This exhibition entitled “Harmonices Mundi” which takes title from a book of the same name published in 1619 by the German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler, in which he displays his groundbreaking discoveries about the harmony and congruence between different worlds, planets, or –in simplest terms- orbits. The exhibition celebrates the opening of the Erimtan Museum of Art and Archaeology, by bringing together ancient Anatolian pottery from the Erimtan Collection, with the works of the Turkish artist Alev Ebüzziya, one of the foremost 20th century masters of the ceramic vessel.
The judicious exhibition is designed and conceived by Deniz Artun, director of Galeri Nev in Ankara, which has been representing Ebüzziya since 1992, brings attention to the artists unique response to vessels, that have been crafted in the same geographic region, between 2500-1500 BCE, by the Hatti, the Ancient Hittites, Kultepe and Van-Urmiya cultures, as well as the Phrygians, around 900 – 800 BCE. The participation of other art collectors from Ankara in this event is an equally significant outcome of this show, as they have contributed the quasi totality of Ebüzziya’s vessels, present in the exhibition. By responding to Artun’s invitation, they too have collaborated with Yüksel Erimtan’s grand gesture, by sharing treasured works from their own collections, with art lovers in Ankara, and beyond.
Around which aesthetic criteria does the dialogue between Alev’s work and Ancient Anatolian vessels occur? How can artworks, created in such distant historical periods, have anything in common with each other? A comparison of the forms, of these ancient, and contemporary works, holds light to the existence of many affinities. The ancient pottery in the Erimtan collection consists largely of utilitarian, beak-spouted vessels specific to ancient Anatolia, large and smaller bowls, narrow necked pithhoi, bulbous storage vessels and urns, jugs and beakers, animal shaped rhytons, large storage or burial vessels, and other utilitarian wares. These vessels are made of low-fire clays, the colors of which range from buff colors, to brick red, dark brown, gray, and black. Although they have not been glazed, the majority present smooth, vibrant, burnished surfaces, that been covered with a slip of the same color as the clay body. These vessels are for the most part wheel thrown, while others are hand built. They all display proud, full-bodied, firmly grounded, upright stances, and exude a distinctively powerful aura, due to the simplicity of their clean-cut silhouettes.
Alev Ebüzziya’s vessels too are characterized by their proud stance, and pristine outlines. However, they present quite a contrast to the formal diversity of ancient Anatolian ceramics, as they focus, and elaborate on subtle variations of a single reductive bowl form. These bowls are curvaceous, thin walled, and wide rimmed. Unlike ancient Anatolian wares, they are made of denser, high-fire, gray-white stoneware, giving strength to their thin walls, and are built with a combination of complex, wheel-thrown and coil-built techniques. They stand on a tiny, non-visible foot, which lightly lifts the bowls from the surface they stand on, endowing them with a gravity-defying stance. Their ample bodies invite the viewer, to contemplate the silence of the space they hold within. In appearance, these streamlined vessels seem much more ethereal, and delicate, than ancient Anatolian pottery. However, in terms of their spatial containment, and purity of form, these minimalistic large bellied volumes, relate beautifully to the ample-bodied bowls of the Van-Urmiya and Trans-Caucasian regions, and to the full-bodied Hittite beak-spouted vessels. The minimalistic aesthetics of Ebüzziya’s sculptural vessels, has its roots not only in these ancient terracotta vessels, but also in the great bronze cauldrons of the Urartian, and Phrygian periods (9th-7thcenturies BCE), the Greco-Persian, Hellenistic and Roman clay, glass, and metal vessels (6thcentury BCE-12thcentury CE), and Seljuk metal wares (12th-13thcentury CE), all produced on Anatolian soil.
The Ancient Anatolian ceramics of the Erimtan collection are predominantly monochromatic. A few Hatti vessels are engraved with crescent motifs, and some have surfaces animated by striations created by dragging fingers on the wet clay. One of the Hittite beaked jugs sports protomes imitating breasts. The Van-Urmiya group on the other hand, demonstrates ample use of geometric motifs applied around the rims of bowls, and shoulders of pithoi. These markings consist of a combination of zigzags, wave patterns, and lozenge motifs created by one, two, or three different colored slips on red clay bodies.
While purity of form where “less is more” is certainly the signature of Ebüzziya’s sculptural style, this approach has not distanced her from developing a very personal, and selective surface decoration, to complement her forms. Ornamentation of a very subtle kind is an essential feature of Ebüzziya’s visual vocabulary, where it is used to highlight important formal features, and to create rhythm. Many of these decorative elements, are also in agreement with ancient Anatolian conventions.
Her smooth and pristine bowl’s surfaces are covered with a glaze, rather than the clay slips used in ancient Anatolian wares, and are mono-chromatic or bi-chromatic at most, using an elemental color scale of black, gray, navy blue or white, echoing the stark simplicity of Anatolian Bronze age pottery. The markings on the vessels, which are akin to those visible on the Van-Urmiya group consist of lines, triangles, zigzags, and other linear repetitive patterns, applied with remarkable precision. Ebüzziya’s designs are reserved with wax resist on the clay body, which remains exposed after glazing, laying bare the texture of the speckled stoneware underneath. This effect which can also be achieved by carving through glaze or slip, is visible on some of the Hatti wares, with crescent motifs graven onto their slipped surfaces, revealing the lighter colored clay beneath.
The glazed, high-fire matt surfaces of Ebüzziya’s vessels have the feel of hard, opaque stone. The artist has always had a particular admiration for the qualities of stone, which in her own words convey “a sense of stability, strength and timelessness”. Ebüzziya has always had a great predilection for Ancient Assyrian alabaster bas-relief, carvings of the late Bronze and Iron Ages, the regional predecessors of which are thought to go back to 9000-8000 BCE in the South Eastern Anatolian ritual sites of Nevali Cori and Göbekli Tepe, where the first known, early Neolithic, Near Eastern monumental and figural sculptures were created. In spite of the rock-like, hard appearance of their surfaces, Ebüzziya’s vessels always have a soft fluidity about them due to their gentle curvilinear contours. The glazes she has selected are akin to the durable minerals and rocks, which craftsmen of ancient civilizations used to ensure permanence and durability to representations of their rulers, as well as to the symbols of religious, and political power they depicted in their work. Some of the stones Ebüzziya’s glazes emulate, are basalt, slate, schist, and anthracite which are all matt, dark-gray and black stones, used in the Ancient Near East and North Africa, deep blue lapis lazuli which comes from Afghanistan, and Obsidian, a black glossy volcanic glass employed in the fabrication of tools and weaponry, and traded in Anatolia from 6500 BCE onwards.
The versatility of clay, and its ability to emulate other materials, was not unknown to Ancient Anatolian societies. A few of the ancient Anatolian ceramic vessels of the Erimtan collection, are part of a category of wares called skeuomorphs (a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues from structures that were necessary in the original) and were made to replicate the more prestigious metal ceremonial vessels used by the elite, especially during the period of Assyrian trading colonies in central Anatolia. Two of the red clay Hittite beak spouted vessels in the exhibition are ceremonial wares of this kind, and were used for ritualistic libations. They are distinguished by highly burnished, clean-cut, bi-conic, dark red clay bodies, cylindrical necks, sharp edged beaks, and angular hard-edged silhouettes, which reflect an effort to replicate the “metalness” of bronze ceremonial vessels.
Behind the universal quest for permanence shared by all cultures, is a craving to capture the ultimate essence, which is timeless and eternal. Ebüzziya’s vessels do just that for us. They capture the powerful and immaculate stillness embodied in ancient Anatolian pottery created in a mythical age. From this point of view, her works stand apart from bowls produced for functional purposes, as they have become receptacles for contemplation. They have not been made to receive but rather to emit. Just like the Hittite, beak-spouted ceremonial libation pitchers, Ebüzziya’s works are ritual vessels par excellence. The importance of ritualistic experience lies in its transformative power to link tradition with the present. In this respect, these spacious vessels act as visual mantras, calibrated to resonate with timeless vibrations, which harken back to us from epic times. These great bowls are the modern spiritual counterparts of the Urartian bronze ritual cauldrons of Ancient Anatolia, the singing bronze bowls of Tibetan monasteries, and the great bronze bells of Buddhist temples and Christian churches.
The qualities of Ancient art that have fascinated Alev Ebüzziya most are; silence, timelessness, permanence, and their power to make her “believe in some thing”. Her bowls are not about transience, but are the material manifestations of a profound quest for preservation, continuity, and a deep desire “not to forget, but to remember again and again”. In the soundless depths of Ebüzziya’s vessels where past and present merge, the vibrant soul of ancient Anatolia continues to reverberate with universal appeal in the hearts of people from different horizons, transcending cultures, geographies, and time.
Nermin Kura is Professor of Arts and Architectural History at Roger Williams University, Bristol R.I.
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