Unseen Art: Making, Vision, and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica

Unique, insightful, nicely theorized, and important, Unseen Art will stand alone among studies of Mesoamerican art produced in the last hundred years. This book will be a service to art historians and archaeologists studying ancient Mesoamerica but other parts of the world as well.

Cecelia Klein

In Unseen Art, Claudia Brittenham looks deeply into the images and sacred things left by the peoples of Mesoamerica. She explores what it meant to 'see' beyond the sense of sight, whether in relation to concealed Olmec pavements; Maya lintels that offered, at best, partial glimpses; or the 'radical invisibility' of Aztec carvings-not a few with hidden surfaces that were never meant to be viewed. With insight and élan, Claudia Brittenham teaches us new ways of understanding Mesoamerican images. In so doing, she shows that the esoteric path to knowledge both privileges sight and, at times, transcends it.

Stephen Houston

Ultimately, Unseen Art brings to the forefront questions about the power of looking that are vital not just for scholars of Indigenous art of the Americas, but for all of art history. The interventions presented here ask us to consider the meaning of looking; the role of the body in relation to works of art; and connections between visibility and power that resonate in the present as well as in the past.

caa.reviews

Claudia Brittenham's new book delves into the question of why Mesoamerican cultures produced works that often restricted or occluded the act of 'seeing.' . . . She convincingly argues that how and why works become dif?cult to see has much to do with how their creators and audiences understood the nature of vision . . . Brittenham proposes that if we begin to understand how these objects were intended to be seen or not seen in their culture, we might have a better understanding of power in Mesoamerica and perhaps even reconsider our own ideas about seeing and experiencing as art historians.

Latin American & Latinx Visual Culture