Cathy's Art Diary

Excellent online lecture from the British Museum introducing their current exhibition on Stonehenge. The curator of the show, Neil Wilkin, guided us clearly through the thinking behind it and the reasons for picking particular objects and for the layout. He took each section of the show and talked about what it covered and highlighted some of the pieces. I’d already been to the show twice when I listened to this talk and yet I learnt a lot and want to go again! I’d not realised that each section had an object from Stonehenge itself as the focus then used other works to put it into context. I’d also now noticed that all the stone axes in an early section were made from stone from the northern Alps and brought to Britain despite Britain having suitable stone probably because of its emotional resonance. If you can’t get to the show watch this, it’s available on YouTube, as it gives a good flavour of the show and you get a real sense of the curators enthusiasm for the subject. ...

Awesome exhibition at the British Museum looking at Stonehenge and putting it into context. I went along to this suspecting it would be a bit dull and worthy but it was very engaging and I learned so much. In fact I’ve been back again for a second visit and I may well go again! The show has six stages to lead you roughly through the chronology of over 2000 years of pre-history, from working with nature and the pre-agricultural people though to quite sophisticated trading by sea. Each section was anchored by a piece from Stonehenge itself. It was full of complex stories and ideas from an era I had expected to find quite simplistic. The exhibits are stunning and at times you almost can’t believe what you are looking at. There was some amazing gold work including a wonderful shoulder cape found in Wales. Most moving were people’s burial goods and I was fascinated by an archer who had travelled from Switzerland only to be buried at Stonehenge. I was amazed at a wooden walkway which h...

Interesting exhibition at the British Museum looking at the art and people of southern Africa. I loved the first section on the ancient art of the area. As it is one of the places where human life began so it is also one of the areas where art began. I was moved by a small pebble with natural markings like a face. This demonstrated the first stage of artistic sensibility, collecting objects which mean something to you, called nominid curiosity. This stone was found in a cave with human remains. It hadn’t come from the surrounding area so must have been found and kept by those people. The show also took you through the other stages from decorating objects and bodies including a necklace of shells which is some of the earliest evidence of body decoration, through to one of the earliest pieces of 2D art, a wonderful antelope type animal scratched onto a rock. The history of the area was told well through the art and I finally understand the Boer War. It had always been ...

Good small exhibition at the British Museum looking at prehistoric paintings on rocks in southern Africa. The British Museum has been actively recording this art since 1875   painted by the ancestors of the San|Bushmen, small nomadic groups of hunter, gatherers. Most show animals and appear in caves and on boulders. There were some great photographs of the work but only one real piece. It was from Zimbabwe showing antelope in red ochre on pink quartzite. It seems to have been part of a rock face and shows signs of being painted a brush. I am fascinated by early art works like these as they point to fundamental human need to record the world around them. Closes on 20 November 2016  

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...