Ice Age Art exhibition at British Museum

Ivory carved pieces from the Ice Age exhibition

This exhibition, "Ice Age Art -   arrival of the modern mind" at the British Museum, London,  is a most  exciting and satisfying event .  Most of the pieces on display are very small, probably made to be easily portable in the nomadic times (20,000 to 40,000 years ago) when they were made.  They are mainly carvings from or incising in mammoth tusk.  Many of them are now partially destroyed and the original  smoothness of the tusk has cracked into a yellow and textured appearance, which gives them a rugged yet delicate look.  For such small sculptures these works have amazing power. 

The exhibition has been very well curated and themed.  One of the main points made was the similarity between ourselves and our ancestors from those times, who obviously also had the ability to transcend their lives through imagination and art.  In fact I experienced a great sense of recognition in the simplicity and strength of the work.  Many of the pieces reflect the importance of prey animals in the lives of Ice Age peoples, not only as a means of sustenance, but as a link to the spiritual world.  The pieces would symbolize this link, and like so many works in the British Museum, they retain an immense charisma.

Many of the statuettes were symbolic figures of women, with exaggerated breasts, stomachs and genitalia.  It is even suggested that, from the angle of the carving, they could have been self portraits. The function of these statuettes can only be guessed at.  One small model is obviously the portrait of an individual woman, with a damaged or blind eye.  Over many thousands of years  the female statuettes gradually became much more abstract, just a slender silhouette with a hint of breasts and buttocks. 

Several pieces (purpose unknown?) are decorated with abstract patterns.  Rather than these patterns having aesthetic or formal value, it is suggested that they have a social and spiritual meaning.  We are so blinded by formalism that it is refreshing to think of pattern in this way.

A reference to neuroscientist, Semir Zeki, indicates s that visual perception is a much more ancient sense than the use of language.  Zeki's experiments famously show that  a particular area of the brain lights up (and we therefore experience pleasure) when we see something beautiful.  I think my brain must have been fizzling all the way around this exhibition!   Wonderful.  

Here is a link to an article about a visit to the exhibition by  Kathleen Jamie