In 1956 the sculptor William Turnbull wrote: “Sculpture used to look ‘modern’; now we make objects that might have been dug up at any point in the past 40,000 years.”
Turnbull was writing for the exhibition catalogue accompanying This Was Tomorrow at the Whitechapel Gallery. Today, the exhibition Ice Age Art at the British Museum turns Turnbull’s assertion on its head; it presents 40,000-year-old objects as art and as products of the modern mind.
The brain is at the heart of this extraordinary and important exhibition. As its curator Jill Cook explains: “All art is the product of the remarkable structure and organisation of the human brain.”
The startling revelation she goes on to make is that the brain, that is the modern mind as we understand it now, actually emerged just over 100,000 years ago and, moreover, it had the capacity for complex behaviour, including an impulse to create art.
The objects Cook has assembled for Ice Age Art were all made in what we now call Europe between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago.
The fact that they are shown as art at the British Museum, and not as archaeological artefacts, is a surprise and requires us to make a certain conceptual leap – it is not what we normally expect our museums to do.
And while the exhibition seeks to shed new light on old objects, is it really art? And if so, can we entertain the idea of Ice Age artists?
Erudite and accessible
Certainly in this exhibition, materials, making, colour, shape and form are emphasised in the way objects are displayed, lit and labelled. Interpretation is kept to a minimum. Nothing is large here and some objects are truly tiny.
Occasionally some of the display cases feel over-full and smaller items can be very hard to see, especially when the temporary exhibition galleries at the British Museum are busy. And many of these exhibits do require prolonged, close scrutiny before they fully register.
I am probably more familiar with these objects and Cook’s premise than most, since I first met her about 14 years ago when I was a young curator at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds.
We later had the chance to work together on what was the first-ever exhibition of Ice Age art, in 2010 at the Henry Moore Institute, a small-scale forerunner of what she has now achieved.
Cook has remained an exciting and enthusiastic guide to the Ice Age, and the accompanying catalogue she has written for the show is erudite, accessible and, above all, fascinating.
Ice Age art is an exhibition that has been a long time coming, about 40,000 years to be almost precise (the dating of such objects is still not an exact science). As a visitor to the exhibition the first simple but staggering fact to absorb is the age of the exhibits. The fact they have survived for so long is remarkable.
Transferable skills
Even harder to appreciate is the idea that humans in the Ice Age, whom we might assume would be more concerned with survival, took care and often a great deal of time to not only decorate functional items but to make objects with no apparent function at all.
As the exhibition shows, stone, bone, ivory, clay and antler were modelled, carved and engraved with great realism and skill – normally benchmarks of what nowadays might popularly be regarded as “good” art.
We have to bear in mind that, in the Ice Age, people first had to make the tools they needed to use before they could make any actual objects. We might call these transferable skills, since they were just as adept at making the tools for survival, as well as making art.
However, as the exhibition illustrates, to conceive a figure that did not exist, such as the Lion Man, and to make it with articulated arms and legs from a single tusk, required more than skill. It required imagination and the spirit of invention. And the Lion Man is one of the oldest pieces on display.
Modernist links
One way of making Ice Age art seem less alien is to show us recent, analogous artworks with which we might be more familiar. Hence Cook has included works by artists, including Picasso, Matisse, Moore and Pasmore.
Finding equivalents for what we don’t know, in what we do know, can be a useful curatorial conceit but here they are perhaps the least satisfactory element in an otherwise very successful show.
Their presence suggests pre-historic makers and more recent artists shared certain concerns and encountered similar problems with materials, composition and representation.
While Cook is not presenting a direct link between the pre-historic and some periods in the 20th century, nonetheless, the presence of the more recent art implies that there is a continuum. The few examples Cook has included feel rather partial and, I think, the Ice Age objects convince as art well enough without them.
Until now, there has been a reluctance to openly refer to Ice Age objects as art. Perhaps this is symptomatic of a pervading prejudice towards sculpture. After all, it is about 100 years ago that cave paintings were rediscovered and then readily accepted as art.
The decorated sanctuaries at Chauvet, Lascaux, Niaux and Altamira are now well known despite the fact that few of us have actually seen them at first hand. We accept Ice Age people painted the scenes they witnessed around them.
A few of the sculptural objects, such as “Fanny” the dancer and the Willendorf woman, have entered a wider consciousness, but on the whole such items have remained virtually invisible, despite the fact they have been on view in museums for years.
At the same time they seem to have been considered something – anything – other than sculpture, as if categorising an object intended for use in a ritual meant more than categorising it as art.
Compelling argument
If the realistic figures depicting women, men and animals have proven hard to accept as art so far, then some of the more abstract works in the exhibition will be near impossible.
Can a few incised lines on a limestone lump really represent a woman? Is a gently modulated pebble a rendering of female form? More importantly, is such abstraction an aesthetic or stylistic choice as opposed to a lack of skill?
Cook’s answer to these questions is “yes” and the exhibition she has mounted more than fulfils her claim.
Ultimately, Ice Age art is a compelling exhibition that convincingly shows us that human artistry and intellectual achievement have existed for a very long time.
Stephen Feeke is the curator at the New Art Centre, Roche Court, Wiltshire
Turnbull was writing for the exhibition catalogue accompanying This Was Tomorrow at the Whitechapel Gallery. Today, the exhibition Ice Age Art at the British Museum turns Turnbull’s assertion on its head; it presents 40,000-year-old objects as art and as products of the modern mind.
The brain is at the heart of this extraordinary and important exhibition. As its curator Jill Cook explains: “All art is the product of the remarkable structure and organisation of the human brain.”
The startling revelation she goes on to make is that the brain, that is the modern mind as we understand it now, actually emerged just over 100,000 years ago and, moreover, it had the capacity for complex behaviour, including an impulse to create art.
The objects Cook has assembled for Ice Age Art were all made in what we now call Europe between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago.
The fact that they are shown as art at the British Museum, and not as archaeological artefacts, is a surprise and requires us to make a certain conceptual leap – it is not what we normally expect our museums to do.
And while the exhibition seeks to shed new light on old objects, is it really art? And if so, can we entertain the idea of Ice Age artists?
Erudite and accessible
Certainly in this exhibition, materials, making, colour, shape and form are emphasised in the way objects are displayed, lit and labelled. Interpretation is kept to a minimum. Nothing is large here and some objects are truly tiny.
Occasionally some of the display cases feel over-full and smaller items can be very hard to see, especially when the temporary exhibition galleries at the British Museum are busy. And many of these exhibits do require prolonged, close scrutiny before they fully register.
I am probably more familiar with these objects and Cook’s premise than most, since I first met her about 14 years ago when I was a young curator at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds.
We later had the chance to work together on what was the first-ever exhibition of Ice Age art, in 2010 at the Henry Moore Institute, a small-scale forerunner of what she has now achieved.
Cook has remained an exciting and enthusiastic guide to the Ice Age, and the accompanying catalogue she has written for the show is erudite, accessible and, above all, fascinating.
Ice Age art is an exhibition that has been a long time coming, about 40,000 years to be almost precise (the dating of such objects is still not an exact science). As a visitor to the exhibition the first simple but staggering fact to absorb is the age of the exhibits. The fact they have survived for so long is remarkable.
Transferable skills
Even harder to appreciate is the idea that humans in the Ice Age, whom we might assume would be more concerned with survival, took care and often a great deal of time to not only decorate functional items but to make objects with no apparent function at all.
As the exhibition shows, stone, bone, ivory, clay and antler were modelled, carved and engraved with great realism and skill – normally benchmarks of what nowadays might popularly be regarded as “good” art.
We have to bear in mind that, in the Ice Age, people first had to make the tools they needed to use before they could make any actual objects. We might call these transferable skills, since they were just as adept at making the tools for survival, as well as making art.
However, as the exhibition illustrates, to conceive a figure that did not exist, such as the Lion Man, and to make it with articulated arms and legs from a single tusk, required more than skill. It required imagination and the spirit of invention. And the Lion Man is one of the oldest pieces on display.
Modernist links
One way of making Ice Age art seem less alien is to show us recent, analogous artworks with which we might be more familiar. Hence Cook has included works by artists, including Picasso, Matisse, Moore and Pasmore.
Finding equivalents for what we don’t know, in what we do know, can be a useful curatorial conceit but here they are perhaps the least satisfactory element in an otherwise very successful show.
Their presence suggests pre-historic makers and more recent artists shared certain concerns and encountered similar problems with materials, composition and representation.
While Cook is not presenting a direct link between the pre-historic and some periods in the 20th century, nonetheless, the presence of the more recent art implies that there is a continuum. The few examples Cook has included feel rather partial and, I think, the Ice Age objects convince as art well enough without them.
Until now, there has been a reluctance to openly refer to Ice Age objects as art. Perhaps this is symptomatic of a pervading prejudice towards sculpture. After all, it is about 100 years ago that cave paintings were rediscovered and then readily accepted as art.
The decorated sanctuaries at Chauvet, Lascaux, Niaux and Altamira are now well known despite the fact that few of us have actually seen them at first hand. We accept Ice Age people painted the scenes they witnessed around them.
A few of the sculptural objects, such as “Fanny” the dancer and the Willendorf woman, have entered a wider consciousness, but on the whole such items have remained virtually invisible, despite the fact they have been on view in museums for years.
At the same time they seem to have been considered something – anything – other than sculpture, as if categorising an object intended for use in a ritual meant more than categorising it as art.
Compelling argument
If the realistic figures depicting women, men and animals have proven hard to accept as art so far, then some of the more abstract works in the exhibition will be near impossible.
Can a few incised lines on a limestone lump really represent a woman? Is a gently modulated pebble a rendering of female form? More importantly, is such abstraction an aesthetic or stylistic choice as opposed to a lack of skill?
Cook’s answer to these questions is “yes” and the exhibition she has mounted more than fulfils her claim.
Ultimately, Ice Age art is a compelling exhibition that convincingly shows us that human artistry and intellectual achievement have existed for a very long time.
Stephen Feeke is the curator at the New Art Centre, Roche Court, Wiltshire
Project data
- Cost undisclosed
- Main funders Betsy and Jack Ryan; Henry Moore Foundation; Patrons of the British Museum; American Friends of the British Museum
- Exhibition design Gary Egleton
- Lighting design Studio ZNA
- Construction Mark II
- Mounts Richard Rogers Conservation
- Digital media design Newangle
- Digital media production Sysco
- Graphics production BAF Graphics; John Harries
- Fine art transport Momart
- Exhibition ends 26 May
