The Polychromatic Painting Strategies of Classic Maya Ceramic Artists

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Polychromy, Multimediality, and Visual Complexity in Mesoamerican Art" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Maya polychrome ceramics have long been regarded for the distinctive regional styles that emerged during the Late Classic period (ca. 600–900 CE). These styles, aligned with royal workshops and their patrons, encompass a wide range of aesthetic strategies, particularly with respect to color. Some workshops and their artists developed a broad palette of colors to adorn their vessels, painting colorful scenes imbued with realism. Others prized line over color, painting whiplash strokes to render evocative if colorless tableaux. Others used bichromy, manipulating a single paint in variable concentrations to create remarkable depth and movement over a static base. How did Classic Maya ceramic artists formulate and apply their ceramic paints, or engobes, and what does the development and selection of particular paints convey about the artistic process? What meaning do these different strategies impart on a vessel and its imagery? In this talk, we examine the innovative science and materiality of Classic Maya ceramic paints, or engobes, as they intersected with art and society.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Polychromy, Multimediality, and Visual Complexity in Mesoamerican Art

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33366