I love this ancient figurine of three goddesses.
It was sculpted in the early bronze age, circa 2500 BCE, in the city of Kanesh, a trading hub of the ancient Mesopotamian empire. I encountered it at the Spurlock Museum of World Cultures at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.
It's strikingly abstract, a work of conceptual art nearly 5,000 years old.
Today some people criticize abstract art, along with its cousins conceptual art and postmodernism, as signs of the decline of modern civilization. But I've repeatedly been impressed by ancient and even prehistoric art that looks as new as the most avant garde work.
2,000 years after the three goddesses of Kanesh, the ancient Greeks took another crack at sculpting three goddesses, this time for the east pediment of the Parthenon. My, how styles can change in a mere 2,000 years!
The Greeks and the people of Kanesh celebrated their gods with different kinds of art.
The Greek sculptures, with their realistic folds and accurate bodies, were a loving tribute to natural beauty. The sacredness of their goddesses is revealed in representational forms. The goddesses of Kanesh, on the other hand, look more like tokens for intangible forces. In Kanesh and Mesopotamia, the deities tended to represent forces such as the wind or a storm or a mountain. Perhaps it's fitting that these goddesses took the shapes of arrows and circles.
Their eerie, wide eyes bug out of their empyreal pointer heads and they have no mouths. I'd hate to meet these three in a dark alley in Kanesh. Also, the Mesopotamian gods were said to radiate melam, a substance which "covered them in terrifying splendor."
I like that the goddesses wear their hair braided down their backs:
When I turned a corner in the Spurlock Museum and came across the abstract little sculpture in a display case, I first wondered whether I'd crossed over into a modern art museum by mistake. Then I remembered the quote attributed to the great Ralph Waldo Emerson:"Excellence is the new forever."
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32 comments:
What "goddesses" are these supposed to represent? These look like stylized Planarian flatworms. (Which are, interestingly, quite "godlike" in their resistance to aging and their ability to regenerate severed body parts, even their heads.)
2,000 years after the three goddesses of Kanesh, the ancient Greeks
…and 2000 years earlier, neolithic sculptors celebrated their goddesses by making proper figurines. But then, of course, the liberals took over the media and the colleges, and Kanesh went down the drain!
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Postmodern Anonymouse
No retrofitting pedigree please, that's an entirely novel & contemporary species of retard.
I sought out the website and they didn't say goddesses, let alone who the goddesses might be. They just said it was a votive figure. It doesn't look like it was handled much at all for votive purposes, that I can see, as all the very fine lines remain. Why would they say these things are goddesses? (They look more phallic anyway.)
The craftsmanship is incredible. They must have used quite a fine protractor-type tool to get the circles so exact. Whoever made this had carved those kinds of circles a thousand times before getting to this one.
~ FV
FV-- Yes, actually the Spurlock museum website does say that these are three goddesses (https://www.spurlock.illinois.edu/exhibits/permanent/MSO/) and the display case at the museum goes into more detail, describing this as a "figurine of three goddesses" and notes that "the religious contexts" at the site where it was excavated at Kültepe "suggest that they are goddesses probably related to fertility." This might explain your point that they look phallic-- a point with which I agree.
It's true, the museum didn't post the names of the goddesses on its website or in the display case. It turns out that the good people of Kanesh had a LOT of gods and goddesses, most of whom it would be difficult to pronounce unless you were in the middle of swallowing an overly large bite of a peanut butter sandwich: Ḫariḫari, Ḫigiša, Nipaš and Tuḫtuḫani for starters.
postmodern anonymouse-- an astute observation. Is it possible that these three goddesses are represented by vertical pointed columns because the nefarious liberals persuaded Kanesh to let men participate in women's sports?
Kev Ferrara -- I couldn't tell you the names of the three goddesses represented here (see my response to FV above) but the museum exhibition notes say the figurine is similar" to other goddess figurines at that religious location.
Even the Elgin marbles, which have been under a microscope for two centuries, lack complete certainty. The three figures which have long been known as "three goddesses" are now under suspicion that two of them, Aphrodite and Dione, are actually fates rather than goddesses.
What is this? Why are you so against women and girls being able to compete against each other fairly, without queer activists and idiot progressives screwing up their sport? You people shove your ideological bullshit into everything, smugly laugh off anybody's concerns as you screw up people's lives, pat each other on the back, and wonder why you are so hated and divisive.
David, it's very important, in fact crucial, to remember that ancient art, whether highly stylised or abstracted with closer reference to the natural world, was always serving a purpose, that being the veneration of our existential genesis. The vast majority of 'Modern Art' is serving nothing other than disruption.
Because two things superficially resemble one another does not mean they are the same thing.
chris bennett-- I agree, that is indeed the crucial issue. Over the years many fierce battles have been waged here about the importance of meaning or purpose in art. How do you feel about the merit of art with evil purpose (Nazi art? genocidal racist/religious art?) Is that better or worse than abstract art with a beautiful design? What about art with a commercial purpose (such as advertisement art by N.C. Wyeth or Norman Rockwell or Maxfield Parrish?). We've talked here about Dubuffet's argument that art should not be separate from life; he hated optical illusions painted on flat boards and hung on walls in museums (which he thought should all be burned to the ground) Instead he felt that art achieved purpose and meaning when integrated into life, decorating our environment, playing a role in religious or other ritual and expanding our consciousness. We've also discussed tribal art which practitioners believed to have totem or medicinal or other mystical powers. We've talked about the role of animistic art in ancient Egypt, We've discussed Thomas Merton's argument that "The peculiar grace of a Shaker chair is due to the fact that it was made by someone capable of believing that an angel might come and sit on it." Some of these purposes may have made art more meaningful and important, but they may no longer be within our power to believe.
My point is, "purpose versus non-purpose" doesn't seem to be a binary choice. Art is too complex and multi-faceted and untidy for that. The three goddesses may have had a deeply religious purpose for the people of Kanesh. But modern art (which you say "is serving nothing other than disruption") can do the same thing-- for example, the Rothko chapel has become a spiritual center for meditation; Guernica (whether you approve or not) has taken on an important emotional purpose for people, just as Maya Lin's abstract Vietnam veteran's memorial has taken on a deeply emotional purpose.
Anonymous-- I am not at all "against women and girls being able to compete against each other fairly." That is not the subject of this blog and I have never said anything against it. Anyone who wants to know my personal feelings on the subject had better be prepared to sit down with me in person and spend some time working through the complexities.
I was just tickled by postmodern anonymouse's humor that the damn abstract artists of 5,000 years ago had ruined good ol' traditional art of 7,000 years ago, signaling the decline of civilization. I thought I'd extend the game by playing off of FV's comment that the "goddesses" looked "phallic."
You may be correct that I am "hated and divisive" but it's more likely because I've criticized the work of Nelson Shanks.
"I couldn't tell you the names of the three goddesses represented here (see my response to FV above) but the museum exhibition notes say the figurine is similar" to other goddess figurines at that religious location."
That the representations of the supposed three goddesses are identical/undifferentiated, sparsely symbolized, and each ramrod straight without a shred of femininity to them makes the whole 'goddesses' attribution frankly dubious. Doesn't a goddess by necessity have some unique defining identity and symbolic purpose?
If we're going to talk abstraction, the abstraction must make correspondence sense; it must be evidently derived and efficacious. Unless we are talking about a code symbol, which may not be an abstraction at all, may just be a designed marker within the tribal lexicon that points to a pre-established reference.
Not all abstractions are good. If somebody refers to a Golden Labrador as "that yellow dog" - the abstract characteristic of yellowness is such a lossy stand-in for the actual color coat of the animal it amounts to poor poetry; a faulty summary of the fact. Primitive abstraction is already very lossy, and usually stylized, which is why it results in graphic dogma and cartoons. But this is beyond even that. The aesthetic tether of a parallel reality is lost.
Kev Ferrara-- I don't claim to have any special insight into the minds of early bronze age worshipers, but some of the clues they left behind suggest you may be taking an overly restrictive view of how goddesses may be portrayed.
The cycladic sculptures, which were approximately contemporaneous with these goddesses, were just as "identical/undifferentiated." Some of the wisest of the ancient Greeks worshiped the simple monad (a circle with a dot in the middle) as the ultimate god. FV may be right, the triangular heads of the current figures may look like a penis glans, but that alone wouldn't stop them from being deities. There's along tradition of genital-related gods and goddesses, just as there's a long tradition of treating the simple triangle as the sacred union of three forces.
As with the cromagnon cave paintings, all we can do is infer meaning from the forms they are given and the surrounding circumstances in the archaeological dig where they were found. Here, I have to trust the trained experts on ancient Mesopotamia at the Spurlock Museum more than I trust my uninformed intuition.
There are no complexities. Autogynephilic beta-male misogynists found a charade they could hide behind and convinced the parents of a-stereotypical kids that they had a 'gender-udentity' (a phantasm invented by a child-abuser, Dr J Money) at odds with their physical sex, which needed to be remedied by the pharma-surgical industry & facilitated by replacing sex-based categories with the phantasmagoria.
The 'er..uhm...complexites...' is the stance of many who played along happily but have been forced to backtrack in the light of increasing evidence (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/apa.70533) and non-partisan, international opposition .
El sueño de la razon produce monstruos
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Have you considered the possibility that we're looking at the earliest examples of the shenis?
My point is, "purpose versus non-purpose" doesn't seem to be a binary choice.
I think it is. But that's not to say that all purposes are good.
'Whom does the Grail serve?'
chris bennett wrote: "I think [purpose versus non-purpose is a binary choice]. But that's not to say that all purposes are good."
Okay, so compare a painting that has the purpose of celebrating child molestation with a purposeless painting with an extraordinarily beautiful design-- perhaps a Robert Motherwell or Helen Frankenthaler. Which is the "better" art?
Anonymous wrote: "Have you considered the possibility that we're looking at the earliest examples of the shenis?"
An interesting point. It hadn't occurred to me but upon reflection I'm sure there were many earlier examples of a shenis, as well as all kinds of other wild permutations. We know from DNA that Our prehistoric ancestors were a zesty bunch; Cromagnons combined with Neanderthals (or anything else they could grab). Art of the era suggests humans combining with animals, or decorating caves with fanciful images of phalluses and vulvae. One stone age artist etched a vulva on the molar of a woolly mammoth. Check out the anthropological study entitled, "Context and dating of Aurignacian vulvar representations from Abri Castanet, France," describing how prehistoric people drew vulvae all over the ceiling of their cave. It makes goddess "shenises" seem tame by comparison.
...compare a painting that has the purpose of celebrating child molestation with a purposeless painting with an extraordinarily beautiful design-- perhaps a Robert Motherwell or Helen Frankenthaler. Which is the "better" art?
The fact that you put 'better' in quotation marks suggests to me that you are doubtful about what quality in art actually is. Maybe you're not. But putting that aside, I think your question is based on a false premise:
The purpose of Art is to serve a good, and the highest Art serves the highest good. Thus, to my mind, a celebration of a bad, let alone an evil, by definition can never be art.
As to the notional Robert Motherwell painting being purposeless, I think this is not the case. So-called 'Abstract Painting', which is not abstracting anything, is just a status hyping term for what is in essence, decoration. Far better to market it as a 'new art' that transcends the old order. In other words disruption and revolution is its tacit and sometimes overt purpose. It is no accident that it emerged out of the Second World War consensus.
"The purpose of Art is to serve a good, and the highest Art serves the highest good."
This was used against Hitler.
This was used to sell otherwise blank paper to 1920s American Women which also thereby put them in the crosshairs of perfume and soap ads.
You're getting into a territory that takes the emphasis off quality in art and puts it on its utility, which cannot be controlled.
For instance, imagine an extremely silly and disgusting caricature of Hitler by Basil Wolverton in 1942. In America, it is used to mock and dehumanize the tyrant and rally the troops to the cause of freedom. Same picture is held up in Nazi Germany. And the cry goes up "Look how they make fun of our wonderful Führer! Let's get those slanderous bastards!"
You are talking about propaganda here Kev. And I know, and you know that ain't art.
chris bennett wrote, "I know, and you know that ain't art."
Well, since I don't know it, perhaps you could explain Kollwitz and Goya and Daumier to me. For that matter, if we define "propaganda" to include pictures that proselytize and indoctrinate for the church, perhaps you could also explain Michelangelo and Raphael and Leonardo to me?
The propaganda elements in Kollwitz, Goya and Daumier diminish the works involved. It's, well, kinda like someone asking for a loan at a wedding.
If you really believe that sacred art is proselytizing, indoctrinating propaganda then I doubt if I can change your mind that it is nothing of the sort.
chris bennett and kev ferrara-- If there's one word more porous than "art," it's "good." But these are engaging questions and let's see what we can make of them.
First, I have to agree with Kev that the assertion, "The purpose of Art is to serve a good, and the highest Art serves the highest good" opens up a trap door underneath us. Who gets to decide what the "highest good" is? I've volunteered to perform that service several times on this blog, but I am always greeted with insults and brickbats.
Chris writes, "a celebration of a bad, let alone an evil, by definition can never be art." Last year I posted a splendid drawing by A.B. Frost which, in keeping with the times, was terribly racist. (https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2025/04/more-about-beauty-and-ugliness-in-art.html ). Am I to believe that this was good art until popular opinion shifted and its purpose became immoral?
chris, I don't disagree that a substantial element of abstract expressionism is "decoration" (or put differently, "design."). I believe that Kev agrees with you on that. Are you suggesting that design without purpose cannot be art? I've always thought that purpose requires design in order to qualify as art. Doesn't that suggest that the two elements have a symbiotic relationship?
Chris,
The only higher sacred good I can absolutely vouch for in art is the distilled expression of the true, the abstract dynamics shared in all our experiences down through the ages that bind us all; universal emotions, the visual music of nature's patterns (including all anatomies, rhythms, and reverberations), and Harvey Dunn's maxim The Majesty of Simple Things.
chris bennett wrote: "If you really believe that sacred art is proselytizing, indoctrinating propaganda then I doubt if I can change your mind that it is nothing of the sort."
I did not intend my comment to be sacrilegious or even controversial. I assume the reason the church commissioned beautiful altarpieces by the greatest artists was to attract and dazzle congregants and to make sacred stories understandable and believable to populations that were, for most of history, too illiterate to read the bible. In short, to persuade and inspire belief. Am I wrong?
I wish we knew more about this abstract sculpture. Can you tell us anything about the oval shape? Why are these three goddesses emerging from it and what do the symbols on it mean?
JSL
The only higher sacred good I can absolutely vouch for in art is the distilled expression of the true, the abstract dynamics shared in all our experiences down through the ages that bind us all; universal emotions, the visual music of nature's patterns (including all anatomies, rhythms, and reverberations), and Harvey Dunn's maxim The Majesty of Simple Things.
Nicely put Kev, and I wholeheartedly agree with this. You mentioned quality in art a little earlier, which, given this context in particular, begs the question 'what does quality serve?'. If it is good quality then it serves the good, at whatever level of the value hierarchy we are concerned with, if it is bad in quality its service is in the other direction, down towards the bad.
One could say that Art, like time's arrow, points in one direction only.
"I don't claim to have any special insight into the minds of early bronze age worshipers"
You asserted this work to be bronze age high abstraction. Abstraction is a mental process. I’m trying to figure out in what sense they are abstracted versus merely being symbolic designs.
Let’s say you reach down into a nearby mud puddle and grab a hunk of squishy silt. Observing the moist gray clump in your hand molded by the grip of your fingers, you say, “This represents the Goddess Isis!” Does that proclamation suddenly make the lump of clay an abstraction?
I frankly don’t see how without some telling visual correspondence. I don’t believe the words in your head change the reality in your hand. Just as I don’t believe titles change paintings.
”some of the clues they left behind suggest you may be taking an overly restrictive view of how goddesses may be portrayed.”
One may create a symbol pointing to some imaginary reference without it being a portrayal or representation. Thus not an abstraction. Though we may say that the fact of the three objects is some vague abstraction of some three objects in reality.
There are many thousands of female sculptures from the ancient Mesopotamian region - including those known to be of goddesses - that show characteristic female anatomy. I’ve never seen a female sculpture named as such that lacked all feminine features, let alone human characteristics. Even the crude Cycladic sculptures had basic female anatomy.
"Some of the wisest of the ancient Greeks worshiped the simple monad (a circle with a dot in the middle) as the ultimate god."
The Pythagoreans revered the principle the symbol expressed. Their’s was not some literalist idolatry of a graphic mark.
It is worth considering too if the monad symbol was abstracted from an experienceable reality, or whether it is just a diagrammatic symbolization of a conception so beyond experience it could only have originated diagrammatically in the mind.
I don't disagree that a substantial element of abstract expressionism is "decoration" (or put differently, "design."). I believe that Kev agrees with you on that. Are you suggesting that design without purpose cannot be art? I've always thought that purpose requires design in order to qualify as art. Doesn't that suggest that the two elements have a symbiotic relationship?
If we think or art as 'that which is well fitted together towards a good' then yes, there is a certain degree of artfulness in decoration or design, just as a talented chief or carpenter are artful in their occupation. They are just lower orders in the hierarchy of the good. My use of the term 'lower' here is in no way to denigrate it but rather to understand it flourishing in its proper place. For example; if culinary delights are placed above, say, looking after one's family then we have broken the hierarchy of the good. There is nothing wrong with fine dining in its right place, just as there is nothing wrong with drinking beer with your buddies, but when drinking beer is placed higher up the hierarchy of importance...
Likewise, there is nothing wrong with a lovely or arresting decoration, but it doesn't belong in the place of an altarpiece. The reverse of this would be why, for example, the Piero Della Francesca's Madonna Del Parto looks stupid printed on a mug.
I assume the reason the church commissioned beautiful altarpieces by the greatest artists was to attract and dazzle congregants and to make sacred stories understandable and believable to populations that were, for most of history, too illiterate to read the bible. In short, to persuade and inspire belief. Am I wrong?
The congregants, believed and knew the stories, they did not need convincing of them by the artwork on the church walls. Just as the cinema goer watching a love story already knows what it's like to fall in love and believes that it is good. The point of both is that they are forms of communal participation.
So yes David, I think you are wrong, and this is why, in my view, you have confused it with propaganda.
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