Early Cycladic Sculpture [antikvár]

Foreword If you rank Brancusi or Jean Arp among the great masters of modern sculpture, then inevitably the Cycladic idols must be closer to your heart than anything from the classical Mediterranean. Since the late nineteenth century, when these marble figures first emerged from a sleep of several millennia to engage the modern aesthetic consciousness, modern sculptors have realized a deep affinity with them. The language of the forms, the taste, and the touch seem to spring from the same source. For a knowledgeable specialist, however, an abyss of difference underlies this apparent kinship. Modern sculpture is a curved mirror that reflects the hypersophisticated universe of modern man, while Cycladic idols were intended to satisfy the basic needs of a simple society with limited horizons. The self-conscious forms of modern art are like the changeable surface of a soap bubble, always on the verge of exploding. The well-structured beauty of Cycladic idols must have appealed to their people, but such feelings were certainly subordinated to primordial, nonaes- thetic purposes. Tensions and contradictions inherent to mankind certainly found some expression in Cycladic art, but even to our eyes, ignorant of their original intentions, the idols incarnate a conscious effort to achieve harmony and order. One difference is basic. The language of modern artistic forms contains inevitable references to millennia of traditions, influences, and quotations. Modern society cogitates its art, but the art participates, at the very least, in shaping the ways of thinking. The art of Cycladic idols seems, rather, to have fallen from heaven. Of course, the idols conform to a perennial tradition; but the tradition seems to involve only the substance, the fact of making figures. From very early, if not from his first days, man was creating gods in his own image out of anything that was available, whether carving mammoth ivory that became fossilized or arranging organic material that would perish the next day. Small figures survive from the old Stone Age that perpetuate the omnipresent Mother, the origin of life and source of food, while