Neue Zürcher Zeitung from 11 2. 2011
Joachim Güntner · The man is the animal that is puzzling. The world is a mystery to him from effect relationships that need to be detected or banned, and he himself is an open question. In the mirror of his questioning to the rätselnde makes man a man. It is as if the entity should be included in his double. Art, religion and science make the world a second time what they think is often not abstract, but urges sensible intuition in pictures, sculptures, models, symbols. Also like some puzzles of the mind: in so far is alone will not be put to, they can nevertheless be handled sensibly in objectification. Understand and grasp are related.
view might think, who is responsible for the exhibition "Gods, idols and idols" in Hamburg's Museum of Art Commercial and enters. Figures of almost five millennia populate the first room, small sculptures, which were found around the Mediterranean and in northern Germany. What they show is clear and unclear in one. What is clear is the urge Photos objectify people. Clear the limits of the human remains to the divine or God-like. imagine animal forms and hybrid creatures, demons, like men and women can be identified. It's amazing how little it takes to ensure that we recognize shapes: outline, the suspect can be differentiated from head, neck and body, usually already sufficient. The so-called board-idols such as from the 3rd millennium BC, the archaeologists are brought from Troy, extreme reductions, slices of marble, where you can make but a top and bottom but not front and back.
From doll-like differentiation and human similarity is, however, the female double-idol from Anatolia, a plump nude with arms bent, hold their hands, the breasts. Chiefly because of its material - rock crystal - the exhibit looks at the Hamburg show like a gem. Especially also that the figurine is made on both sides. Yet this is not alleged Mother Goddess of the curator favorite piece. If you ask the person responsible for the concept of the exhibition archaeologist Frank Hildebrandt for his favorites, he performs a Boeotian board before idols from the 6th Century BC, which are rustic, made of clay and painted with strange bird-like facial features. Their expressive power is enormous.
gathered about two hundred objects, the exhibition. This is not much compared to how huge the geographical and historical space, which they derive, and it should not it be more to the front of the visitor is not overwhelmed. Note the small formats, which point out that the sculptures were part of a religious life that has permeated everyday life. And some forms seem almost universal: the broad pool of female idols, like praying or splayed out arms around his waist. Since written records of the ancient civilizations are missing, only to conjecture as to establish whether they are figures of gods, praying, fertility symbols Talismans or concerns. That as a consecration or grave-offerings were light up, the sites at least when they are tombs. Interestingly, although simple in Mykonos clay idols, but not found in rich graves were - just as it would have had the common people needed more to be insured on their journey to the afterlife of the company of their household gods.
In its second Part changes the exhibition, which presents itself at first sensuous culinary, the sober. The structuring colored light disappears in favor of intellectual grays. The visitor makes into a time warp in the Reformation. Martin Luther's dictum, "For all the gods are idols" exacerbated the spell which had been imposed by the Church Fathers on the representations of pagan deities. In the final, finally, Johann Joachim Winckelmann is the founder of modern archeology honor. All display cases and objects in this last room on the principle of the golden section arranged: a visible expression to the extreme science. To disillusion heard that the term "idol" who is charged in our everyday language with standings, is among archaeologists today used quite neutral: idols are therefore abstract anthropomorphic, mostly small figures made of stone, bronze, ivory, clay or wood, "which can not may appoint more detail. "
Museum of Arts and Crafts, Hamburg, 30 April, Catalogue € 24 - .
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