Ice Age art : Arrival of the modern mind

Inspiring exhibition at the British Museum looking at art and decorated objects from the Ice Age.

I went along thinking I had better go but fearing it would be very worthy and I loved it. It made you think about what art really is in its purest form and how basic an instinct being creative is. It showed that ice age people had the same modern visual brain as our own.

The female figures were intensely moving as they were a record of different stages of a woman’s life. I loved the idea that the pregnant figures were probably given to women by women as a talisman for a safe birth.

The descriptions of the objects were very good and included the best definition of art I’ve seen “An expression of ideas … formed by the brain and shaped by cultural experience.” They also showed a wry sense of humour at times. There was a tendency to define everything as being a spiritual or ritual object but on one small sculpture after suggesting it may represent the spirit world the caption then says “Alternatively it may be an image of a small meal and a bag of useful feathers.”

By the later stages of the exhibition there was evidence of practiced specialists in an art form whose creations were valued and of workshops producing items.

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