Acheulean Flint Handaxe With Hole

Formerly in the collection of artist Tony Berlant (b. 1941).

First Sculpture: Handaxe to Figure Stone. 27 January - 29 April 2018. Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas.

The Origins of Sculpture. 27 September 2023 - 7 January 2024. Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece.

Berlant, Tony, and Thomas Wynn. First Sculpture: Handaxe to Figure Stone. Nasher Sculpture Center, 2018, Cat. 39.

Galanidou, Nena, et al., editors. The Origins of Sculpture: Archaeological Finds from the Old World and Lesbos 2.5 Million to 50,000 Years Before Present. University of Crete/Benaki Museum, 2023, Cat. 55.

ONE OF THE EARLIEST SURVIVING HUMAN OBJECTS TO SUGGEST A CONSCIOUS AESTHETIC CHOICE

Among the earliest surviving artifacts made by humans, Paleolithic handaxes provide a remarkable window into the history of material culture. The finest examples, such as this handaxe, appear to have been created not only for utilitarian purposes, but also with a strong sense of balance and form. The present example has been deliberately worked around a natural hole in the stone. In preserving a feature that would have made the object inherently weaker and therefore less efficient as a tool, its maker seems to have made a choice that was not governed by function alone, but by sensitivity to visual composition.

The precious few handaxes exhibiting such pronounced aesthetic decisions invite discussion as to the extent to which early toolmakers responded not only to the practical qualities of stone, but also to its formal and visual possibilities. Here, the relationship between what nature has provided and where humanity has intervened is unusually clear. The maker has not simply imposed form upon the material, but has worked in dialogue with it, preserving and accentuating an existing feature.

It is this combination of utility and aesthetic sensitivity that has made handaxes such a powerful subject of recent scholarship and exhibition. Included in both the Nasher Sculpture Center’s landmark exhibition First Sculpture: Handaxe to Figure Stone and the Benaki Museum’s The Origins of Sculpture, the present work stands as a particularly eloquent example of the idea that the roots of sculpture may lie deep in the earliest phases of human toolmaking and technological craft. Rarely does a prehistoric tool so vividly suggest the beginnings of formal awareness: not only the shaping of an implement, but the framing of an artistic form.