Many claims are made for the oldest sculpture. A stone object about six centimetres long and 400 000 years old found in Morocco with human characteristics is thought by some to have been carved and painted, but dismissed by others as the result of natural weathering. It stands upright, with a head, shoulders, arms, body and legs; how much more human could it be? But created by the chance happenings of nature or man-made; evolution by nature or creation by man?
The oldest European sculpture, of about 35000 years of age and found in Germany, is a relief carving on an ivory panel of a male figure with ‘imposing’ genitals. On the reverse are ‘dots’ that, at that time, would have lined up with the stars in the constellation of Orion thus suggesting its use as a compass.
A stone figure that you could hold in the palm of your hand is the Willendorf woman. This highly detailed carving from about 25000 years ago is naked but for a knitted beanie. Broad of hip and overflowing with the milk of human kindness, she has been taken to be an ‘earth mother’.
Why are these objects regarded as sculptures? Older artefacts have been found of course; stone arrow heads, antler axes, etcetera. These are not regarded as sculptures presumably because of their assumed purely utilitarian purpose. But every object that has been deliberately made can be said to have a purpose if only to provide amusement to the maker, thus eliminating ‘uselessness’ from the list of criteria necessary to define a sculpture. With smaller steps along the way, one could finally arrive at a position, and argue with some conviction, that any man-made object is a sculpture. That is, any man-made three or four-dimensional arrangement of any materials, however intangible and ephemeral, in space and time is a sculpture, which is just about the point at which the world of ‘sculpture’ has arrived.
While these attempts to nail things down continue so does the evolution of sculpture. A thousand years from now it will be as unrecognisable to us, as present day sculpture would be to the person who carved the Willendorf woman.
I wonder if those early carvers thought of themselves as sculptors? I doubt it. I like to think they thought more about what they were doing rather than who they were. Their identity is expressed by the sculptures they left behind
John Wooller President
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