KABAH

Kabah, originalmente cargada por Mario De Leo.

The Mayan city of Kabah, with exquisite detail in the façade. The masks are representations of the god of water: Chac.

Chaac (also spelled Chac or, in Classic Mayan, Chaahk) is the name of the Maya rain deity. With his lightning axe, Chaac strikes the clouds and produces thunder and rain.

Like other Maya gods, Chaac is both one and manifold. Four Chaacs are based in the cardinal directions and wear the directional colors. Contemporary Yucatec Maya farmers distinguish many more aspects of the rain and the clouds and personify them as different, hierarchically-ordered rain deities. The Chorti Maya have preserved important folklore regarding the process of rain-making, which involved rain deities striking rain-carrying snakes with their axes.

Earthenware effigy urn (an incense burner) of Chaac, 12th-14th century

The rain deities had their human counterparts. In the traditional Mayan (and Mesoamerican) community, one of the most important functions was that of rain-maker, which presupposed an intimate acquaintance with (and thus, initiation by) the rain deities, and a knowledge of their places and movements.

Particularly the Huastec Maya (Teenek), have a cyclical concept of water. Virile, young lightning deities dominating the skies during the rainy season are transformed into wasted, terrestrial and subterranean old men (Mamlab 'Grandfather') during the dry season; in the ocean, the old men rejuvenate themselves again. This cyclical concept may well have been shared by the Classic Period Maya.

Among the rituals for the rain deities, the Yucatec Cha-Chaac ceremony for asking for rain was a ceremonial banquet for the rain deities; it included four boys acting as frogs. Asking for rain and crops was also the purpose of 16th-century rituals at the karstic wells, or cenotes, of Yucatan. Young men and women were lowered into these wells and left to drown there, so as to make them enter the realm (and possibly, become the escorts) of the rain deities. Alternatively, they were thrown into the wells later to be drawn up again, and give oracles.

Chaac is usually depicted with a human body showing reptilian or amphibian scales, and with a non-human head evincing fangs and a long, pendulous nose. In the Classic style, a shell serves as his ear ornament. He often carries shield and lightning-axe, the axe being personified by a closely related deity, god K, called Bolon Dzacab in Yucatec.

A large part of the most important Maya book, the Dresden Codex, is dedicated to the Chaacs, their locations, and activities. It illustrates the intimate relationship existing between the Chaacs, the Bacabs, and the aged goddess, Ixchel. The main source on the 16th-century Yucatec Maya, Bishop de Landa, combines the four Chaacs with the four Bacabs and Pauahtuns into one concept. The Bacabs were aged deities governing the subterranean sphere and its water supplies, corresponding to the Huaxtec Mamlab mentioned above.

In the Classic period, the king often impersonated the rain deity (or the associated rain serpent) while the pictogram of the rain deity can accompany the king's other names. This may be related to the king's role as a war chief, metaphorically equated with the violence of a thunderstorm. It may also, however, have given expression to his role as a supreme rain-maker.

About Chaac's role in Classic period mythological narrative, little is known. However, he is present at the resurrection of the Maya maize god from the carapace of a turtle representing the earth. Together with the skeletal Death God, he also seems to preside over an initiate's ritual transformation into a jaguar.

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Kabah (also spelled Kabaah, Kabáh, Kahbah and Kaba) is a Maya archaeological site in the south-east of the Mexican state of Yucatán.

Kabah is to the south of Uxmal, and is connected to that city by a grand 18 km long raised pedestrian causeway 5 meters wide with monumental arches at each end. Kabah is the second largest ruin of the Puuc region after Uxmal.

The name "Kabah" or "Kabaah" is usually taken to be archaic Maya language for "strong hand". This is a pre-Columbian name for the site, mentioned in Maya chronicles. An alternative name is Kabahaucan or "royal snake in the hand".

The area was inhabited by the mid 3rd century BC. Most of the architecture now visible was built between the 7th century and the 11th century. A sculpted date on a doorjamb of one of the buildings gives the date 879, probably around the city's height. Another inscribed date is one of the latest carved in the Maya Classic style, in 987. Kabaah was abandoned or at least no new ceremonial architecture built for several centuries before the Spanish conquest of Yucatán.

The most famous structure at Kabah is the "Palace of the Masks", the façade decorated with hundreds of stone masks of the long-nosed rain god Chaac; it is also known as the Codz Poop, meaning "Rolled Matting", from the pattern of the stone mosaics. This massive repetition of a single set of elements is unusual in Maya art, and here is used to unique effect.

Masks of the rain god abound on other structures throughout the site. Copal incense has been discovered in some of the stone noses of the raingods. The emphasis placed on Chaac, the "Protector of the Harvest", both here and at other neighboring Puuc sites, stemmed from the scarcity of water in the region. There are no cenotes in this dryer, northern part of the Yucatan, so the Maya here had to depend solely on rain.

Portion of "Temple of the Masks" facade as drawn by Frederick Catherwood.

The site also has a number of other palaces, low stone buildings, and step-pyramid temples. While most is in the Puuc Maya style, some show Chenes elements. The site had a number of sculpted panels, lintels, and doorjambs, most of which have been removed to museums elsewhere. The sculptures mostly depict the site's rulers and scenes of warfare.

The first detailed account of the ruin was published by John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood in 1843.

Codz Poop - Temple of the Masks.

The site is on Mexican highway 261, some 140 km south from Mérida, Yucatán, towards Campeche, Campeche, and is a popular tourism destination. Ruins extend for a considerable distance on both sides of the highway; many of the more distant structures are little visited, and some are still overgrown with forest. As of 2003^[update], a program is ongoing to clear and restore more buildings, as well as archeological excavations under the direction of archeologist Ramón Carrasco. Kabah was declared a Yucatán state park in 1993.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabah_(Maya_site)

KABAH

PALACIO DE BELLAS ARTES

Palacio Bellas Artes, originalmente cargada por Mario De Leo.

A very recurred landscape scene in Mexico: the Palace of Fine Arts (Palacio de Bellas Artes).

This was taken from the Sears department store right in front during a clear weekend.

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Palacio de Bellas Artes (Spanish for Palace of Fine Arts) is the premier opera house of Mexico City. The building well known for both its extravagant Beaux Arts exterior in imported Italian Carrara white marble and its murals by Diego Rivera, Rufino Tamayo, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco.

The Palacio has two museums: the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes and the Museo de la Arquitectura. Metro Bellas Artes is located alongside.

The theatre is used for classical music, opera and dance, notably the "Baile Folklórico". A distinctive feature of the theatre is its stained glass Tifany's curtain depicting a volcano and the valley of Mexico. It is the home of Mexico's National Symphony Orchestra, the Bellas Artes Orchestra, the Bellas Artes Chamber Orchestra, the National Dance Company, and the Bellas Artes Opera.

View of the Palacio de Bellas Artes from the Torre Latinoamericana.

Maria Callas sang in several productions at the Palacio early in her career, and recordings exist of several of her performances here. Other opera greats who have performed and/or sang there include Plácido Domingo, Pavarotti, Kathleen Battle, Kiri Te Kanawa, and Jessye Norman. Most of the world's great orchestras and dance companies have also performed there, including the New York, Vienna, Israel, Moscow, London and Royal Philharmonics; The National Arts Centre Orchestra (Canada); the Philadelphia, Paris, Dresden Staatskapelle, and the French, Spanish and Chinese National Orchestras; the Montreal and Dallas Symphonies; the American Ballet Theatre, the English National Ballet, the Australian National Ballet, the Bolshoi and Kirov Ballets; among others.

The Palacio de Bellas Artes has been used as a funeral venue for artists of Mexican national importance such as Frida Kahlo in 1954 and María Félix in 2002. The Palacio hosted the North American premiere of the film "Frida".

During the late 19th century and going into the first years of the 20th century, during Porfirio Díaz's 30-year rule of Mexico, there was a marked tendency to imitate European art, styles and customs. Following this tendency, a plan for a new Teatro Nacional (National Theater) was laid out and construction of a new building began on October 1, 1904. The plans were drawn up by the Italian architect Adamo Boari, who also designed at the same time the Palacio de Correos de Mexico, across the street, using state-of-the-art technology as was common in European theatres.

Construction was originally scheduled to be finished by 1908; however, it was delayed by problems with Mexico City's soil, notoriously muddy in composition and which led to the gradual subsidence of the building. The construction site was chosen by President Porfirio Díaz because it was located downtown (then Mexico City's financial and hosting district), on an elegant park promenade, and face-to-face with the then tallest buildings in the city, but the choice was not so favourable: indeed, the weight of the building is so massive that it has been sinking a few centimeters yearly since the completion of its construction.

Matters were further complicated by the beginning of the Mexican Revolution in 1910. Boari left Mexico in 1916 and construction was virtually stopped until 1932, when works were resumed under Mexican architect Federico Mariscal; completion took place in 1934. The square with gardens and pegasus statues, devised by Boari himself, was not completed until 1994.

Rivera's "Man at the Crossroads" mural was originally painted for the Rockefeller Center in New York City. Rivera had finished ⅔ of the mural when the Rockefellers objected to an image of Vladimir Lenin in the mural. When Rivera refused to remove Lenin, his commission was cancelled and the mural was destroyed. Rivera repainted it a smaller scale at the Palacio in 1934 and renamed it "Man, Controller of the Universe".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palacio_de_bellas_artes

PALACIO DE BELLAS ARTES