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A World in trAnsition:
4000–2000 BC
T
he exhibition
Idols
, from the greek
eidolon
, or image, invites the visitor to
embark on an aesthetic journey across time and space, to
discover how art-
ists who lived and worked around 4000–2000 BC created three-dimensional
images of the human body. the vast geographic area extends from West to east,
from the iberic peninsula to the indus valley, from the gates of the Atlantic to the
confines of the far east.
A tribute to the late giancarlo ligabue, whose multicultural interests are reflect-
ed in
the exhibition, the journey will reveal a surprising number of common traits,
shared by distant people and regions, and compare local variants.
the date in focus is a period of transition, when late neolithic farming villages
were evolving into the urban societies of the Bronze Age. familial
and tribal societies
changed into state-controlled societies. economic mutations accompanied new tech-
nologies, the development of metallurgy, the invention of writing. trade networks,
established for the circulation of exotic raw materials, connected distant people, over
land and sea routes; itinerant craftsmen propagated technologies, goods and ideas.
metaphysical concepts were expressed through the visual media of anthropomorphic
figures – the idols in the show. Considered here from an aesthetic angle, these idols
are discussed on a consolidated archaeological and historical basis. recent research
is presented in the catalogue by specialists of international standing.
the confrontation
is about invariants, and variables, seen from the double angle
of anthropology and aesthetics. Paramount among the invariants or common fac-
tors is the artistic quality. the individuals who created those sculptures were highly
skilled artists, who traced their own narrow way, between respect for traditional
models and innovative creation. Because of the destructive action of time, we are
left with only a few examples of what must have been a much larger number of trial
objects, failures and success, working on specific materials – clay, ivory and bone,
wood, stone and, later, metal. in the exhibition, preference has been given to pieces
carved in stone, a more demanding medium than pliable clay, and better displaying
the artist’s individual genius.
Another common factor is the “life” these figurines had before and during their
last deposition, in the funerary or cultic context where they have been found. traces
of repeated handling, such as weathering of the surface and the addition of marks
or reparations of breakage, are evidence that they were made use of and were given
a part to play in the course of recurrent social or religious events, linked to birth
Standing SteatopygeouS
figure
Southwest Arabia
IV
millennium BC
Private Collection, London, inv. 2131
(cat. 48, detail)
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and death, or the cycle of nature; there is evidence that they were necessary to the
owner(s), even though their meaning and function escape us.
A corollary to the necessity of these figures is the repetition of apparently simi-
lar figures, classifiable into types that answer to similar iconographic codes. each
figure, however, is entirely novel and individual. the cylindrical eye figures and the
slate plaques of iberia; the Cycladic reclining figures of the spedos type; the “eye or
spectacle” idols type, distributed over a vast area encompassing Anatolia, syria and
mesopotamia; the “oxus lady” (the so-called “Bactrian princess”): each of these types
is
known in many examples, up to hundreds in the case of the Asiatic eye idols. the
typology is the same; nevertheless, each figure is unique in its proportions, details
and charisma, through the personal action of the artist and creator. such musical,
poetic variation on one theme introduces the visitor to the aesthetic appreciation of
a selection of iconographic types.
the earliest in the show is the ubiquitous steatopygous type, the so-called mother
goddess, inherited from a long neolithic tradition. nude and sumptuously voluptuous,
she stood alone in the iconography of most of the ancient world until the arrival
of new visions at the end of the fourth millennium. Comparable examples from far
away regions – sardinia, the
Cyclades islands, Cyprus or Arabia – are also present
in the exhibition. the carefully balanced volumes of the different parts of the body,
emphasized here and abbreviated there, result in a dynamic and powerful whole.
With the coming of the age of the first cities, ca. 3300–3000 BC, when an urban revo-
lution took place in most of the old World, with the accompaniment of profound social
and economic mutations, drastic changes occurred in the visual media. metaphysical
concepts continued to be embodied in three-dimensional images, but
the previous
steatopygous ideal was abandoned in favour of entirely new visions. the contrast be-
tween the two phases is particularly striking in the areas where it has been possible to
present examples of the two successive periods, as in sardinia and the Cyclades islands.
two opposed and complementary aesthetic avenues were then opened, one tend-
ing towards abstraction and extreme schematization; the other realistic, tempered
by idealization. Both aesthetics were often adopted simultaneously.
Abstract images, constructed in bold and geometric volumes, are not abstract in
the twentieth-century aesthetic sense. they are the abbreviated vision of the body,
leaving out parts of it, emphasizing others, principally the eyes and the feminine
sexual
triangle, in a visual synecdoche (
