The architecture of the new museum in Afyonkarahisar divides the history of the city and its region into three eras, with the upper floor being dedicated to the period commencing with Turkish settlement, the ground floor to classical and Byzantine history and the underground floor to prehistory, representing symbolically perhaps, the subterranean from which its discoveries emerged. In turn, on each floor, as the visitor moves inwards from the entrance, the display items move forward in time. Thus, on the underground floor, the great antiquity of large display cases of figurines and idols on display near the entrance can be guessed at before their identifying labels can be read by the visitor whose eyes still perhaps need adjusting to the low subterranean lighting.
The impression of these Early Bronze Age items is otherworldly. The most impressive of the pieces, a tilted ashen-gray pensive-looking figure, bears a striking resemblance to the great nemesis of the "Star Wars" sequels, Supreme Leader Snoke. One small green piece appears to be a stereotypical alien. Furthermore, at the back separated from the others on a pedestal of its own is one that looks a little like the figure of the alien "E. T." in Steven Spielberg’s classic 1982 film. For those who believe that aliens have been among us in the past this whole section might seem to provide some proof. Nevertheless, there is an alternative interpretation – that all fictional aliens are products of the human imagination. That is, the resemblance of these figures of gods or powerful spirits to the depicted aliens of science fiction suggests that whenever human beings think up otherworldly beings of greater power than themselves, they may draw on the same imagery.
This thought leads us to the subject of this piece, though it is not on archaic figurines and science fiction, a terracotta work found in Bolvadin in the province of Afyonkarahisar and dated before 2000 B.C. The issue of this piece is that this figurine also has an even greater, and more shocking, resemblance to the key figure in one of the most iconic works in the whole history of art, “The Scream” by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944).
When looked at side-by-side, the similarities between the figures in the museum and the one by Munch are immediately apparent. Neither of them is naturalistically human, both being elongated, the one of Munch having a willow-like curve of the body and the museum figurine possessing an elongated reptilian-like neck. They also share wide-open staring eyes and two prominent nostrils. But what suggests the greatest affinity between the two figures is the way they have both raised their hands to frame their heads, clutching the face in the case of the figurine, whereas with Munch’s figure, the slight gap letting in a line of dark background between head and hands intensifies its dramatic effect.
Though one is not identical to the other – the genders of the figures are different, to begin with – there is clearly a kinship between the two and it is that both are figures whose expressions seem to manifest fear. There is nothing to suggest that Munch had any knowledge of this figurine, which leaves the intriguing question touched upon in connection to science fiction above, as to how artists from such different times, cultures and geographical locations could have produced works of art with such striking similarity.
To attempt an answer to this question it must be pointed out that Munch’s art belongs to a period of art history – that of the late 19th and early 20th centuries – in which two interrelated sources are sought by some for artistic inspiration. One was ever present within the artist, being the essential true core of their own persons, whilst the other could only be found literally far away overseas, being the artistic production of cultures outside of Europe. Nonetheless, these two sources of inspiration were linked in that they were both seen to reflect what humans are when the effect of modern society is removed or absent.
The second of these quests for artistic inspiration gave rise to the term Primitivism. For this to be appreciated properly, a couple more interrelated points need to be made here. The first is that in English the term “primitive,” from which it derives, may carry pejorative connotations. The second concerns the current thorny issue of cultural appropriation. This is defined by the Oxford Language as “the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society.”
The Western artists of the later 19th and early 20th centuries were certainly from societies with a heavy imbalance of global dominance in their favor. It is the case that the inspiration they found in native cultures was certainly not “unacknowledged” but the question of its appropriateness to them may be regarded as a more tricky one. Yet, to attempt to tarnish their works with the deprecatory label of cultural appropriation is perhaps to misunderstand their aim and their outlook. These Western artists of that time were of course in many senses products of their age. Yet, in one essential sense, they were not. They regarded themselves as being in rebellion against what they regarded as the corrupting, hypocritical and soul-stifling nature of a money-obsessed, increasingly bourgeois society. Hence, these artists’ encounters with the art of peoples who had not been, as they would have seen it, corrupted by their own modern civilization was to them refreshing and, as such, they approached their work reverentially. These modern artists felt this art spoke directly to them, to the core of their being, that kernel of character that lay inside any superficially outward civilized individual. As such, for them, this native art was not culturally specific, but rather had, what all great art has, universality, which explains its vital importance for these artists. They were not condescendingly interested in exoticism, but in understanding themselves.
Another way to understand this inner core was to attempt to look inward, past the accretions of modernity, and find it through a fundamental understanding of the self. Munch was an artist of this type. What is clear therefore is that the artists who looked outward, such as Paul Gauguin, and the artists who looked inward, such as Munch, were engaged in the same quest – self-understanding. That either approach taken to this quest is valid is suggested by the figurine in Afyonkarahisar Museum. For it is impossible that Munch was aware of it, so any question of cultural inspiration or appropriation cannot be raised here. It does suggest, however, that the Primitivists had a point – for if what is archaic and external to the artist can also be discovered by a thorough self-examination amid modern society, then the art of nonmodern cultures can indeed have direct relevance to those from modern societies.
This is only fundamentally the case, though, if the two artworks are not simply similar in appearance but that there is a correlation in meaning between them. As we can't know for certain what the long-forgotten creator of the archaic figure intended with his work. First, the inspiration for Munch’s “The Scream” will be looked at and then, speculation will be made to see if it is likely, in the absence of definitive certainty, that the figurine maker was inspired by similar concerns.
Although Munch’s painting appears to be set in his native Norway, it seems to have been motivated by something that occurred when Munch was abroad in Nice, France, in 1892. Ill at that time, Munch noted in his diary:
"I was out walking with two friends – the sun began to set – suddenly the sky turned blood-red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on a fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and there I stood, trembling with fear – and I sensed an endless scream passing through nature."
Here, Munch is generally regarded as suffering from what is known as existential angst. This form of anxiety is, as the psychologist Eric Fromm puts it, a “feeling of individual isolation and powerlessness” and it derives from an unqualified understanding of the true situation of the human being if, as advances in 19th-century science were interpreted by some to suggest, the universe is indeed purely mechanical and thus devoid of meaning, making it frighteningly indifferent to our lives and struggles.
Yet, while I agree that angst is at the root of “The Scream,” I do not feel that the concept of an indifferent universe properly explains the experience of Munch or the painting. I believe it is actually something worse. To explain, I wish to draw upon Munch’s contemporary, the Prague-born angst-plagued writer Franz Kafka. In one letter Kafka expresses his fear of drinking from a glass of milk, for, to him, the glass itself “could easily explode in my face, not by chance but by design, and throw the splinters into my face.” No self-respecting scientific advocate of a mechanical universe would give the slightest possibility to this happening, and thus, it is not such an indifferent universe that afflicts Kafka but rather one with a harsh will that seeks to thwart and specifically hurt him. This idea is brilliantly developed in Kafka’s literary masterpiece, "The Trial." In this work, there is an individual who suddenly, and for reasons that are never made clear, begins to be persecuted by a nebulous higher authority, whilst around him the civilized life that he has always known continues unabated and unaffected.
It is a personal feeling of willful maliciousness on the part of the wider world that, I believe, is reflected in Munch’s painting. Otherwise, the spectral manner of the figure would be symbolically apt for individual angst, but all about him would be normal. However, the other details of the picture suggest a complex Kafka-like situation. Clearly, the terror of the figure is unique to him alone, as the solid pier he stands upon, and even more significantly, the two other figures in the background in their gentle promenade down it, are unaffected by any external happening. Yet, at the same time, the sky – that is mentioned so graphically in Munch’s diary entry – is on fire, and the water and land around the bay have lost their solidity in swirls. Thus, it appears that the universe itself is involved in the terror of the individual, yet it affects that figure alone. In this manner, it is possible to read the painting as being of a man who, in a sudden flash of realization rends for himself the veil which surrounds the comfortable bourgeois world and sees simultaneously a nefarious will in nature and his own powerlessness and meaningless. The terror of this causes him to scream.
This raises the question of whether the figurine in the museum is also suffering in a similar manner, and as such, whether the figurine is perhaps a talisman with which to warn off angst. If my reading of Munch’s painting is valid though, it would initially appear to rule out any real affinity in meaning between his work and that of the figurine in the museum. Angst is regarded as a quintessentially modern phenomenon, produced by the increasing individualization of society, one of the exclusive hallmarks of our world.
Archaic peoples lived as families and communities and not as individuals. Thus, there can be no question of them experiencing angst. Yet, angst is, of course, a form of fear. And, they certainly lived in a world that, externally to themselves, was far more fear-inducing than our own, with crop failures that could cause famine, excessively high rates of early mortality and greater exposure to diseases with less to combat them. Moreover, despite the sensationalism of news broadcasts, a modern human being is far less likely to encounter war or extreme violence than their archaic counterpart. Hence, archaic human beings could certainly be understood as having more external fear, with these fears being a natural response to a dangerous external world. Nevertheless, it has also to be stressed that archaic human beings would not have differentiated between the natural and the supernatural, seeing the natural dangers around them as being supernaturally inspired. So their sense of fear would also have been a spiritual sense of fear.
To fully grasp this, it is necessary to realize that modern human beings almost everywhere in the world, save for in large parts of Asia, whether they are personally religious or not, carry a concept of religion that comes from a deep monotheistic tradition. Those in these societies that have for centuries been shaped by the monotheistic religions that originate in the Middle East have themselves been deeply shaped by this tradition, obviously in the case of those who are religious practitioners today, but also significantly, in a very real sense, in the case of those who are not. At the center of the belief systems of Christianity or Islam is the idea of an all-powerful yet compassionate God. It is because of this background idea that some New Age believers, whilst rejecting God, have applied attributes from this tradition to the universe and designate it as a domain of compassion. Moreover, as has been seen, it is the loss of such belief that causes angst.
It has already been intimated that archaic human beings would not have viewed the universe in a benevolent way. They would have seen it as dangerous and hostile. Moreover, it would have been to them willfully hostile, as, unlike for the monotheists, it was for them the realm of capricious and sometimes spiteful supernatural powers which they would attempt to placate into allowing them to continue in the most rudimentary forms of life.
Hence, the two artworks on which this piece focuses are, in fact, closely related. For whilst Munch’s “The Scream” comes from the idea of a hostile universe vis-à-vis the individual and the figurine in Afyonkarahisar Museum almost certainly reflects this vis-à-vis a community, the fear in both seems to be inspired by a universe that is worse than indifferent to their plight and actively seeks to harm them. As such, even though both screams are originally uttered at points about four thousand years apart, they resonate with the same timbre across that space in time.
