«As if they were living in palaeolithic Europe»: notes on the reception of prehistory between North America and Europe starting from miniaturised sculpture

Abstract

This study examines a series of essays and publications, primarily on European prehistoric art, produced in the late 1940s and early 1960s that can be linked, however indirectly or editorially, to the A.W. Mellon Lectures in Fine Arts (Washington D.C.). In particular, the study considers a selection of writings by Clement Greenberg, Herbert Read, Carola Giedion-Welcker, Sigfried Giedion, and Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti. These sources illustrate the emergence of modernist study of prehistoric art from a series of methodological debates, some of which were also activated by precise personal, theoretical, national, and even transnational positions. Indeed, the prehistoric element was responsible for elucidating two essential macro themes. Firstly, the vibrant and complex interconnection between modernity and its numerous, albeit disparate, historical pasts; secondly, the constitutive and primordial relationship between the living body and the artifact. In their theorisations on prehistory, the aforementioned authors accorded a distinctive role to miniature sculpture. As an exhaustive bibliography demonstrates, these are tiny, small or microscopic artifacts, crafted in natural materials such as stone, wood, or bone, and have been prevalent since the Palaeolithic era. This paper will critically examine the ways in which selected examples of Western modernist theory have engaged with (or avoided engaging with) such figurines, considering more broadly the ways in which these authors have approached prehistoric material cultures and historiographies.