Not Sweating the Small Stuff

Cycladic Sculpture

Standing Female Figure, c 2600–2400 B.C. Early Cycladic II Period

Settled at least as early as the C6 millenium BC, the Cyclades are a group of around 30 islands in the Aegean Sea and to the south-east of the Greek mainland, so called from the word 'kyklos' ('circle') because they formed this shape around the sacred island of Delos, with its holiest Temple of Appolo.


The culture that developed in these islands is best known to me through the Parian marble figures, usually female, made there between for 3200 and 2300 BC.

Head from the Figure of a woman -Spedos Type, Early Cycladic II Keros Culture (2700 BC–2300 BC), Le Louvre

Female Figure - Early Aegean, Cycladic, Bronze Age, Early Cycladic II-III Period (c2300–2000 BC)

Marble Figure of Chalandriani Type (2400-2200 BC)

Apart from their obvious beauty, I think what initially captured my imagination was the similarity of these sculptures to some abstract modern works, like some of Constantine Brancusi.

Brancusi 'Sleeping Muse' (1909-10) Smithsonian Institution

Brancusi 'Torso of a Young Girl' (1922) Fogg Art Museum

The Cycladic sculptures show traces of having been originally painted. Scientific analysis reveals mineral-based pigments - for example, blue (azurite) and red (iron ore or cinnabar). As well as facial features, clothing, tatoos and jewelry were indicted. As in these mocked up (later) Archaic marble figures.


Which now puts my beloved Cycladic marbles somewhere in the zone between comic books and drag! I want my plain white abstract images back - with absolutely no paint-applique 'colorful' added realism!

But I guess I'll simply have to develop a new aesthetic, one more in line with the evidence of the actuality of third and fourth millenuim Greece. But it's going to be a tough job !!!