Murals at Bonampak
The summer between my junior and senior years in college was a summer that influenced me more than any other in my life.
I wasn't off playing, partying, or working, I was going to school. I was an art major in college, and my interest in both art and in history caused me to take more art history classes than most art majors. At the time, there were two art history teachers, one a relatively new woman, whose classes were disappointingly easy, and the other, a button-down, suited strutting martinet of a hard-ass professor, known to be the toughest teacher in the art department. Sadly, I don't even remember the man's name. I do know that most of the art students absolutely hated him, because he was not only the toughest teacher any of us had ever had, but because he was unsympathetic and unforgiving. But, you learned what he taught, by god, or you flunked. Since art history was a required course, and you had to pass to get your degree, it was sink or swim. I did ok on the first course (I think it was the only B I ever got in an art class, but at least I didn't flunk!) so I took Advanced Art History as well.
Then came the summer, and I was still a few credit hours short to get my degree the following spring, so I signed up for a summer school course in Art History so I could graduate on time. Despite the fact that it was taught by this same martinet. Fellow students thought I was nuts.
That course changed a lot of things for me, including not only how I thought of my professor (he showed up for the first day of Pre-Columbian Art class in bermuda shorts, socks, sandals, and a completely different attitude,) but how I thought of art.
We learned about the Olmecs, the Maya, the Inca and the Aztecs. We learned the terms
stelae, and chacmool, and about gods with exotic names like Xipe Totec, Tlaloc and Quetzacoatl, and places called Chichen Itza, Tenochtitlan, Uxmal and
Teotihuacan. We learned to distinguish between Olmec, Zapotec, Mayan and Toltec designs.
By the end of the course, we could identify the pyramids at Tikal and Teotihuacan, and knew the difference between the cultures that produced them. We could tell a
Zapotec glyph from a
Mixtec one, recognize the
ball court at Copan, and the dancers of Monte Alban. We learned that all art did not sprout from Europeans and Greeks, or even Persians and Chinese. We learned about the art that originated
here, and that was a real eye opener, because up to that time, we'd been deluded into thinking that all culture sprang from another continent than our own. This was home-grown, and while it seemed primative at first, it was complex, and relevent, and it was ours.
I managed to finagle an independent study out of the art department that year over Christmas break. It centered on a trip I took with my parents and youngest brother (now an assistant professor of anthropology) to Mexico City, where we hung out in Chapultepec Park,
Plaza de la Constitución or Zócalo, the Museo Nacional de Antropologia (sadly, they have a terribly difficult-to-navigate
website,) the
Plaza of the Three Cultures and various other archaeological sites in and around (
and under!) Mexico City. There wasn't much to the independent study other than that - I took lots of photos, wrote some bogus essay for a little humanities credit, wrote a paper called, "The Art and Architecture of Mexico City" and read
The Children of Sanchez by Oscar Lewis. I always good at finagling independent studies out of my teachers for credit.
Ancient Greece seems very far away, and while an archaeological find in the old world might thrill most art and archaeology lovers, give me a story about
Maya Blue or
newly discovered Mayan building sites or
ancient murals to make my day.
So, Dr. Whateveryournamewas, thank you, for being a great art history teacher. Even though it was 30 years ago, and I've forgotten far more than I remember, you were, unwittingly, one of those teachers that may become anonymous, but are never really forgotten. You instilled a life-long appreciation and love in others for the subject you taught, so you were by all accounts a great success at what you did.
You sure would have loved the internet, sir.
If you're new to Pre-Columbian art, a great site to get you started is Ancient Mexico. Click on the interactive map to visit a region and culture.
Enjoy all these geeky links:
Bomampak Documentation Project
Murals at Bonampak
Maya Blue Info
Maya Blue from National Geographic
Press Release Maya Blue
Really nerdy stuff about Maya Blue
More nerdy stuff about Maya blue
News story
Presidential Palace
Meso America links
Meso America photos
Zapotecs
maya blue pre-Columbian art archaeology