“Bread crumbs”(perhaps how you got here)

(Originally posted August 10th, 2008)

Bronze Head of an Akkadian King (Perhaps Sargon the Great), c 2200 BCE

This justly famous head of a king was for a long time called that of Sargon of Akkade (or "Sargon the Great"); but possibly it is some other monarch of about that time, such as Naram -Sin.

The technical mastery in this head has often been noted. The reason for the interest is that this is, after all, not even a Late Bronze Age work, but rather from what is sometimes called the "Early Bronze Age." More than four millennia later, in an era in which metal-working offers richer possibilities, we look back in wonder at this work - but we should hardly be astonished, for the craftsmen of that time were intelligent and industrious, for they were like us . Here as elsewhere, I repeat the theme that I often sound: the works of our ancestors are the way they are mainly because they wanted them that way.

This means that we can pay a little attention to the actual artistic details, not merely the technique. Note the careful and elegant, but highly abstract, modeling of the hair, the fillet bound around the head, the beard, and the general proportions. And I direct attention especially to the lips, done with exquisite care. They are very sensuous lips, full but not in any way feminine. This is a man who tasted pleasure and knew what he tasted.

But my main point is the abstraction (Wikipedia has a fairly decent article). Whatever he looked like, and whoever he was, this king surely did not look exactly like this. Here, as in all art, the artist has made a selection of the features that will be presented; others are suppressed. This is the essence of abstraction in art as in information science - the adroit selection of features and the suppression of others. All art, even the most ostensibly "realistic" employs such abstraction - if nothing else, in at least the selection of subject or the choice of the angle from which the depiction occurs. It is in abstraction that lies the greatness of art, for the truly great artist must somehow match an abstraction to a "reality" that may only be dimly glimpsed. Then the viewer (or listener, in the case of music, or reader, in the case of prose, etc.) is illuminated by the connection between the artist's abstraction and the "reality" in the perceiver's mind, however it got there. And that "reality" toward which the artist reaches will be different for every person.

This touching, from artist to infinitely varying audience via abstraction, is truly magical. It is a communion; if you believe that anything is sacred, surely it must be this miracle. We see it in all art, of all kinds, from all periods; it is this touching, more than anything else that conveys and protects the human spirit, accumulating, generation after generation, a heritage that preserves identity, emotion, thought, and even bodily sensations, allowing one person to touch another across the gulf of centuries or of thousands of miles. This is why the artistic heritage of every people, every time is the most vital part of their lives, the part that must be defended first and last.

 All text on this page is the work of J W Durham and is licensed only under terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Other licensing terms may be available. E-mail me