Theme:
1. Artefacts, Buildings & Ecofacts
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
CANCELLED Re-viewing Prehistoric Female Figurines: Art(ifacts) and Intentions
Content:
This session invites papers on prehistoric anthropomorphic sculpture with an emphasis on the female form, within the theme of art expression. Certainly, prehistoric art(ifacts) would have been produced for their purely artistic merit, yet the aesthetic decisions were key to creating and conveying the embedded content. When a culture produces naturalistic depictions the female form in some contexts and schematic renderings in others the differences do not result from varying levels of crafter competence. The descriptors we deploy in our discussions of these objects - for example elite vs. homely or rustic - betray our inclination to confront these objects on our terms rather than probe for the mindset of that distant time. Dipesh Chakrabarty and Greg Anderson among others have warned us against imposing our modernist mentalities on earlier societies.
We must approach artefacts, particularly three-dimensional renderings of women, in fresh ways rather than relying on facile interpretations based on our own views of the subject, such as the (male) scholarly gaze; fertility and fecundity; matriarchy vs. patriarchy. Particularly salient issues would be, for example, the question of whether a female figurine in an apparent cult context necessarily represents a goddess, also the practice of deliberate fragmentation. Could the image instead be an expression of the internal experience of the participant in whatever rite was taking place?
The organizers welcome a broad range of reassessments of three-dimensional representations of women. We expect papers that consider the whole range of aesthetic decisions from whether or not a figure is clothed to the rendering of details such as noses or hair. We encourage participants to focus on a particular object or group of similar objects to explore these issues. Our aim is to seek insight into how the people who made these artefacts thought about and approached their task.
Keywords:
sculpture, prehistory, female form, aesthetics, prehistoric art
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Athena Hadji (Greece) 1
Co-organisers:
Emily Miller Bonney (United States) 2
Affiliations:
1. DIKEMES-College Year in Athens
2. California State University, Fullerton
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