The heads in this piece do have a certain bleak grandeur. They have expressive faces while remaining big rocks, thanks to their sculptor. The influence of the Moai can't really be missed.
Incidentally, when I first read the header "Georgia's Easter Island" I thought it might be the other Georgia. Southern folk art has produced some wondrous things. But the Eurasian Georgia is quite interesting too. In modern times it might best be known as the home of Josef Stalin, who much preferred to speak Russian, although he did speak Georgian to his mother. (Everybody has a soft spot, I guess.) It was also on the Eastern edges of the Roman Empire, although it doesn't seem Romanized in most respects.
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The Sno heads pictured on the link are very interesting but Atlas Obscura, never really generous with images, always leaves me wanting more. So I found this Medium article about the place and the artist. It didn't take long to read and the pictures of the village that include Merab's house and workshop show an austere yet beautiful environment.
The Easter Island Moai are fascinating and would be amazing to see in person. It was Thor Heyerdahl who first excavated the hillside statues discovering in the process they had bodies. They are definitely imposing. Merab Piranishvili's sculptures owe the Moai their inspiration, but his vision and execution are far more beautiful.
There's definitely a large number of creative people everywhere. Unfortunately there's less naive art to be found anywhere these days.
It appears the main Roman influence left in Eurasian Georgia is the Eastern Orthodox Church. Their icons are also wondrous examples of holy art.
Thank you for pointing me toward the Medium article. Yes, there are more lovely images in it, and it also provides more context as to where this is coming from. The author, I'm guessing, is Georgian himself or at least has roots there, so he's on the ground as it were.
Thor Heyerdahl has to be the great real life archetype of the academic-adventurer, and it's really exciting what he found in the Easter Islands. The Rapa Nui people likely had what they saw as a pragmatic purpose in building them, although they're great creative pieces too. The Sno statues are more pure art.
It's harder to maintain that quality of naivete than it used to be. Maybe that will change, as people realize that neither mass media nor social media really offer them anything.
Georgia's an unusual case in that they do have some visual and sacramental ties to the old Empire but they're language is entirely its own thing, and written in an alphabet that really veered off from the other European models, although I think it is related to the common Phoenician base.
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