The ancient Cycladic culture flourished in the islands of the Aegean Sea from c. 3300 to 1100 BCE. Along with the Minoan civilization and Mycenaean Greece, the Cycladic people are counted among the three major Aegean cultures. Cycladic art therefore comprises one of the three main branches of Aegean art.
The best known type of artwork that has survived is the marble figurine, most commonly a single full-length female figure with arms folded across the front. The type is known to archaeologists as a "FAF" for "folded-arm figure(ine)". Apart from a sharply-defined nose, the faces are a smooth blank, although there is evidence on some that they were originally painted. Considerable numbers of these are known, although most were removed illicitly from their unrecorded archaeological context, which seems usually to be a burial.
Neolithic art
Almost all information known regarding Neolithic art of the Cyclades comes from the excavation site of Saliagos off Antiparos. Pottery of this period is similar to that of Crete and the Greek mainland. Sinclair Hood writes: "A distinctive shape is a bowl on a high foot comparable with a type which occurs in the mainland Late Neolithic."
Cycladic sculptures
The best-known art of this period are the marble figures usually called "idols" or "figurines", though neither name is exactly accurate: the former term suggests a religious function which is by no means agreed on by experts, and the latter does not properly apply to the largest figures, which are nearly life size. These marble figures are seen scattered around the Aegean, suggesting that these figures were popular amongst the people of Crete and mainland Greece. Perhaps the most famous of these figures are musicians: one a harp-player the other a pipe-player. Dating to approximately 2500 BCE, these musicians are sometimes considered “the earliest extant musicians from the Aegean.”
The majority of these figures, however, are highly stylized representations of the female human form, typically having a flat, geometric quality that influenced some 20th-century modern art. However, this may be a modern misconception as there is evidence that the sculptures were originally brightly painted. A majority of the figurines are female, depicted nude, and with arms folded across the stomach, typically with the right arm held below the left. Some writers who view these artifacts from their own anthropological or psychological viewpoint have assumed that they are representative of a Great Goddess of nature, perhaps in a tradition continuous with that of Neolithic female figures such as the Venus of Willendorf. There is no consensus on their significance. They have been variously interpreted as cult images of the gods, images of death, children's dolls, and other things. One authority feels they were "more than dolls and probably less than sacrosanct idols."
Suggestions that these images were idols in the strict sense—cult objects which were the focus of ritual worship—are unsupported by any archeological evidence. What the archeological evidence does suggest is that these images were regularly used in funerary practice: they have all been found in graves. Yet at least some of them show clear signs of having been repaired, implying that they were objects valued by the deceased during life and were not made specifically for burial. Larger figures were also sometimes broken up so that only part of them was buried, a phenomenon for which there is no explanation. These figures apparently were buried equally with both men and women. Such figures were not found in every grave. While the sculptures are most frequently found laid on their backs in graves, larger examples may have been set up in shrines or dwelling places.
Early Cycladic art
Early Cycladic art is divided into three periods: EC I (2800–2500 BCE), EC II (2500–2200 BCE), and EC III (2200–2000 BCE). The art is by no means strictly confined to one of these periods, and in some cases, even representative of more than one of the Cycladic islands. The art of EC I is best represented on the islands of Paros, Antiparos, and Amorgos, while EC II is primarily seen on Syros, and EC III on Melos.
Early Cycladic I (Grotta-Pelos Culture, 3300–2700 BCE)