time they were used.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , April 1964 , pp. 442 - 448
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1964

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arnheim, Rudolf 1954 Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Cajori, Florian 1938 A History of Mathematics. Macmillan, New York.Google Scholar
Covarrubias, Miguel 1957 Indian Art of Mexico and Central America. Knopf, New York.Google Scholar
Gordon, George Byron and Mason, John Alden 1925-43 Examples of Maya Pottery in the Museum and Other Collections. 3 volumes. University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Leonard, Carmen Cook de 1954 Dos Extraordinarias Vasijas del Museo de Villa Hermosa; El Vaso de Tabasco. Yan, No. 3, pp. 96-102. Mexico, D.F.Google Scholar
Merwin, Raymond E. and Vaillant, George Clapp 1932 The Ruins of Holmul, Guatemala. Memoirs of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Vol. 3, No. 2. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Morris, Earl H., Charlot, Jean, and Morris, Ann Axtell 1931 The Temple of the Warriors. 2 volumes. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
Ruppert, Karl, Thompson, J. E. S., and Proskouriakoff, Tatiana 1955 Bonampak, Chiapas, Mexico. With copies of the murals by Antonio Tejeda F. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication 602. Washington.Google Scholar
Satterthwaite, Linton Jr. 1944 Piedras Negras Archaeology: Architecture. Part IV, No. 3. University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Smith, Robert E. 1955 Ceramic Sequence at Uaxactun, Guatemala. Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, in cooperation with Carnegie Institution of Washington. New Orleans.Google Scholar
Smith, A. Ledyard and Kidder, Alfred V. 1951 Excavations at Nebaj, Guatemala. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication 594. Washington.Google Scholar
Spinden, Herbert Joseph 1957 Maya Art and Civilization. Falcon's Wing Press, Indian Hills, Colorado.Google Scholar