This Leopard relief was created by the people of Çatalhöyük. An ancient
pre-historical culture that existed in present day Turkey at the very
cusp of the agricultural sciences. Their proto-city was a mass of simple
jumbled boxes that utilized the horizontal space of the roof as both
public throughway and plaza. Doorways in the settlement tended to be
few, low and interior. In this way the construction and demolition of Çatalhöyük was likely ongoing from 7,500 BCE through 5,700 BCE. It resulted in a 20 meter mound facing the Konya Plain. The importance of hunting and agriculture on the social mechanisms and personal lives of the residents of Çatalhöyük is very much unknown. What is known is that the patterns on these leopards
is really fascinating. Combined with the marks used to identify the
claws this image with it's low relief becomes practically animated. The
play at liveliness by elevating simple contrasting elements is clearly
an ancient visual strategy. When put into a relational context with the
modern works of Fernand Leger or of street artist Keith Haring one can
easily see similarities in the visual language emerging despite the likely
differences of these artists experiences to those of the earlier people that crafted
these Leopards. This is just some sweet stuff in the morning.
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