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30 Millennia of Sculpture. Patrick Bade

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30 Millennia of Sculpture - Patrick Bade

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Artists Rights Organisation (IVARO), Dublin, IR

Art © Robert Rauschenberg/Licensed by VAGA-DACS, New York, NY

Art © Estate of Alexander Rodchenko/RAO, Moscow/Licensed by VAGA-DACS, New York, NY

Art © The George and Helen Segal Foundation/Licensed by VAGA-DACS, New York, NY

Art © Estate of David Smith/Licensed by VAGA-DACS, New York, NY

The works illustrated on pages: figs. 851, 893, 904, and 980 have been reproduced by permission of the Henry Moore Foundation

Introduction

From the beginning, sculpture seems to have held a role beyond that of aesthetics. Indeed, the first statues found give the impression of deliberate crudeness and were probably used during mysterious mystical rituals. Prehistoric or primitive peoples, therefore, leave behind them only small quantities of relics, since the statues were most often made of clay, wood or bone, these silent witnesses of their unrecognised civilisations. Zoomorphic representations develop hand-in-hand with the evolution of settlement; evidence of early domestication. As for anthropomorphic forms, they are mainly women, and may have been objects of worship dedicated to the goddess of fertility (fig. 1). Likewise, while the first sculptures found in Egyptian tombs are often the effigies of the deceased, many of them represent deities, Anubis, Hathor and Isis, the necessary and obligatory last rites required for the journey of the deceased and access to the afterlife. The Egyptians appear to have been the first to develop a concept of idealised and well-proportioned human figures and a narrative tradition in painting and relief sculpture, as well as temple architecture incorporating a variety of sculptural elements.

The ancient Greeks, at first an isolated and provincial people among many population groups in the Mediterranean basin, rose to cultural, military and political prominence, but they stood on the shoulders of giants and learned from the traditions of other ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern civilisations. In the sphere of the arts, the Egyptians, in particular, had already developed a culture of idealised, well-proportioned human figures, a narrative tradition in painting and relief sculpture, and temple architecture that incorporated the display of a variety of sculptural elements. Yet the Greeks, in altering the static forms of the Egyptians, sought to craft sculptural figures that expressed life, movement, and a more fundamental and humane sense of moral potential. This development is seen in its early phase in the growing naturalism and subtlety of facial expression in sculpture produced in the Archaic period of the 7th and 6th centuries BCE. Greater freedom of invention appeared during that time in vase painting, but sculptors, restrained by the intractability of stone and by convention, lagged somewhat behind. Reflecting a philosophical search for the ideal, the sculptors aimed at achieving timeless beauty. Just as Greek philosophers considered the nature of the ideal republic, perfect justice or the ideal Good itself, artists brought forth a host of perfected forms. In their subject matter, sculptors often favoured the naked, youthful male body, a reflection of the Greek penchant for athleticism and military prowess, and an indication of the fluid boundaries of their range of sexual appreciation. A widespread and important form was the kouros, a free-standing male figure often placed at tombs in honour of the deceased. Kore, female equivalents of the kouroi, were clothed, following the convention of the time, but equally focused on youth, charm and ideal beauty.

During the 5th century BCE, a mood of great confidence developed among the Athenian people, spawned by their victory over the Persians in 490–479 BCE and by continued Athenian leadership among the collected Greek city-states. Indeed, the Athenian leader Pericles, in his famous oration (431 BCE) for soldiers fallen in the Peloponnesian War, affirmed the superiority of Athens in cultural affairs, stating that their dedication to citizenship, sacrifice and intellect formed the moral core of Athenian greatness. This was a moment of revolution in artistic style. Ever more explicitly based on the ideals of the perfect body, sculptured figures expanded in movement and emotion, but always with a moderating balance of weight, proportion and rhythm. Equally important was the sense of palpable reality; sculpture, rather than being made of unadorned marble or bronze, was often enhanced by details in other media to achieve, in restrained fashion, an extra degree of naturalism. In later eras, a belief in the ‘purity’ of the art of the Greeks led critics to overlook these additions, but the Greeks themselves gave life to their figures by painting key features, such as lips or eyes, onto the marble. In bronze sculpture, the highest and most enduring form of artistic technique, one found such additions as glass eyes and silver eyelashes. Later, Greeks and Greek colonists would make a specialty of coloured terracotta figurines. The realm of ancient Greek sculpture was

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