Transcript
OUTLINE FOR AEGEAN ART OF THE BRONZE AGE
Historical background:
While the early advanced civilizations of Mesopotamia in the Near East and Egypt in the northeastern corner of Africa were creating remarkable artistic achievements during the third millenium BCE, the third great civilization of the eastern Mediterranean was arising in that sea’s northeastern arm, the Aegean. Archaeological evidence (i.e. the material remains of this culture) indicates that during the third millennium BCE, all the peoples inhabiting the Aegean Sea littoral shared regional variations of a common culture, suggesting both a high degree of maritime communication, and that these people were probably of the same linguistic/ethnic group. Though these people lived in the land that would become Greece, they do not seem to have spoken the Greek language.
At roughly 2000 BCE, the transition from the Early to the Middle Bronze Age, the archaeological evidence signals the often violent arrival of a new group, early Greek-speaking peoples. Though much of the earlier non-Greek population seems to have amalgamated with the Greek newcomers, many also fled as refugees to Crete, the large island closing off the bottom of the Aegean. Beginning around 2000 BCE, this condensed pre-Greek population on Crete created a strikingly original palatial civilization called Minoan (after the legendary king Minos) by modern art historians and archaeologists. Its artistic tradition at its best displays a lyrical spiritualism, a desire to capture the emotional essence of life. This essential feature of Minoan Art will become an equally essential feature of Greek art and eventually of all “high art” in the Western tradition.
During the two Palatial periods (early 2000-1700 BCE, later 1700-1400 BCE) Minoan art becomes progressively naturalistic. A good example is the *lentoid flask decorated with an octopus and other forms of marine life and dating to ca. 1500-1450 BCE (Janson fig. 4.12). The motif, placed on the diagonal to emphasize torsion and movement, is probably derived from the frescoed wall paintings of contemporary palaces, and it is worth noting that no attempt is made to have the painted decoration delineate the various parts of the vase; indeed, the entire body of the vase is used as the figure field, like a wall. The same effects and characteristics appear in low relief on the *Harvesters Vase, the preserved upper half of an ostrich egg-shaped rhyton of black steatite dating to ca. 1650-1450 BCE (Janson fig. 4.13 and website images). The harvesters, first appearing on the left shoulder of the vessel, move out towards the viewer. On reaching the point of the vase closest to the viewer, they turn away and disappear around the right shoulder, their movement emphasizing the architectonics of the vase, its three-dimensional form as do their diagonally held pitchforks. Since the figures in the background are just as large as those in the foreground, there is no perspective, an accurate depiction of three-dimensional space, but the overlapping harvesters, sometimes three and four deep, create a convincing sense of space while simultaneously maintaining the necessary emphasis on the surface and architectonics of the structure they decorate. The scene has none of the expository abstractions used in Egyptian art; even the leader is only distinguished by his hair style, staff and robe. Sometimes the naturalism is astounding, as in the sistrum player, and reveals a profound knowledge of the structure and workings of the human body. Since the scene decorates a religious object, the activity depicted must have religious significance. Nevertheless, and unlike Egyptian art, the event or activity depicted seems to modern eyes of almost secondary importance. The harvesters, mouths agape as they belt out a work song, appear full of joy and a lust for life. In Western culture, it is the depiction of believable human emotion that separates “high art” from decorative art. Its earliest examples are Minoan.
Though enormous in scale and complexity, Minoan palaces, like the Minoan approach to ceramic decoration, are conceptually non-monumental in that no single, unified plan was ever imposed on these structures. The core of each Minoan palace is an open space, a courtyard with religious as well as civic functions. The early palaces seem to have grown up around these courtyards as isolated clumps of buildings called insulae (a Latin word meaning islands) that were eventually joined together through the expansions and enlargements demanded by the ever increasing complexity of the palatial society. Thus these structures tended to grow in a non-monumentally conceived, almost haphazard manner called agglutinative. Though all Minoan palaces contained the same architectural features, the largest and best-preserved is that at *Knossos (Janson figs. 4.4, 4.5, 4.6 and website images). Among the more successful architectural innovations found in these palaces is the use of interior stairwells (Janson fig. 4.6 and website images) which did triple duty, serving also as light wells and air shafts for interior rooms in these multi-level structures. The architectural system used in the building is, of course, post and lintel, and was often used to open up exterior walls in a thoroughly modern manner reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright (website images). Though they taper in the opposite direction, from top to bottom, the columns, originally of wood (and thus the presence of a stone base at the bottom of the shaft), provide the basic elements (shaft, necking ring, echinus, and abacus) of the doric order column used in Greek architecture of the historical period, and are called protodoric columns. Another feature of these Minoan palaces worth noting is that none of them is surrounded by defensive walls. Since Greek mythology speaks of a Minoan thalassocracy, “rule of the sea,” it seems logical to conclude that Minoan rulers, protected by their navy, were unconcerned about the possibility of foreign invasion. The lack of defensive walls also indicates that Minoan rulers were equally unconcerned about internal threats. Images in Minoan Art, such as that on the previously discussed Harvesters Vase, often suggest that theirs was a remarkably peaceful and harmonious society. It should be kept in mind, however, that Minoan Art was produced for an aristocracy, and depicting its peasantry as happy and contented is always in the interests of the ruling class.
Wall paintings in true buon fresco, a technique of applying water base paints to the wet plaster of walls so that the paint bonds with and becomes part of that plaster are another medium for which Minoan Art is justly famed. A good example is entitled the Blue Roller Bird fresco dating perhaps to ca. 1750 BCE. in the Early Palace phase (website image). Typically (and unlike the contemporary Egyptian painter) the Minoan artist is completely unconcerned with the bird’s species, only the essence of what a bird is, and even uses abstract colors such as the plant with the blue stalks and blue leaves. The brush work is also rapid and fluid, necessitated by the fact that the paint had to be applied quickly to plaster that had just the right degree of wetness.
Compared to Minoan Crete, the early Greek speaking peoples who had arrived in the Balkan peninsula around 2000 BCE. were at a much lower level of civilization for the first 400 years of their cultural existence. Suddenly, around 1600 BCE., there is a great explosion of wealth on Mainland Greece as evidenced by the shaft grave circles at Mycenae (Janson figs. 4.27 and 4.28) the citadel site after which the entire Greek culture of the Late Bronze Age takes its name, Mycenaean. Though influences from the various cultures of the eastern Mediterranean are present in the objects found in the shaft graves, the civilizing and artistic influences of Minoan Crete are dominant, but often presented with geometric clarity and in a monumental manner typical of the Mainland and Greek art in general, regardless of period or cultural phase. A good example appears in the decoration of a so-called stirrup vase, this one date to the Late Bronze Age, ca. 1150 BCE (website image). Here the Minoan motif of the octopus has been applied in a non-Minoan manner. The creature has clearly been abstracted, and, rather than ooze diagonally around the vase in an asymmetrical but naturalistic manner, this Mycenaean version has stiff, symmetrically arranged tentacles, exactly the same on each side, and is vertically placed in the center of the vase’s body, enhancing the vase’s shape in a static, symmetrical fashion. In addition, and also unlike Minoan vases, horizontal lines of paint are used to indicate the vase’s various structural components.
The most famous example of this static, monumental approach to decoration can be seen in the thin limestone relief that fills the relieving triangle formed by a corbeled arch in the Cyclopean fortress wall above the famous *Lion Gate, the main entrance into the citadel at Mycenae, ca. 1300-1250 BCE (Janson fig. 4.22 and website images). The triangular figure field is effectively filled with two standing lions whose front paws are placed on Bronze Age altars, one on each side. A protodoric column surmounted by a bit of entablature is atop the altars and separating the lions. The lions’ heads are now missing but dowel holes at the tops of the preserved bodies indicate that they were separately made and turned out at right angles to their bodies, gazing down at anyone approaching. According to mythology two noble families amalgamated to form the ruling dynasty at Mycenae, suggesting that this relief functions as a coat of arms in which each lion represents a branch of the family flanking architectural elements representing the palace. The fact that all these elements are supported by altars presumably alludes to the intertwined sanctity of the families and their palace. Another function of the relief is undoubtedly apotropaic, to ward off evil and those with evil intentions, and, if analogy might be drawn with later Greek art, yet another symbolic function is to promote the fecundity of nature. Reliefs of this sort must have been common in the Mycenaean world of the 13th cent. BCE, as in the now empty relieving triangle above the entrance or stomion of the the *Treasury of Atreus, at Mycenae, ca. 1250 BCE (Janson figs. 4.24, 4.25, 4.26 and website image), but the Lion Gate is the only large monumental sculpture in stone that survives from the Aegean Bronze Age. Visible in antiquity as it is today, when the Greeks of the historical period decided to decorate the triangular gabled ends or pediments of their temples, the Lion Gate at Mycenae seems to have provided an inspirational model.
Minoan in building technique and with frescoed plaster walls, Mycenaean Greek palaces looked superficially Minoan, but were usually heavily walled fortresses as in the *citadel at Mycenae, current form ca. 1250 BCE (Janson figs. 4.17 and 4.18and website images). These walls indicate a certain well-placed insecurity, of both foreign invasion and probably of one’s neighbors, too, hardly the peaceful atmosphere suggested by the openness of the Minoan palaces. Moreover, the core of these Mycenaean palaces was not a central courtyard, but a kind of building that served as a throne room and is called a *megaron (Janson fig. 4.19 for the example at Tiryns, and website images), the term Homer uses for the palaces of his heroes. The megaron is a rectangular building usually composed of three or four rooms: a front porch, an antechamber, the throne room, and sometimes a rear storage room, placed one behind the other. This plan will become the core of almost all Greek temples of the historical period.
Since these citadels were all destroyed by fire around 1200 BCE in the upheavals that mark the end of the Bronze Age, these Cyclopean walls were in the end useless. Mythology speaks of the arrival of the Dorians, a new tribe of Greeks, and the Return of the Sons of Herakles, but the destruction of these apparently impregnable fortresses is likely to have been “an inside job,” the result of internal economic inequities and social conflicts of the sort that awaited Homer’s heroes on their return from Troy and as remembered most prominently in the Odyssey.
In any event, the stories and the material culture of the Aegean Bronze Age formed the inspiration and subject matter for much Greek art of the historical period, both literary and visual, and subsequently for much of Western art regardless of period. It will, in addition, be the genius of Greek art of the historical period in its efforts to achieve mimesis, a concept in which art is meant to be an imitation of life, to effect a perfect combination of the Minoan and Mycenaean artistic principles, a form of art that captures both the emotional and physical aspects of life in monumental form.
Copyright John F. Kenfield Sept. 6, 2011
