̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - sculpture

Another India exhibition gives voice to India’s most marginalised communities

sjr81 — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 13:59:14 +0000

Putting on display never-before-seen objects from the Museum’s historic collections, as well as stunning, newly-commissioned works from contemporary Adivasi sculptors, Another India tells the stories behind a remarkable collection of artefacts while confronting head-on the role played by Empire and colonialism in the gathering together of this material. ̽��ֱ��exhibition also features 23 works acquired by its curator Mark Elliott, using a New Collecting Award from Art Fund.

“This is an exhibition about the India – or the many Indias – that most people in the UK don’t know,” said Mark Elliott. “It’s about 100 million people of Indigenous or Adivasi backgrounds who are marginalised by majority populations and the state. It’s an exhibition about identity, diversity and belonging; and the role that objects play in creating a sense of who we are.

“These are issues that affect all of us, particularly now when Identity – who we are, where we come from and where we belong – is being fought over here in Britain. Another important story is how these things came to Cambridge in the first place. Many of the artefacts were acquired through colonialism: sometimes fair exchanges, sometimes gifts, sometimes not. This is about legacies of empire for people in the UK and India.”

Among the objects going on display are a head-hunters skull, pieces of the Taj Mahal and a snake-charmer’s flute. Ten new sculptures, specially commissioned by Elliott after working closely with Adivasi and indigenous artists at workshops across India, will also take pride of place in Another India, thanks to the prestigious New Collecting Award from Art Fund. ̽��ֱ��workshops took place from Gujarat in the west to Nagaland, right on the border with Myanmar (Burma) in the North east.

̽��ֱ��sculptures, the largest of which is 13 feet (3.9m) high and the heaviest of which is almost a tonne, have been shipped from the sub-continent and will sit alongside stunning photographic portraits of Indigenous Indians – from the late 19th century to the 21st. ̽��ֱ��most recent works include photos of Naga men in their 80s and 90s proudly displaying their tattooed faces and bodies.

“We are trying to make this less of a show about dead white guys by living white guys,” added Elliott. “We showed artists across India some of our collections and said ‘here’s the stuff we have from your place, what do you think? What would you make now if we asked you?’ ̽��ֱ��whole brief was to produce new works in response to the collections we have.”

Ruby Hembrom, an Adivasi writer and activist, who has worked closely with Elliott and MAA on the planning of the exhibition, said: “Another India is the only India we Adivasis know. Identity is belonging and we belong to this India. We belong to the objects of this India and belong to the feelings they trigger and emotions they evoke. ̽��ֱ��India that ‘others’ use is the one where we are confronting hatred, racism, sexism, exploitation, brutality, dehumanisation and stereotyping in our everyday lives.

“No matter how much we’ve talked of or engaged in social and political change, very little has changed for us. This is not the India our ancestors sacrificed for, or hoped for us, and this is not the one we want for our descendants.”

Among the historic objects going on display at MAA is a coin necklace from the ‘Criminal Tribes’ settlement in Maharashtra which was collected by Maguerite Milward in 1936. Milward went on expedition to make portrait sculptures of Indigenous and Adivasi men and women. ̽��ֱ��necklaces show how Adivasis whose lives were transformed by colonialism, reappropriated and repurposed coins issued by the British Raj as jewellery, signs of wealth and status.

̽��ֱ��head-taker’s skull meanwhile comes from Nagaland and was worn on the chest by a Konyak warrior who had captured an enemy head. ̽��ֱ��monkey skull, with red, white and black hair woven into the crown, was collected by JH Hutton, Deputy Commissioner of the Naga Hills and later a Professor of Anthropology at Cambridge, who put it in a glass jar and kept it in his office until he retired.

Headhunting was a popular but ambivalent topic of anthropology in the first half of the 20th century. It was an aspect of Naga culture that the British sought to eradicate but found fascinating, and which despite the coming of Christianity, remains a hugely important part of Naga identity today.

“Another India is talking about a very different India to most people’s expectations in Britain and possibly India too,” said Elliott. “We didn’t want to do a show about Bollywood, saris and curry, but instead highlight a massive body of marginalised people – numbering nearly twice the population of the UK – who to a great extent aren’t seen as having culture, heritage and history of their own.”

Many of the objects going on display – whittled down from the 10,000 plus Indian objects in MAA’s collections – are the product of an extraordinary industry of exploration, survey and classification whose advance started with the East India Company and continued under the Crown until independence in 1947.

By the mid-19th century, scholars and administrators were working through masses of linguistic, economic, ethnographic and criminological data to decode the demography of India, defining groups of people as distinctive on the basis of shared language, customs, religious belief and ‘racial’ characteristics.

By the end of that century, such groupings had been consolidated into a fundamental distinction between ‘castes’ and ‘tribes’. Tribes were identified as groups of people who were separated geographically, socially or both from ‘mainstream’ caste society. Often living in more isolated territories away from large population centres such as hill and forest regions. These groups were defined first as being outside the caste system but furthermore as ethnically or culturally distinct, often being described as ‘primitive’.

While the constitution of India identifies these groups as Scheduled Tribes or ‘Tribal’, this term is widely seen as derogatory with connotations of primitivism, backwardness and even savagery. In truth, all the categories are remarkably slippery. Indigenous, Adivasi and Tribal identities are still fiercely contested.

“ ̽��ֱ��objects on display resist pigeonholing, just as people do,” added Elliott. “ ̽��ֱ��identities presented here are ambiguous and contested. But this is not just an historical exhibition, the artefacts and the stories they tell are the stories of communities who are living, struggling and thriving today.

“Putting together this exhibition has brought me and the museum into contact with extraordinary people: scholars, activists and artists and more – from the tribes, groups and communities that we are incredibly proud to represent here in Cambridge.”

Another India is the centrepiece of the ̽��ֱ��’s wider celebrations entitled India Unboxed. To mark the UK-India Year of Culture 2017, the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Museums and Botanic Garden, are hosting a shared season on the theme of India with a programme of exhibitions, events, digital encounters, discussions, installations and more within the museums and the city of Cambridge. Rooted in the Cambridge collections, the programme will explore themes of identity and connectivity for audiences in both the UK and India.

For further information, visit the Another India website.

Hundreds of objects which tell the story of 100 million of India’s most marginalised citizens – its Indigenous and Adivasi people – are to go on display for the first time in a ground-breaking exhibition at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) from today.

We didn’t want to do a show about Bollywood, saris and curry, but instead highlight a massive body of marginalised people.

Mark Elliott

A head-hunter's skull from Nagaland which was worn on the chest of a Konyak warrior who had captured an enemy head.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike

A Handful of Objects

sjr81 — Wed, 23 Mar 2016 16:25:53 +0000

A Handful of Objects, developed in conjunction with teachers and young people, aims to introduce the objects to new audiences while Kettle’s Yard is closed as part of a multi-million pound redevelopment that will transform its gallery spaces and house a new, four-floor education wing and cafe.

̽��ֱ��objects range from paintings and ceramics to natural objects displayed within the Kettle’s Yard house.

̽��ֱ��five objects are:

‘Red Stone Dancer’ a sculpture by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska,
‘Five Ships – Mount’s Bay’ a painting by Alfred Wallis,
‘March 1962 (Argos)’ a painting by Ben Nicholson,
‘Bowl (aka Wave/Shiny White)’ by Lucie Rie
‘Spiral of Stones’ an arrangement of pebbles by Kettle’s Yard founder Jim Ede.

Lucy Wheeler, Assistant Education Officer at Kettle’s Yard, said: "A Handful of Objects showcases five exceptional works from the Kettle's Yard collection. ̽��ֱ��beauty and importance of the objects is illustrated through high quality images, films and archive material. I hope visitors find the resource easy and enjoyable to use and hope they will add their thoughts online to create a wider discussion about this rich collection.”

Kettle’s Yard hopes to add more objects to A Handful of Objects in the future, making other famous objects from its collection of 1,200 objects.

A Handful of Objects allows viewers to experience artworks close up through high-quality images and the option to zoom-in, as well as 360-degree carousels to see sculptures and ceramics in the round. ̽��ֱ��process of making the artworks is also examined through sound clips, sketchbooks and images of the artist at work.

Throughout the resource there are options to share information through Facebook and Twitter – as well as inviting people’s thoughts and comments about the artworks themselves.

Robyn Llewellyn, Head of Heritage Lottery Fund East of England, who funded the work, said: “We are delighted that, thanks to National Lottery players, we have been able to fund this innovative new resource that will allow many more people to explore objects from the collection at Kettle’s Yard and learn about their fascinating histories.”

Kettle’s Yard is the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s modern and contemporary art gallery. Kettle’s Yard is a beautiful house with a remarkable collection of modern art and a gallery that hosts modern and contemporary art exhibitions.

Five key objects from the world-class collections at Kettle’s Yard have been made available online to view through film, sound, photographs and 360 degree views.

A Handful of Objects showcases exceptional works from the Kettle's Yard collection.

Lucy Wheeler

Alfred Wallis Film

Kettle's Yard

Detail from Five Ships - Mounts Bay (1928) by Alfred Wallis

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike

Terme Boxer makes an entrance at the Museum of Classical Archaeology

sjr81 — Sat, 19 Dec 2015 00:47:20 +0000

Beginning life as a bright-white plaster cast, the Terme Boxer has been recently restored by former Fitzwilliam Museum technician Bob Bourne; his transformation from chalky whiteness to burnished bronze giving visitors the chance to see a magnificent replica of Hellenistic Greek sculpture in close detail.

̽��ֱ��original Terme Boxer is one of the finest examples of bronze-cast sculpture to have survived from the ancient world. Found in 1885 on the south side of the Quirinal Hill in Rome, where it had been carefully deposited, it is believed to be a Hellenistic original, but could date to any time between the fourth and first centuries BCE.

Sitting on a rock, this bearded fighter rests his weary body after a bout of boxing. Ancient boxing was a brutal sport. He wears fur-lined gloves to protect his hands, but has still taken a battering. Wounds cut into his skin and bruises swell from beneath the surface; his broken nose, cauliflower ears and hardened muscles are evidence of a long career. ̽��ֱ��impact of this rare example of a fully preserved bronze is not just realistic, but visceral.

Dr Susanne Turner, Curator at the Museum of Classical Archaeology, said: “ ̽��ֱ��Boxer is a wonderful addition to our atmospheric cast gallery. It's not just a beautiful sculpture, it's also a real reminder of the sheer breadth of classical sculpture, which ranges beyond the familiar idealised youths and naked Aphrodites to encompass hyperbolic Hercules, babies squashing geese and, indeed, battle-worn boxers who look like they've seen better days.”

Most bronzes have been lost to us, so much more easily melted down and transformed into new objects than their marble and stone counterparts. So special is the original that it is currently one of the star pieces in the exhibition Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World at the J.P. Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

̽��ֱ��Museum of Classical Archaeology is open 10am-5pm on weekdays and 10am-1pm on Saturdays during ̽��ֱ�� term-time.

A heavyweight addition has joined the ranks at the Museum of Classical Archaeology after a cast of the Terme Boxer was placed on display.

It's not just a beautiful sculpture, it's also a real reminder of the sheer breadth of classical sculpture.

Susanne Turner

Bronzing the Terme Boxer

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

How classical sculpture helped to set impossible standards of beauty

amb206 — Sat, 18 Jul 2015 09:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��efforts we make to shape our bodies to meet ideals border on the extreme. Earlier this summer advertisers of weight loss products enraged thousands of London tube-goers by asking: Are you body beach ready? ̽��ֱ��accompanying image showed a pitifully thin model in a tiny bikini. A recent survey points to a six-fold upsurge in the number of men using anabolic steroids, widely known to have damaging effects, to boost their muscles in the quest for a body of a Greek god.

Where do ideas about beautiful bodies come from? In her recent book, Dr Kate Nichols, a researcher at CRASSH, explores the connections between beauty and morality, nudity and nakedness through the prism of public responses to the classical sculpture brought to the masses by the Crystal Palace at Sydenham. In 1854 these plaster cast representations of gods and heroes, many of them without a scrap of clothing, ignited fierce arguments that continue to trickle into contemporary discussions about bodies and perfection, what’s appropriate and what’s not.

Nichols also looks at the debate about obscenity that arose specifically from displays of naked male sculpture at the Crystal Palace. To modern eyes, classical sculpture is the height of respectability, embodying tradition and (as the British Museum titled its recent blockbuster show) ‘defining beauty’. But this wasn’t always the case.

“Nude male sculptures had been on display in the British Museum since the early 1800s, with no complaints. ̽��ֱ��Crystal Palace attracted more than twice as many visitors as the British Museum – some 2 million each year, and from a truly mass audience of all social classes. For many, the idea of nudity being displayed to such mass audiences was profoundly shocking,” says Nichols.

On 8 May 1854, the Times published a letter addressed to the directors of the Crystal Palace. Designed for the Great Exhibition of 1851, the palace had been moved from Hyde Park to the south London suburb of Sydenham. Here, the building had been reassembled to house an exhibition which aimed to bring art and culture to the masses. ̽��ֱ��objects on display were arranged, in a series of giant ‘courts’, to tell the story of civilisation through art and architecture.

Signed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and several bishops, the petition asked that the plaster casts of nude male statues on show in the Greek Court be fitted with the ‘usual leaf’ to reflect the way in which certain parts of the body are covered in daily life. ̽��ֱ��‘usual leaf’ is a rather endearing reference to the fig leaves which are frequently employed to preserve the modesty of artistic representations of the male human figure.

“From the 16th century onwards, various Popes had insisted on deploying fig leaves to cover the genitals of male sculptures on display in public spaces in Italy. In 16th-century Florence, Michelangelo’s David was a particular point of contention,” says Nichols.

Reactions to the letter in the Times were mixed. ̽��ֱ��newspaper itself scoffed at the need to recreate the “earliest fashions of paradise” – but the bishops got their way. A specialist company was commissioned to make plaster fig leaves to cover the genitals of a number of male statues.

̽��ֱ��Greek gods and heroes who found their genitals disappearing beneath pieces of foliage included the bulgingly muscular Farnese Hercules, the contorted figures of Laocoon and his sons, and the svelte Apollo Belvedere. “ ̽��ֱ��casts of all three had been made from celebrated sculptures housed in Italy and were key points of reference for the educated elite taking the Grand Tour in order to broaden their aesthetic horizons,” says Nichols.

" ̽��ֱ��request from the Archbishop and his supporters was a thinly veiled way of saying that working-class visitors, and those untutored in classical art, would be unable to appreciate on a suitably cerebral level, the purity and beauty of classical sculpture. It’s an admission that you need to absorb a set of cultural techniques in order to look at art works – it’s not innate.”

̽��ֱ��heated discussion about what we might today call the ‘appropriateness’ of nude sculpture was embedded in questions that provoked passionate feelings in Victorian society. ̽��ֱ��Victorian public was not familiar with art works showing undressed bodies. ̽��ֱ��Crystal Palace’s exhibition of the human form in plaster to a mass audience coincided with a growing concern with sexual morality.

“In the 1850s, activists were raising awareness of the problems associated with prostitution and discussing methods to control it. ̽��ֱ��year 1857 saw the passing of acts on marriage, divorce, and obscene publications, as state regulation of sexual conduct increased,” says Nichols. ” ̽��ֱ��tensions between what was beautiful, and should be admired, and what was obscene, and should be hidden from family viewing, threw up divides – especially when it came to male nudes.”

Victorian Britain was entrenched in biblical teaching. ̽��ֱ��presence at Sydenham of nude statues, accessible to all classes and all ages, provoked a flurry of vociferous pamphlets from some religious groups. Sensational stories (true and fabricated) were recorded: in 1862 Susan Flood, a young member of the Plymouth Brethren, was apparently so affronted by the nude ‘pagans’ displayed in the Crystal Palace that she smashed several plaster casts with her parasol.

It would be wrong, however, to presume that Victorian society was universally stuffy and prudish. “ ̽��ֱ��Crystal Palace was, in some ways, a kind of theme park where people could have fun – there are fabulous photographs of Victorian women on water flumes in its grounds – but it was also the product of a mission to educate the masses," says Nichols.

"I’m fascinated by the ways in which unclothed Greek and Roman sculpture gave rise to two opposing viewpoints – on one hand, as a threat to morality and, on the other hand, as a vehicle for improving and uplifting the minds of visitors.”

̽��ֱ��designer Owen Jones was responsible for selecting the classical sculpture for the Greek and Roman Courts. According to the Times, Jones reacted with ‘horror’ when the Palace directorate capitulated to the demands of the bishops and peers. He had even suggested that money spent at Sydenham "would save many thousands more from being spent on building gaols".

Jones was backed up by other commentators who saw the Crystal Palace contributing to the well-established association between viewing art and elevated moral conduct.

“These dialogues show how art was considered to be a powerful force for good. Belief in the improving power of art was the impetus for the foundation of many galleries in industrial cities. ̽��ֱ��Museums Act of 1845 enabled towns to levy local taxes to fund museums, on the grounds that culture was morally enhancing, and it was on this basis that galleries were founded in towns like Manchester, Birmingham, Blackburn and Leeds,” says Nichols.

Nichols’ exploration of responses to representations of the human figure touches on deep-seated notions about the body beautiful – and how idealised body shapes took root in public consciousness with Greek statues in particular setting the parameters for (impossible) perfection.

She reveals that the later 19th-century cult of body building, promoted by Eugen Sandow, took its inspiration from the athletic perfection of Greek figures with their honed-and-toned limbs and impressive six-packs, and the intellectual and moral prowess associated with ancient Greece. It was at the Crystal Palace that Sandow opened his first suburban ‘School of Physical Culture’ for men, women and children in 1899.

“ ̽��ֱ��classically-inspired notion of beauty is emphatically one of idealised white European bodies. ̽��ֱ��Crystal Palace had a ‘natural history department’, featuring tableaux of models of indigenous peoples from all over the world – some of which were plaster casts of living people,” says Nichols.

“Europeans were notably absent from these displays, and several commentators claimed that Europeans were already represented by the Greek sculptures on show as objects of ‘fine art’, rather than ‘natural history’. This reinforced the racist hierarchy in which white Europeans epitomised beauty and ‘civilisation’, while non-Europeans represented savagery and ‘aesthetic under development’.”

Many were troubled, however, by the fact that both sets of sculptures were undressed. Much of the anxiety felt by the educated elite, on behalf of the uneducated masses who were untutored in art appreciation, turned on the fine distinction between dangerous naked and respectable nude – a boundary which is in many ways artificial, but required – and indeed still requires – constant policing.

“I’m interested in the ways in which the unclothed body in art gained respectability and also in ways that gender differences are played out in responses to male and female bodies in art. Campaigners at the Crystal Palace focused primarily on unclothed male bodies. ̽��ֱ��sculptures of, for example, Venus, were already deemed ‘nude’ and respectable. This disparity continues today – an exhibition of male nudes in Vienna in 2012 caused an outrage – whereas female nudes are ubiquitous and generally unquestioned, safely subsumed into the art historical category of the nude,” says Nichols.

” ̽��ֱ��idea that female bodies are acceptable objects for public scrutiny whereas male ones are dangerous and disruptive says a great deal about the relative power of men and women. ̽��ֱ��Crystal Palace debate shows that classical sculpture remained on the borders of respectability in the 1850s, when the public was less familiar with the nude-as-art. ̽��ֱ��Palace’s contribution to the history of the category ‘nude’ lies in its dissemination of the unclothed male form, exhibited as ‘art’, to a wide range of people. But with varying degrees of success as the letter from the Bishops suggests.”

̽��ֱ��link between bodily beauty and classical sculpture is remarkably enduring. In its June 2015 issue, the glossy magazine Tatler asks: How posh is your body? Its satirical answers in relation to the upper-class female body (feet should be gracefully small, limbs honed but not muscled) decree that the neck should be “long, straight and alabaster” – a reference to the gleaming white materials of classical statuary. ̽��ֱ��feet of posh men should be long and elegant, speaking “of authority, and ruling, and staking out the boundaries of the Empire”.

“Ideas and ideals surrounding ‘the body beautiful’ based on classical sculpture are constantly repeated and reinforced in our culture. But there’s often little thought about where such ideas may have their origins. Art historical and archaeological discussions about the beauty of classical statuary developed in the contexts of imperialism, ‘scientific’ racism, and eugenics, and often made active contributions to these discourses. ̽��ֱ��split between the supposedly ‘European’ bodies of Greek sculpture in the ‘fine arts’ courts, and the non-European bodies in the ‘natural history department’ at the Crystal Palace is just one example” says Nichols.

Tatler connects looking classical with ‘the Empire’ and the upper classes – and perhaps implicitly with ‘good breeding’ or at least good social standing. Its feature is tongue-in-cheek and pokes fun at the ruddy faces of toffs who’ve overdone the great outdoors. But, as Nichols adds: “It’s important to think about who’s excluded from these normative and frankly racist definitions of beauty, given credence by their connections to ‘the classical’.”

Greece and Rome at the Crystal Palace: Classical Sculpture and Modern Britain, 1854-1936 by Kate Nichols is published by Oxford ̽��ֱ�� Press.

Inset images: ̽��ֱ��Crystal Palace at Sydenham c.1910 (Wikimedia Commons); Farnese Hercules, Roman marble version (early 3rd century CE) of a Greek sculpture (4th century CE) (Wikimedia Commons); Souvenir photograph of body building entrepreneur Eugen Sandow posing as 'Farnese Hercules' (with fig leaf) c.1893 (Wikimedia Commons).

What do we mean when we say that someone has ‘classical’ good looks? Are male nudes in art appropriate viewing for family audiences? In looking at the arguments ignited by the opening, in 1854, of an exhibition of Greek and Roman statuary, Dr Kate Nichols explores the ways in which notions of beauty, morality and gender are intertwined.

It’s important to think about who’s excluded from these normative and frankly racist definitions of beauty, given credence by their connections to ‘the classical’

Kate Nichols

An over-dressed Victorian man looking at the nude Venus de Milo.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Gaudier-Brzeska show marks centenary of his death

sjr81 — Thu, 05 Mar 2015 11:48:43 +0000

Gaudier-Brzeska moved permanently to London in January 1911. He made a significant contribution to the development of modern sculpture as one of the key members of the Vorticist movement and by influencing a later generation of sculptors.

His precocious artistic talent was cut short by his death at the age of 23 while fighting for the French army in Neuville St Vaast, France, in 1915. As Ezra Pound wrote in 1916: ‘A great spirit has been among us, and a great artist is gone’.

̽��ֱ��exhibition, NEW RHYTHMS Henri Gaudier-Brzeska: Art Dance and Movement in London 1911-1915, is the first to explore the artist’s engagement with dance and movement. New Rhythms brings together sculpture, drawing, photography, film, and archive material, combining the strengths of Kettle’s Yard’s sculpture and drawing collections with important loans from national and international institutions.

̽��ֱ��exhibition includes work by Gaudier-Brzeska’s contemporaries David Bomberg, Jacob Epstein, Percy Wyndham Lewis, William Roberts, Auguste Rodin, Helen Saunders and others who engaged with the subject of dance.

Kettle’s Yard holds one of the largest collections of sculptures and drawings by Gaudier-Brzeska, acquired by the creator of Kettle’s Yard, Jim Ede in 1929. Ede went on to write the first seminal biography of Gaudier- Brzeska ‘Savage Messiah’ in 1930, using the letters that were exchanged between Gaudier-Brzeska and his partner Sophie Brzeska.

New Rhythms takes as its starting point Gaudier‐ Brzeska’s two contrasting sculptures Red Stone Dancer and Dancer. ̽��ֱ��exhibition looks in detail at the inspirations for the two sculptures of 1913, using them as studies for a wider exploration of the artist’s interests in the subject and the cultural milieu in which he was working.

For example, his engagement with the dynamic performances of the Ballets Russes is brought to the fore through his bronze Firebird (1912). As well as exploring dance, New Rhythms will investigate the artist’s wider fascination with motion, the physical dynamism of bodily movement, and wrestling.

̽��ֱ��new dance trends that exploded onto pre‐war London stages and screens such as Apache dance from Paris and Tango, and performances by the Ballets Russes, will be represented through photographs, printed sources and film.

̽��ֱ��show culminates by asking how Gaudier‐Brzeska’s dancers can inspire new rhythms now, through a contemporary dance and music commission. ̽��ֱ��work by Malgorzata Dzierzon, performed to new music commissioned from emerging composer Kate Whitley, will feature in the exhibition through film.

This will be the final exhibition at Kettle’s Yard before closing for a major development of the site and offers a chance for visitors to enjoy the house and an exhibition intimately linked to it and the permanent collection. It closes on June 21, 2015.

For more about the development plans and off site activity visit www.kettlesyard.co.uk.

̽��ֱ��exhibition will tour with selected works to Harewood House, Leeds, from 11 July to 1 November 2015 and is supported by the Henry Moore Foundation.

From March 17, Kettle’s Yard will present a major exhibition to mark the centenary of the death in the First World War of the French-born sculptor and draughtsman Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891-1915).

A great spirit has been among us, and a great artist is gone.

Ezra Pound

Kettle's Yard

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Black & White poster (aka Boxers), 1911

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page. For image rights, please see the credits associated with each individual image.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike

Island of broken figurines

lw355 — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 09:05:36 +0000

On a June morning in 1963, Colin Renfrew stepped from a caïque boat onto the scrub-covered Aegean island of Keros on the basis of a tip-off. In search of material for his graduate studies, the young Cambridge graduate had been intrigued by rumours of a recent looting of the almost uninhabited island relayed to him by a Greek archaeologist.

Sure enough, evidence of looting abounded. As he reported back to the Greek Archaeological Service, on whose permit he had been surveying the Greek Cycladic islands, smashed marble statues and bowls and broken pottery lay scattered over the hillside.

Despite the destruction, it was clear that the fragments were Early Cycladic, an interesting find in itself. In fact, as he was to discover, he had also stumbled upon the first evidence of an astonishing Bronze Age ritual.

Broken bodies

A year later, the Greek Archaeological Service carried out a major recovery, finding fragments of a type of sculpture found previously mainly in Cycladic Bronze Age graves. ̽��ֱ��simplicity of these eerily beautiful figurines, with their folded arms, sloping feet and featureless faces, are said to have inspired Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore.

On Keros, however, apart from a single intact figurine, all others were broken. There were ‘body parts’ in their hundreds – an elongated foot, a single breast, a folded arm, a pair of thighs, a face – all jumbled together with broken bowls and pots.

When the ‘Keros Hoard’, a collection widely believed to be part of the looted material, appeared on the antiquities market in the 1970s and all the fragments were also broken, the mystery deepened. Was the site on Keros an ancient burial ground that, perhaps in haste, had been destroyed by looters, or was the site something else entirely?

A special deposit

A new opportunity to investigate came in 1987, when Renfrew, by then a Professor in the Department of Archaeology, and two Greek archaeologists were permitted to excavate and survey the looted area, which they called Special Deposit North. “We recovered great quantities of broken material and yet as we excavated more we found no indications of tombs,” said Professor Renfrew.

Not only were the fragments not grave goods but the first of several astonishing features came to light, as Professor Renfrew explained: “As I studied the marble materials for publication, I realised that nearly all of the breakages seemed to be ancient and not the result of the looting. They had been deliberately broken before burial.”

“Although this excavation didn’t resolve the puzzle, it did emphasise how rich the site was and how puzzling.” ̽��ֱ��archaeologists felt sure that more light would be shed by the investigation both of an area a few hundred metres further south that also seemed to be a Special Deposit and of the tiny steep-sided islet of Dhaskalio that lay 80 metres offshore from Keros.

Return to Keros

It was another two decades before Professor Renfrew was able to return, this time for three seasons of excavation, ending in 2008, and with an international team of almost 30 experts. ̽��ֱ��post-excavation analyses of the finds are now nearing conclusion.

In the first year, the Cambridge–Keros project team excavated at the southern site and confirmed the presence of another Special Deposit, but this time undisturbed by looters. Many of the materials were bundled together in small pits up to two metres in diameter. ̽��ֱ��breakages were old and deliberate. Moreover, the absence of marble chips, expected in the case of breakages on the spot, showed the fragments had been broken elsewhere. As later radiocarbon dating confirmed, they had been deposited over a 500-year period from 2800 BC to 2300 BC.

“But the strangest finding of all was that hardly any of the fragments of the 500-odd figurines and 2,500 marble vessels joined together,” said Professor Renfrew. “This was a very interesting discovery. ̽��ֱ��only conclusion we could come to was that these special materials were broken on other islands and single pieces of each figurine, bowl or pot were brought by generations of Cycladic islanders to Keros.”

Bronze Age guesthouse?

Meanwhile, across the short stretch of water to Dhaskalio, a very different picture was emerging. From the outset, the islet showed evidence of having been a major Bronze Age stronghold with structures built on carefully prepared terraces circling a summit, on which a large hall was erected. ̽��ֱ��settlement dates from around the time of the Special Deposits, and then continued to operate before being abandoned around 2200 BC.

Examination of its geology showed that the beautifully regular walling of the settlement was imported marble rather than the flaky local limestone found on Keros. Remarkably, in the same era that the pyramids were being built and Stonehenge was being erected, Cycladic islanders were shipping large quantities of building materials, probably by raft, over considerable distances to build Dhaskalio.

Here, too, there were puzzling finds: a stash of about 500 egg-shaped pebbles at the summit and stone discs found everywhere across the settlement. And, although there was evidence that the olive and vine were well known to the inhabitants of Dhaskalio, the terrain there and on Keros could never have supported the large population the scale of the site implies, suggesting that food also was imported.

One answer is to hypothesise a largely transient population. Several strands make this plausible, as Dr Michael Boyd, who is collating the results of the post-excavation analyses, explained: “Archaeobotanical evidence implies that the site was not intensively occupied year-round, and the imported pottery and materials suggest the possibility of groups coming seasonally from elsewhere.”

“A possible attractor to the site,” he added, “would of course be the Special Deposit on the immediately opposite shore.” In fact, team geologists believe that Dhaskalio and Keros were probably one land mass during the Early Bronze Age and that tectonic movement and rising sea levels created the divide.

Sanctuary

As the team members conclude their analyses of the finds, all indications point towards Keros having been a major ritual centre of the Cycladic civilisation. “We believe that the breaking of the statues and other goods was a ritual and that Keros was chosen as a sanctuary to preserve the effects,” said Professor Renfrew.

He speculates that the objects were used repeatedly in rituals in the home islands, perhaps carried in ritual processions in much the same way that icons are paraded today in Greek villages: “They had a use-life, probably being painted and repainted from year to year. Perhaps the convention was that when a figure had reached the end of its use-life, it could not simply be thrown away or used conventionally, it needed to be desanctified in an elaborate process.”

“Strangely,” he added, “there seems to have been some obligation to bring a piece of the broken figure and deposit it on what must have been the sacred island of Keros, possibly staying a few days on Dhaskalio while the ceremony was completed.” ̽��ֱ��missing pieces of the statues, bowls and pottery have never been located on other islands, and Professor Renfrew wonders if they were thrown into the sea during transit and have long since disintegrated.

This wouldn’t be the first time a sanctuary has been identified in the Greek islands - Delphi, Olympia and Delos, for instance – but it would be the earliest by about 2,000 years and certainly the most mysterious.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge–Keros project was authorised by the Greek Archaeological Service and supported by the British School at Athens, with funding from the Institute for Aegean Prehistory, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Society of Antiquaries of London, Stavros Niarchos Foundation, British Academy, Leventis Foundation and Leverhulme Trust. For more information, please visit

https://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/current-projects/keros-project

Why were Bronze Age figurines smashed, transported and buried in shallow pits on the Aegean island of Keros? New research sheds light on a 4,500-year-old mystery.

I realised that nearly all of the breakages seemed to be ancient and not the result of the looting. For some reason, all of the objects had been deliberately broken before burial.

Professor Colin Renfrew

Cambridge-Keros Project

Fragments of figurines found on Keros

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page.

Yes