Background

Esther was born in Budapest, Hungary. Her father was an architect.

She came to the US as a refugee at the age of thirteen during the Hungarian Revolution against communist Russia in 1956.

Education

Esther Pasztory received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1971. She started out in African art with Paul Wingert, Douglas Fraser, and Hans Himmelheber as teachers at Columbia University. Her Master’s essay explored the role of flanking figures in group scenes in West African art.

Career

After receiving Ph.D. from Columbia University Esther began to teach at Columbia. She was a Visiting Professor at UCLA in Los Angeles.

Pasztory’s first two books explored art from the city of Teotihuacan, which flourished from approximately 450 to 650 A.D. but was destroyed around 700 A.D. Relatively little is known about the people who built this city, and their art differs in significant ways from that of most other Mesoamerican cultures. In The Iconography of the Teotihuacan Tlaloc and The Murals of Tepantitla, Teotihuacan, Pasztory considered a topic of great interest to specialists in Mesoamerican art and culture.

Pasztory’s third book is a compilation of essays from a 1973 symposium on pre-Columbian art history at Columbia University. Middle Classic Mesoamerica, A.D. 400-700 was published in 1978. Critics viewed the volume as a work that was certain to generate much debate. A reviewer for Choice also considered Middle Classic Mesoamerica a work that would generate debate, but found more to praise in its collection of articles, including “some exceedingly interesting new ideas about the origins of both the Maya and the Teotihuacan empires.” Adrian Digby, in The Antiquaries Journal, expressed a similar view, noting that several of the book’s essays were “controversial,” but not all were fully convincing, although the book’s “basic conception is sound and is a big step forward.”

In her next book, Pasztory shifted focus slightly to concentrate on the Aztec empire. A contributor to Library Journal gave the book high praise, citing its “fine text” that is “of interest to professional scholars” and “accessible to students and general readers” as well.

In another critically respected overview, Pasztory deals with the entire subject of pre-Columbian art. Library Journal reviewer Sylvia Andrews found PreColumbian Art “beautifully illustrated,” clearly written, and filled with “intriguing conclusions.” Andrews especially admired Pasztory’s comparison of different Mesoamerican cultures and her use of artistic evidence to theorize about the beliefs of these cultures.

Her Daughter of the Pyramids, a novel set in ancient Mexico and the short Colonial Tales, appeared in 2002. In 2005 she prepared one more her work Thinking with Things.

She retired in 2013. A symposium was held in her honor and a Festschrift was published partly as a book and partly on the web. The book, “Visual Culture of the Ancient Americas” ed. By Andrew Finegold and Ellen Hoobler,( former students), Oklahoma University Press, 2017. She expected to write nothing further on an Ancient American topic after her retirement. She moved from New York to Maine.

In 2016 the BBC contacted Esther to participate in a new series called “Civilizations”.

Achievements

• Esther Pasztory is a respected professor in Pre-Columbian Art History, who worked at Columbia University for many years. Her publications include the first book written on Aztec art and the first major study of the art of Teotihuacan art. She teaches the art of both Mesoamerica and the Andes and focuses on the work of art as a source of evidence for the reconstruction of ancient cultures related to but separate from archaeological and textual data. She is engaged in a theoretical study of the relationship of art and society.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Jean-Frederic Waldeck: Artist of Exotic Mexico

    (One of the first artists to visit the Mayan ruins at Pale...)

    2011
  • Aztec Art

    (This is the first comprehensive book on Aztec art: eleven...)

    1983
  • Aliens and Fakes: Popular Theories About the Origins of Ancient Americans

    (A wonderful book about the myths and theories, some plaus...)

    2015
  • The Iconography of the Teotihuacan Tlaloc

    (In Pasztory's iconographic analysis of this deity, she di...)

    1974
  • Teotihuacan: Art from the City of the Gods

    (This volume brings together for the first time the fruits...)

    1993
  • Remove the Trouble from Your Heart

    (Esther Pasztory sought refuge in the United States after ...)

    2009
  • Teotihuacan

    (Depicts art objects from Teotihuacan and discusses resear...)

    1993
  • Daughter of the Pyramids

    (Naomi is writing a novel set in ancient Mexico and accide...)

    2002
  • Thinking with Things: Toward a New Vision of Art

    (Pasztory presents her thesis in a two-part approach. The ...)

    2005
  • Middle Classic Mesoamerica, A.D. 400-700 1978
  • Teotihuacan: Experiment in Living 1997
  • The murals of Tepantitla, Teotihuacan 1976
  • Pre-Columbian Art 1998
  • Conversations with Quetzalcoatl and Other Stories 2011

Views

In Pasztory's work Middle Classic Mesoamerica, A.D. 400-700 she argues for “a three-fold rather than a two-fold division of the Mesoamerican Classic” period, in effect creating a “Middle Classic” period.

In her work Aztec Art, she argues that Aztec culture generated art works that were much more than expressions of mere violence, as was commonly believed. Discovering that certain deities appear exclusively in certain art forms, Pasztory theorized that this occurred because of cultural conflicts between the strictly defined classes: elites, priests, and common people. This highly stratified society, in Pasztory’s view, contributed to an artistic culture that was vigorous and extremely complex.

Quotations: ''Art is not for just looking, it is necessary for thinking.''

Connections

Esther is married.

teacher:

Douglas Fraser

teacher:

Hans Himmelheber

References

• Contemporary Authors, Vol. 181
  2000