Sculpture is an expression of the world reshaped in wood, stone, or some other material in three-dimensional form. Sculptors express themselves differently in this form of art in different times periods. Sometimes sculptors are reflecting community concerns and using these materials as a form of magic or religious expression and sometimes as a personal expression of deep-seated views of how humans relate to the world. Early sculpting tended to have a magical element, as in ancient fertility images to encourage the having of children, or in images of heroes in later eras to encourage others to have courage as well.
The Cycladic or pre-Greek era is represented at the Getty Museum in California by a number of works, such as the Greek island marble figurine "Harpist," from about 2500 B.C. This is a statuette of a musician holding his instrument before him. He is holding it in the configuration necessary for playing it, but he is not playing it and instead has his hands at rest, supporting the harp. The piece was sculpted from a single piece of stone with the simplest tools. Little is known about the culture of the Cycladic islands, and we do not understand the purpose of figures such as the harpist or the more common female figures produced by this culture. However, many of the surviving pieces have been found in graves. Most of the other Cycladic musicians that have been found are playing their instruments, which makes this statuette unusual. Some elements of the original piece are missing: "Some elements such as the hair were originally added in paint, but in general, the modeling of anatomical details has been artfully reduced to a minimum" (The J. Paul Getty Handbook of the Collections 27).
These statuettes from the pre-Greek era are products of a neolithic, or stone-age, culture. At this time, human beings had started to settle in one place, shifting from a nomadic to a sedentary way of life. The agricultural lif...