Archaeology reveals things that have been invisible to people since their use life ended long ago. Once exposed, these architectural features, sculptures, and paintings are documented and reproduced, studied by scholars from different disciplines, and appreciated by the public in museum displays and cultural heritage sites. Contemporary modes of looking, however, are often divorced from the original intent of the artists, especially in traditions that developed in the Americas before European invasion. This compact book by one of the leading art historians of the ancient Americas makes a necessary methodological intervention, urging scholars to pursue “an expanded model of viewing—or, perhaps better, experience” that “enriches the understanding of all kinds of works of art” (p. 14). In Unseen Art, Claudia Brittenham thoughtfully interrogates the nature of visibility in the context of sculpture from three different cultures across time in ancient Mesoamerica: Olmec, Maya, and Mexica. In doing so, Brittenham emphasizes the exciting insights that visual hierarchies inherent in such artistic creations have for documenting broader systems of political power in these societies. This well-written contribution makes a welcome addition to reading lists for upper-level undergraduate or graduate classes in the Americas and the global past more broadly.
Artists in the Gulf Coast of Mexico in the first millennium BC created extraordinary representations of people and divine characters, some only to be buried in massive offerings. Brittenham breathes new life into the analysis of such assemblages by emphasizing the durational nature of making and seeing them: communities and their intended beholders, whether mortal or divine, perceived the greenstone and clay deposits in various stages of construction. Key to this fresh perspective are the numerous color images that provide the reader with excellent original excavation photos, schematic profiles, three-dimensional renderings, and current museum settings. Even the most seasoned Mesoamerican archaeologist or art historian will gain new appreciation for these well-known offerings through the detailed treatment here. The extensive endnotes and references encourage investigational rabbit holes and bolster Brittenham's arguments about how the durational seeing and processual making of these massive community offerings relate to emerging social difference at places like La Venta. She observes that “over time at La Venta, there was an erosion in the power of the unseen, replaced by more and more visible markers of power and inequality” (p. 43).
The sculpted undersides of ancient Maya doorway lintels feature some of the most iconic scenes and histories from the Classic period. Their exceptional making and dedication were somewhat lost on subsequent beholders who only achieved imperfect or fleeting “embodied” viewing, conditioned by lighting, movement of people, and general access. As such, the “lintel reasserts hierarchies of vision and knowledge just at a moment when the participant is experiencing the limitations of human sight” (p. 68). (As someone who has fully laid on the ground at sites many a time to get a worthy lintel photo, I identify with this, and am probably not alone.) A thorough and well-illustrated survey of the corpus of Maya lintels sheds new light on the regional communities of sculptural practice and the common threads uniting these “face-down stones.” When comparing the Maya data presented with the other two chapters, the reader is left wanting more about the multitude of buried Maya caches and dedicatory offerings (or, perhaps, “doings”). Indeed, Maya communities throughout the first millennium gathered precious objects of valuable materials only to hide them deliberately in perpetuity under stelae or in staircases, doorways, or floors. The “planting” of such Maya caches, and social memory associated with them, directly relates to the earlier La Venta practice and presages the sumptuous Templo Mayor findings in ways that could have enhanced the perceptive comparisons presented here.
In the Mexica case, the knowledge of images created on the underside of megalithic sculptures was exclusive, thus making hidden surfaces tools of imperial power. This chapter adeptly weaves together archaeological, epigraphic, and art-historical evidence to argue for the Tenochtitlan origins of the practice of underside carving. The discussion of Tenochca sculptors referencing Teotihuacan and Tula prototypes and embellishing the undersides is especially compelling in pinpointing the late imperial origins of the tradition. The case is convincingly made that the carved undersides manifest teotl, sacredness, or inamic, complementary opposites, which, in the case of Tlaltecuhtli for example, the image “makes the power of the earth present where it is represented . . . indicating that the earth force is an inseparable part of the subject” (p. 118). Throughout, the book rewards the reader by underscoring the continuities of unseen art—Olmec offerings, Maya lintels, and Mexica sculptures—in generating “a fierce asymmetry of knowledge and control” in Mesoamerica between the patrons and artists and later observers (p. 124).
There is great value, as this book demonstrates, in elucidating concepts of the divine and sacred through object-based studies among ancient Mesoamerican, Caribbean, Amazonian, and Andean studies. The conclusion only grazes issues of colonial and imperial power in the contemporary world, represented by labeling Mesoamerican creations “art” and holding such objects in museums far from their ancestral origin place. Brittenham's intellectually rigorous work is exemplary in both its inclusive endnotes and citations of in-country scholars writing in Spanish and foregrounding of objects of national cultural patrimony. Unseen Art thus forms an excellent model for other art historians and archaeologists who intend on researching and publishing images and materials that may not have been intended to be seen by anyone but those individuals who commissioned or made them. Building on such foundational work, the US academy (and journals like this one) should continue to promote the institutional value of coauthorship and collective knowledge production in archaeology and art history as key tools for uplifting marginalized voices within Latin America and the diaspora today. By working together to improve our own ways of seeing through these objects, we expand our understandings of what can be sacred or valuable to others in the past and engender empathy toward our global neighbors in the present.
