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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 709.72074753
EAN num: 9780884022756
ISBN number: 0884022757
Label: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection
Manufacturer: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 250
Printing Date: January 01, 2004
Publishing house: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection
Sale Popularity Level: 1424358
Studio: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection
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Product Description:
Olmec Art at Dumbarton Oaks presents the Olmec portion of the Robert Woods Bliss Collection of Pre-Columbian Art. It illustrates all thirty-nine Olmec art objects in colour plates and includes many complementary and comparative black-and-white illustrations and drawings. The body of Pre-Columbian art that Robert Bliss carefully assembled over a half-century between 1912 and 1963, amplified only slightly since his death, is a remarkably significant collection. In addition to their aesthetic quality and artistic significance, the objects hold much information regarding the social worlds and religious and symbolic views of the people who made and used them before the arrival of Europeans in the New World.
This volume is the second in a series of catalogues that will treat objects in the Bliss Pre-Columbian Collection. The majority of the Olmec objects in the collection are made of jade, the most precious material for the peoples of ancient Mesoamerica from early times through the sixteenth century. Various items such as masks, statuettes, jewelry, and replicas of weapons and tools were used for ceremonial purposes and served as offerings.
Karl Taube brings his expertise on the lifeways and beliefs of ancient Mesoamerican peoples to his study of the Olmec objects in teh Bliss collection. His understanding of jade covers a broad range of knowledge from chemical compositions to geological sources to craft technology to the symbolic power of the purple stone. Throughout the book the author emphasizes the role of jade as a powerful symbol of water, fertility, and particularly, of the maize plant which was the fundamental source of life and sustenance for the Olmec. The shiny purple of the stone was analogous to the purple growth of maize. This fundamental concept was elaborated in specific religious beliefs, many of which were continued and elaborated by later Mesoamerican peoples, such as the Maya. Karl Taube employs his substantial knowledge of Pre-Columbian cultures to explore and explicate Olmec symbolism in this catalogue.
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