The Art of Ancient Mexico

xvii, 260 pp. Includes 152 illustrations. "In this lavishly illustrated study, the astonishing art of early Mesoamerica is examined in its mythological framework. The art of the Maya, the Toltecs, Chichimecs, and Aztecs was distinctly not "aesthetic": it did not consciously strive for beauty. Conversely, it was also not "naturalistic," vainly imitating nature, with accuracy the highest criterion. Rather, each civilization sought, in its individual way, "to transform the terrible into the sublime," to exist in a tension between the ideal and the real. And, in thus making, or trying to make, the divine plausible, the craftsmen of pre-Cortesian cultures were involved in an intensely religious art."