The questions, as well as the answers on the origin of Art, never end. Over time always new insights and discoveries are added. The importance of digging in the most remote time and ask yourself how and when are started human needs and experiences of how and why to exceed the body and the time through the imagination, remain dilemmas. Try to answer these dilemmas become increasingly important.
Read and interpret the signs of those who have begun to think and imagine spaces, worlds and objects, not only useful from a practical point of view, but absolutely essential from a spiritual, aesthetic and sacred point of view, is a horizon that we look with deep interest and astonishment.
From this research we can see an invaluable dimension. It is an incalculable human capital, especially in terms of reflection on the recent past and the future.
For authors these issues remain crucial. A search of this kind creates inquietude, just for the certainty that such questions will ever have a definitive answer.
The beauty of this research is in the fact that you can have many different answers, often all fascinating. The answers in the art field will re-found primarily in the works and in the many artistic productions in every part of the world. The interpretation of the signs and the primordial gestures are issues that, sooner or later, almost everyone unknowingly will face.
The meaning and the reasons for this issue, we constantly try an analysis and reading.How you came and you come to the representation, the construction of an image of a figure and its transformation? As the law is an abstraction of signs into symbols and how we have to bring back the memory of our culture? What is the meaning of 'processing of materials up to the resulting aesthetic and poetic language?
The investigation and questioning force that created what is now, what has come down to us, starting even from the first signs of the Paleolithic, are almost inexhaustible.
Without these premises I would have never started my explorations in Puglia, on the Romandato Torrent, in the Gargano, to search Paleolithic stones worked by man I now wander through these places as a dowser, like a sleepwalker led by a dream. Really, I consider this research perfectly in continuity with that of music composer.
It's incredible to see how for these men, so-called primitives, the vision and dream mysteriously took shape, form and truth in the "blow by blow" and "stone on stone."It 's true, or at least certainly gives us a measure, that the classification of the genus Homo, both Erectus, Neanderthalensis or Sapiens, depart from these principles, not just from standing.
The long time did miss the precise meaning of the sacred cults, but the charm, the beauty, the depth, the immediacy of the artistic gesture and ultimately the magic that surround a stone worked by man, they remain unalterd.
In recent and contemporary art, the languages of abstract art of the historical twentieth century, signs and elaboration of forms functional to the representation of the external and internal world, they come from very far.
What is due is due to what has been, to what over the millennia became and remained "inside" the things we see now. It seems banal to say, but nothing comes from nothing.
The story has a layer made of an infinity of signs that perhaps can be decoded. The language of forms of the highly stylized primitive sculptures is very deeply linked to imagination, vision and sensitivity.
The sensitivity is the only key secure reading that allows us to perceive the abstract and primitive signs that bear witness to the search for the sacred, life, death, fertility, strength.
My great passion for research of ancient human signs and therefore also for Palaeolithic objects, inspired me, as I said, to do some research over the Romandato Torrent, at Rodi Garganico.
The Gargano promontory is one of the greatest and important Paleolithic layers in Europe.The Torrent, which for most of the year is totally dry, has a bottom made of stones and an impressive amount of flint. In this place there are many processing waste and very beautiful tools. The quality and the colors of this flint make the objects among the most beautiful that exist in the world.
This place is truly magical. The Gargano promontory, and specially the torrent, is a kind of time machine that makes you forget, once inside, the passing of the hours.
Around there are prickly pear and rocks. Between authentic Mediterranean vegetation and rocks quite sunny, yelps of far dogs, bird calls and technological silence (you do not hear cars), seems almost to live in a place off the map, it seems to be in Africa.
On the Torrent, listening to my steps between the stones, in the time I used the eye to glimpse, in the surface station, Palaeolithic artefacts.
One day, at the end of last summer, I again picked up some point and some scraper and along with these, even a strange artifact that at the beginning I had no idea to interpret. The challenge, as always, is to find a sculpture.
This "strange" piece questioned me for days. Finally I arrived at one of the possible conclusions, of course comforted by other scientific and specialist sources. It is, in fact, a sensational discovery, that is a bicephalyc sculpture..
Fig.A A small bicephalic anthropomorphic sculpture in flint. It represents two heads joined for the nape. On the left a head of Homo sapiens archaic with forehead and chin and on the right a bird's head.
Found in Romandato torrent, Rodi Garganico, Foggia, ItalY.
Middle Paleolithic.
Frontal view.
Fig.B Back of the sculpture.
The sculpture, in flint, was found a few hundred meters from the mouth of the Romandato Torrent (Rodi Garganico, Foggia). It is 6.50 cm long and 4.50 cm high. The attribution age dates back to the Lower Paleolithic, Mousterian civilization, dating then around 80,000 to 50,000 years ago.
It reproduces a human head, perhaps a Homo Sapiens, because he has chin and forehead, joined by the neck to a bird's head. The bird could be a species of large birds existing in that period. The sculpture is entirely finely worked. The eye at first was a natural deformation of the flint. Then has been a little enlarged by wirling, but also emphasized by two, three well-placed blows. The head of the great bird is very well done. The reason for the production of this sculpture is is certainly a religious cult unknown to us.
The eye hole of the bird probably allowed this sculpture to be worn on the neck, but also, given the precision and the perfect balance of the shape, to be exposed and placed horizontally for a more stable and careful observation.
I hope that this Torrent, (which I call the Torrent, with a capital T, as in the Roman tradition the Tiberby relevance is called River; Famous is the quote in P.P. Pasolini: "Tramp not even River takes him away"). I hope, I was saying, that Romandato, Torrent of Sacred Stones, may have, for a long time, the opportunity to tell the story of Man and to be saved and protected, from ignorance, indifference, negligence by all those who would like to turn it into a rubbish dump.
Stefano Taglietti (composer - Rome 1965)
Author of the most important of his generation.
It possesses a rich and varied catalog of more than 130 musical works.
Its production includes many chamber music works and works for ensemble, Orchestra, in addition to seven works and nine melodramas. Commission received by major institutions such as the Venice Biennale, the National Academy of Santa Cecilia, French Academy, Montepulciano International Yard and many others. His music has been followed in Europe, USA, Eastern Europe and Orient in the most important concert halls and concert seasons.
E-mail:stefanotaglietti@yahoo.it
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