Jean Charlot and Mexican Archaeology"

April 1, 2006-June 30, 2006
Location: Bridge Gallery

This exhibition features a less well known but very significant part of artist Jean Charlot's life-his close involvement with major archaeological work at ancient Mayan sites in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. As a staff artist at Chichen Itzá for the 1926-1928 seasons, he faithfully recorded the forms and brilliant but fugitive colors of the painted walls and bas-reliefs as they were revealed and reconstructed by a team of archaeologists. At Cobá the analyzed giant carved stelae. The exhibition shows this official work, as recorded in the reports, and also informal sketches and prints he made on his own time, as well as the art work and illustrations he provided for some of the numerous books by his colleagues. Additional commentary describes life on the dig, accounts of Mayan art, and Charlot's remarkably diverse contributions to the research.

The experience of tracing, copying and analyzing gave Charlot a deep appreciation of the Mayan artist and the design principles he followed, an understanding that Charlot absorbed and re-visited in his own art for years after. This is shown in examples of his later drawings, prints and book illustrations. It is most strongly exemplified in the powerful forms and colors of the elaborately clad figures in the three large panels exhibited from "Mayan Warriors," a 36-foot mural rarely seen since he painted it for the 1970 ethnobotanical exposition, "Flora Pacifica," held at the Blaisdell Center.

Thanks to the stories told and collections made by his Mexican grandfather, his grandfather's friend the French photographer Desirè Charnay, and his great uncle, Eugène Goupil, Charlot was deeply immersed in the study of Mexican art and life from his Parisian childhood. The exhibition includes images and objects from this influential period, including the illustrated notes he made as a teenager from his study of his great uncle's pre-Hispanic codices by then given to the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

For more about Jean Charlot, contact: Jean Charlot Collection, 956-2849 or visit the Charlot website at https://manoa.hawaii.edu/library/research/collections/charlot-collection/

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