Resumen de History, writing, and image in Maya art
Part of a symposium on writing and the history of art. The writer discusses the revolution of perception and interpretation in art-historical writing over the last quarter of a century. The driving force behind this revolution, she maintains, has been the ongoing decipherment of the Maya hieroglyphic writing system and its contribution to the understanding of Maya cultural history. Charting her own encounter with the Maya since 1970, she shows how she found herself in the situation of reconstructing a history and recovering a lost worldview from the artwork she studied, rather than using history and a worldview to inform the objects. She points out that the Maya have made her acutely aware of the responsibility that comes with writing history and the power of words. For most people in the world, she observes, the written history of the Maya and the ancient descriptions of their worldview and ritual performance are matters of exotic curiosity. For the Maya, however, she asserts, they are matters of identity and the validation of their heritage as human beings.
