So I posted a few photos from my trip to the Worcester Art Museum yesterday. I wanted to take a second and highlight this particular item.
This is probably one of my favorite pieces of art in the whole world. Certainly it's my favorite within the WAM and it's got a Monet among other things.
This is a statuette from Sumeria. Not a lot of details as to who or what the statue represents. The key bit is that it has been dated to somewhere between 3000 and 2500 BCE. So when you look at this statue, you're looking at something that's at least 4500 years old and maybe up to 5000 years old.
It always gives me chills looking at this piece. It's something as old as recorded human history and it's survived all this time. Though all the great upheavals in human history, this statue has endured. Not without a little damage, but it is still relatively intact.
And I always think about the person who carved the figure. Probably just some guy working in/for a temple and they're making this little decorative figurine. They might have expected their work to last quite a while, but I doubt they would've expected 5000 years. They could never have conceived that not only would it last 5000 years, but it would outlast the fall of their civilization and most of the civilizations that succeeded it. They couldn't imagine that their work would be picked up and carried over an ocean they might not have known about to a whole other continent they didn't know about at all to be put on display to be seen by a range of people who may as well be space aliens.
It was just a simple decorative piece of sculpture but it's now an arrow from the distant past. I can't help but feel a little jealous of that unknown artist because I can't imagine anything I've ever made or will make surviving that long. It's a time capsule and a meditation on impermanence all at once.
And that's why it's probably my favorite piece of art in the world.
Thank you for articulating that, you expressed it beautifully. I get a similar feeling when viewing things from the oldest civilizations, and trying to imagine the expanse of time.
ReplyDeleteI should also mention that I get similar chills when looking at mummies and their sarcophagi.
ReplyDeleteYes, this. I had the same feeling standing in the inner sanctum at Newgrange, standing in the place my distant ancestors (probably) once stood, feeling the weight of that history. Tiny bits of my genetics tied me to those people, and I could have no idea how they perceived what I was seeing, but the connection was there nonetheless.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing - amazingly well-said.
For me, it's places like Stonehenge, and Newgrange, older than the Pyramids. Knowing that people people lived there, farmed, built, and made art, longer ago than I can imagine, and their creations are still standing.
ReplyDeleteYes. and for me this is hearing the shofar blown... this, though the recordings do nothing for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jR20-0sy1Y
ReplyDeleteThat's very cool. Thank you for sharing your story.
ReplyDeleteFor me I get that looking at truly ancient writing (and to some extent painted pottery shards). Particularly writing that says something mundane: records of business transactions baked in clay or a cup with a simple geometric pattern used by a commoner. Things that were never intended to last the ages but give me a feeling of true connection with the people that lived then.
ReplyDeleteThere's a fragment of stone in a museum in Taipei that has a few Chinese characters carved on it that has been dated to about the same period as this statue that I could stare at for hours, despite not being able to read it. There's something about the thought that this right here is truly, literally an artifact from the beginning of history. Everything that came before is myth and legend and carefully reconstructed archaeological study, but this tiny chunk of rock has words that someone wrote down thousands of years ago and they're now sitting, climate controlled and fluorescently lit, in a place far stranger than the author could have imagined. But that person is reaching across those years and those changes and talking directly to me -- no intermediary or fragile human memory distorting their message.
Those feels, man. I'm with you.
Thank you for posting this, and now I need to go to the WAM.
That's a great reason and an amazing little piece.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what the artist thought of this particular piece. Was it their best? Was it one of a large number so it didn't get much thought? What were they thinking about when they made it? We're the thoughts profound or mundane?
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