A week or so ago, while Kathleen flew off to England for a few days to see some old friends, I went museum-hopping. One of the museums that turned out to be a lot more interesting than I thought it would be was the Museum of Cycladic Art. The Cyclades are a group of islands southeast of Athens, close to the mainland (at least compared to some of the other island groups); Mykonos and Santorini are probably the most well-known. Long before the "classical" Greek era that we're all more or less familiar with (around 500 - 300 B.C. or so; i.e. the Athenian ascendancy to power and influence, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc.); long before Homer (~800 or so B.C. ?), long before the Myceneans and Troy that Homer wrote about (1600-1200 B.C.); before the Minoans (~2000-1600 B.C. or 2700-1600 B.C., depending on what you count as the start of their civilization) there had developed a fairly sophisticated culture in the Cyclades. The museum exhibit covered just a few years (3200-2800 B.C.) of what is called the early Cycladic period.
The artifacts most associated with Cycladic art are sculptured female figurines, of all sizes from an inch or two high to almost full life-size. Here are a couple examples (but nearly all the others have a similar presentation/look/feeling)
You can't tell from the photos, because I zoomed to fill the frame, but the second one of these is only a few inches high, while the first one is 1.4 meters high.
Nearly all of the figurines have traits in common.
--Female
--Stylized. Few features in face (nose only), body (breast, suggestion of pubic triangle in most cases)
--Very straight legs
--Right arm under left arm (!?), and nearly always with no (or very little) space between them
--about 5-10 other details that I don't remember
What strikes me about them is the sense of abstraction that comes from the stylization--i.e. they feel modern. But they also feel old; they remind me a bit of the Easter Island statues. Maybe timeless is a better description.
Nobody knows for sure what their purpose was. Some have been found in graves, so a theory is that they were specifically something to accompany the dead. Also, maybe just family heirlooms passed down (seems weak to me). I like the theory that they were fertility figures (cf. breasts and pubic triangle). In any case, there were lots of them produced over about a 500-year period. I believe I have read that about 1400 are extant (only 40% are of known provenance, because grave robbers didn't document what they took!)
I love seeing this enduring style, but I also love exceptions. So, now that you have the idea, check these out:
The first of these three is pretty standard; what made it interesting is that is an example (the first, I think I read, at least in this time/era) of an attempted repair by pinning. You can't see in the photo, but there is a vertical drill hole at the bottom of the broken-off leg.
The second is quite unusual, partly because the figure is seated (hardly the only example of such a figurine), but mostly because of the extended arm holding the cup. Also, very differently-shaped face.
The last one has been dubbed "The Thinker." It's broken, and maybe was modified--don't remember. The explanation at the museum wasn't at all clear to me, something about how the legs were originally drawn up as a place to rest elbows..... But I found that there is a similar piece at a museum in Germany which is called the Harp-player; it makes me wonder if that's what this is, too.
Following is another highly unusual figurine. It was in the same case as some of the others I just showed, so I gather than it has some commonality, but it has one strikingly different feature: a snake head! That's not too clear--it wasn't really that clear in the museum, either; it's only about 3+ inches high.
Now for the biggest surprise of the bunch of the figurines in this museum:
This one is unusual for at least two reasons. The one that is most striking is that it is male. Not unheard of, but VERY unusual. Second is that the arms are not touching. Again, not unheard of, but VERY unusual.
Now that you've seen all the pix I took, go back and look at the first one, the one that is 1.4 m high. It actually is pretty unusual, too: it has more sense of motion that almost any other. The shoulders slope slightly, the hips are tilted a bit, there is just a general assymetry that gives a the whole body a feeling of motion.
Below are a couple pieces that I'm including because I just loved them. The multiple-cup vessel is not that unusual, but it was a particularly lovely example. And the pig-vessel is just too charming! :)
Lastly, two more little sculptures that I love. These were on another floor and I don't remember whether they were Cycladic, but I don't think so. I don't remember much about them, just that they are called Phi- and Psi-figures/sculpturees, for their resemblance to the Greek letters phi and psi.
The artifacts most associated with Cycladic art are sculptured female figurines, of all sizes from an inch or two high to almost full life-size. Here are a couple examples (but nearly all the others have a similar presentation/look/feeling)
You can't tell from the photos, because I zoomed to fill the frame, but the second one of these is only a few inches high, while the first one is 1.4 meters high.
Nearly all of the figurines have traits in common.
--Female
--Stylized. Few features in face (nose only), body (breast, suggestion of pubic triangle in most cases)
--Very straight legs
--Right arm under left arm (!?), and nearly always with no (or very little) space between them
--about 5-10 other details that I don't remember
What strikes me about them is the sense of abstraction that comes from the stylization--i.e. they feel modern. But they also feel old; they remind me a bit of the Easter Island statues. Maybe timeless is a better description.
Nobody knows for sure what their purpose was. Some have been found in graves, so a theory is that they were specifically something to accompany the dead. Also, maybe just family heirlooms passed down (seems weak to me). I like the theory that they were fertility figures (cf. breasts and pubic triangle). In any case, there were lots of them produced over about a 500-year period. I believe I have read that about 1400 are extant (only 40% are of known provenance, because grave robbers didn't document what they took!)
I love seeing this enduring style, but I also love exceptions. So, now that you have the idea, check these out:
The first of these three is pretty standard; what made it interesting is that is an example (the first, I think I read, at least in this time/era) of an attempted repair by pinning. You can't see in the photo, but there is a vertical drill hole at the bottom of the broken-off leg.
The second is quite unusual, partly because the figure is seated (hardly the only example of such a figurine), but mostly because of the extended arm holding the cup. Also, very differently-shaped face.
The last one has been dubbed "The Thinker." It's broken, and maybe was modified--don't remember. The explanation at the museum wasn't at all clear to me, something about how the legs were originally drawn up as a place to rest elbows..... But I found that there is a similar piece at a museum in Germany which is called the Harp-player; it makes me wonder if that's what this is, too.
Following is another highly unusual figurine. It was in the same case as some of the others I just showed, so I gather than it has some commonality, but it has one strikingly different feature: a snake head! That's not too clear--it wasn't really that clear in the museum, either; it's only about 3+ inches high.
Now for the biggest surprise of the bunch of the figurines in this museum:
This one is unusual for at least two reasons. The one that is most striking is that it is male. Not unheard of, but VERY unusual. Second is that the arms are not touching. Again, not unheard of, but VERY unusual.
Now that you've seen all the pix I took, go back and look at the first one, the one that is 1.4 m high. It actually is pretty unusual, too: it has more sense of motion that almost any other. The shoulders slope slightly, the hips are tilted a bit, there is just a general assymetry that gives a the whole body a feeling of motion.
Below are a couple pieces that I'm including because I just loved them. The multiple-cup vessel is not that unusual, but it was a particularly lovely example. And the pig-vessel is just too charming! :)
Lastly, two more little sculptures that I love. These were on another floor and I don't remember whether they were Cycladic, but I don't think so. I don't remember much about them, just that they are called Phi- and Psi-figures/sculpturees, for their resemblance to the Greek letters phi and psi.
No comments:
Post a Comment