Ancient Beakers were Something New
Grave goods excavated from a vast necropolis at Susa, ancient Iran, innovated illustration and changed visual language in a way that affects our graphic communication to this day…
During the first decade of the twentieth century, archaeologists excavated the extensive temple and cemetery complex of Susa, in what is now Iran. The Mesopotamian people of the region made fired terracotta pots, and placed some of these in each grave. The vessels, which consisted of beakers, bowls and jars, were all decorated in a fashion that appears strikingly modern, with geometric, repeating patterns. Some of the pots also have designs based on human and animal forms.
In the Louvre collection, Paris, there are a few particularly fine examples of Susa beakers that are remarkable for several reasons. Fired pottery, in itself, represents an important technological step and had been developed, along with a rotating ‘potter’s wheel’, in this region of the near east. The graphic language of the decoration is equally innovative.
Earlier art, such as cave paintings, consisted of many drawings set adrift across stone walls, overlapping, ‘floating’, with no defined borders to the picture field. In these Susa beakers, we see what could possibly be the first use of deliberate framing.
Certainly, it’s one of the earliest examples of an illustration being placed in a defined ‘graphic’ space. The form of an ibex or similar gazelle-like animal, highly stylised to create a graphic motif, is set within a defined rectangular area.
Some are clearly drawn as if standing on a defined ground line within their frame. Both these features, frame and ground line, are now familiar to us. Particularly the frame. The overly extended horns of the animal also act as a sort of frame-within-a-frame, encircling another graphic devise, thought by some to represent the solar disc and an ear of wheat.
We’re now used to seeing images framed on gallery walls. In addition to this well-established convention, nearly all the art and illustration we are exposed to is framed: the poster, magazine page and increasingly the screen are all forms of frame. Our standard paper formats provide uniform frames for layouts and drawings, even before the first marks are made on the surface.
The frame is a signifier of order and containment, a boundary for a concept to be expressed within. The frame became such a tradition that the challenging of this convention though the disruption of, and escape from, it was central to much of Modern and Post-Modern art in the Twentieth Century. It’s a convention that’s remained largely accepted and unchallenged for seven millennia. Ever since its appearance on these beakers.
A ground line is widely used in illustration and formal composition as a means of fixing a form within its two-dimensional space. The ground line can be just that: a simple line, or in a more complicated composition, can be the horizon or a line implied by perspective. The branch upon which the bird sits…
These rare pottery pieces also represent two more firsts: the biomorphic and the expressionist. The ibex-gazelle is not a realistic depiction, but a reduction of the natural form into a collection of almost geometric shapes that hint at abstraction. This changes, or ‘morphs’ the ‘biological’ animal form — hence biomorphic.
The hunting dogs are just as highly stylised. They’ve been elongated to suggest speed, and their feet are not touching their ground line. We know from the central motifs that the designers understood the use of a ground line, so the choice to lift the dogs from their ground must be for a reason. It helps the illusion of speed and suggests that they are running. This is a very early example of an image being distorted in some way in order to express a concept.
If you look carefully at the lines near the rim of the beaker, you can see they are the extended necks of stork-like birds — possibly the quarry of the hunt. Some aspects of the designs remain clear to us, but much of the symbolism here can only be guessed at. The two sets of three parallel lines that circle many of the beakers were certainly significant, as were the other repeated motifs…
This is a very advanced piece of illustration, using natural forms to create decorative motifs and distortion to express ideas, a similar approach to that of Art Nouveau and Art Deco — perhaps also an inkling of approaching abstraction that would be core to Cubism, Constructivism, and Futurism… all art ‘innovations’ that followed some 7,000 years later!
*All images used here for educational purposes under fair usage policy.
A version of this article was first published in my book Evolution of Western Art (questing beast books, 2012)
