New York City has added another jewel to its glittering cultural crown, and it occupies just one medium-sized wall at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The wall can be found in Belfer Court, the first room on the right as you enter the Greek and Roman Gallery from the Great Hall. If you walk too fast you might miss it. Slow down and prepare to be amazed by the largest display of ancient sculpture from the Greek island known as the Cyclades ever seen in New York. The title is “Cycladic Art: The Leonard N. Stern Collection on Loan from the Hellenic Republic.”
Five large panes of glass, typically consisting of three pairs of shelves each, cover the walls, while the red felt interior sets off the gleaming white carved marble of 120 figures and bowls. The shelves are filled with about 70 small, vibrant female statues or idols, some of which are rare, averaging about 16 inches high and just over 4 feet long. This is the glory of Cycladic art, distinguished by its stylized forms, folded arms, expressionless face except for a small wedge-shaped nose, restrained sensibility and calm stillness. They are like tuning forks.
The vitreous body also contains a relatively large free-standing head without a body, similar to a miniature version of the giant head from Easter Island. And there are tons of vessels: vases, bowls, plates, and a few palettes. Two are narrow, delicate, slightly curved, and look like they were cut from a single leek leaf. Five additional pieces occupy five individual vases nearby, and another 36 pieces can be seen in vitrines in the Greek and Roman Studies collection on the mezzanine overlooking the Leon Levy and Shelby White Court.
All 161 works were created in the Cyclades, a small group of islands in the Aegean Sea east of Greece, between approximately 5300 BC (late Neolithic period) and 2300 BC, the beginning of the Bronze Age. Same as early Cyclades I and II. The figures, in particular, represent one of humanity's greatest achievements, solemn and handsome yet instantly familiar and even inherently realistic as a skeleton. It looks like it could be folded like a draftsman's doll.
These works were collected by Leonard N. Stern, CEO of Hartz Mountain Industries, in the early 1980s. As a teenager, he became fascinated with Cycladic art at the Met. Stern gave his collection to Greece, and a deal between him, the Met, and the Greek government will see most of his works stored in the museum for the next 25 years, with some works periodically returned to Greece. The loan is extended for another 25 years. The exhibition was curated by Sean Hemingway, chair of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Department of Greek and Roman Studies, and Alexis Belis, one of the assistant curators.
Cycladic sculpture begins the great tradition of Greek sculpture that appears to have culminated almost 2000 years later in the classical sculpture of the Greek Golden Age, centered in Athens. It is also an important origin of Western abstraction. Like African sculptures, these works were colonial loot enshrined in the Museum of Ethnology in Paris in the early 20th century and influenced modern artists such as Constantin Brancusi, Amedeo Modigliani, and Picasso.
The basics of a doll's posture and pose rarely change. The arms are folded across the center of the torso, just below the strict mark on the chest. These arms typically end with four short, shallow incisions that represent the hands, although the fingers look like brushes or tassels. The inverted triangle cut across the lower abdomen of the female figure resembles a bikini bottom. The curves typically work in the thighs and lower legs.
A smooth, mask-like face with a wedge-shaped nose sits atop a long, tapering neck. Often their heads are tilted back and they gaze upward toward the stars, meditatively, if not adoringly. In other cases, the face is looking straight ahead, conveying a more modern nuance. For example, some may have depicted a caricature of a woman in a wet bathing suit on the beach, slightly shivering, helping her children out of the water. I'm always amazed at what characters I can recall from New Yorker cartoons.
The purpose of the Cycladic figures remains largely a mystery. They were created in pre-literate times, and many of them were dug up by people looking for things to sell. These searchers rarely took into account the details of the field of archaeology, such as when, where, what, and how deep (in the ground) the pieces were discovered. Some of them were found lying horizontally in graves and tombs, part of funerary rituals. Others may have been used as fertility idols or in private shrines. It could also have been a toy, which speaks to its immense appeal and accessibility. They remain the most popular form of ancient art.
Encountering a Cycladic statue for the first time can be an important rite of passage for today's art-oriented people. That sight can teach us in an unforgettable moment that much of what we call modern is not actually new. However, some parts of Cycladic modernity are relatively recent. The image was not originally made of white marble. Most of it was painted, and a palette was born. Faint blushes and tiny flecks of color can be found in some paintings, while some plates feature noticeable areas of pale orange and red brushstrokes.
Seeing so many dolls up close is shocking in itself. We find that this figurative formula accommodates an unusual range of proportions, emotions and body language, encouraging a kind of basic emotion. You can't help but notice and compare.
You can almost see the style coming into focus on the top two shelves of the first glass. The two headless figures have stubby guitar- or violin-shaped bodies. Another two had their arms stretched out at their hips and had a little space at their elbows. One of them has a chest reminiscent of closely spaced bricks. The round-bottomed figure suggests an inflatable bob bag toy, with lovely curved arms and hands that appear to be folded at her armpits.
Sometimes the folded arms look like matchsticks, sometimes they are more fleshy, even relaxed, almost natural. The arms glide somewhat precariously up and down the torso, resembling a cummerbund in some places and a plunging waistline in others. The most extreme displacement of the arm is found in the last vitreous body, which is outlined in red. The absence of a torso, with the crossed arms just below the chin, makes it look as if our idol is holding a small log to make a fire.
The Stern Collection of Cycladic Art transforms Belfer Court into one of the metropolis' finest galleries. The tradition that began with the Cycladic sculptors is generally considered to have reached its peak centuries later, when their Golden Age descendants finally reached a precise and idealized treatment of the human form. I doubt that I am alone in thinking that this idealized realism lacked something and that the Greek sculptural tradition could not have been better than what came from the hands of its Cycladic ancestors.
Cycladic Art: Leonard N. Stern Collection on Loan from the Hellenic Republic
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan; (212) 535-7710; metmuseum.org.