| architecture |
| calligraphy |
| ceramics |
| clothing |
| comics |
| gardens |
| lacquerwork |
| literature |
| movies |
| music |
| painting |
| poetry |
| sculpture |
| tea ceremony |
| television |
| theatre |
| weaponry |
| thematic routes |
| timeline |
| the site |
context: sculpture > early sculpture
|
a figure from around the first millenium B.C. |
Terminal Jomon
Figure work gets even stranger by the first millenium B.C.; there are naturalistic clay models of shells and animals, but humans look like this. Art and archaeology experts do the usual thing of throwing their hands up in the air and shouting words like 'magic' and 'ritual', and they may well be right, but there seems to be no real evidence. The eyes here are weirdly insectoid, but the limbs remind me more of Popeye (or if you want an art reference, try Fernando Botero).