Ice Age 2: 'Arrival Of The Modern Mind'

Over the years I've always made regular trips to London, primarily to visit galleries and exhibitions, but for more general explorations too.  Regrettably, over the last decade my increasingly arthritic knee joints have limited my once extensive perambulations around Southwark, The City, The East End, Clerkenwell and other resonant quarters of the city.  Accordingly, I've become much less ambitious about the distances I can cover and more careful in my travel plans.  My recent trip, a few weeks ago, proved just how curtailed my abilities to wander freely around the capital have become but, less dispiritingly, also included a visit to the most affecting, thought provoking exhibition I've seen in years.

'Female Figurines', Kostienki Site Complex, Russia, Mammoth Ivory,
26,000 - 22,000 Years Old

As previously mentioned, I visited The British Museum's 'Ice Age, Arrival of The Modern Mind' exhibition after viewing the inspiring BBC 2 'Culture Show Special' program on the subject.  I expected to be engaged by the exhibits but was unprepared for just how exciting they'd prove.

Aside from a rather expressionistic audio-visual presentation on cave painting, small-scale sculptural artifacts occupy the majority of the show, some dating back over 40,000 years ago.  As the title indicates, the basic premise is that they mark the very beginnings of Modern European Humanity.  At this point, Homo Sapiens walked out of Africa, interacted with the Neanderthals and underwent an explosion of artistic, technological activity in a harsh new climate.  To emphasize this idea of them being essentially us, the show also includes a few modern artworks demonstrating visual correspondences with the main exhibits.  It's a fascinating point but I found these fairly superfluous, although potentially useful to visitors less familiar with the canon of Modern Art.

'Venus of Lspugue', Lespugue, France,
Mammoth Ivory, Approx 23,000 Old

In all honesty, the Ice Age pieces are so captivating, and unique that they require no augmentation.  I guess we all have a general, often clichéd, idea about Palaeolithic art but I was genuinely amazed by the unexpected delicacy and sophistication of this stuff.  Within moments I was peering at the stunning opening piece, the famous 23,000-year-old 'Lespugue Venus' from France and marveling at both the delicate precision with which the buttocks were delineated, and the seemingly modern nature of the figure's stylization.  To learn of its influence on Picasso is almost unnecessary; it looks like a piece of early 20th Century Cubist sculpture.

'Lion Man', Stadel Cave, Germany, Mammoth Ivory, Approx 40,000 Years Old

This sense of wonder at the expressiveness, observational clarity and technical skill on display never abated throughout the exhibition.  They can be seen in the forethought and imagination needed to sculpt the 40,000 year old, German 'Lion Man' statue by visualizing the hollow cavity within a mammoth's tusk [1.].  They are also evident in the minute precision of a tiny, dynamic water bird carving that I fell in love with.  I was even more startled by a skillfully articulated, 26,000 year old puppet, found in an isolated Czech grave alongside a skeleton with periostitic joint damage.  Whilst intrigued by the idea of its owner having been a shaman or high status individual, I also felt immense empathy towards an ancient ancestor with dodgy knees.

'Diving or Flying Water Bird', Hohle-Fels Cave, Germany,
Mammoth Ivory, Approx. 40,000 Years Old 

'Articulated Puppet Figure', Brno, Czech Republic,
Mammoth Ivory, Approx. 26,000 Years Old

The small scale of these artifacts can be explained logically by the need for portable possessions for a nomadic people following the herds between campsites and cave refuges and, indeed, many of the pieces are perforated, indicating they were intended to be worn.  However, it's amazing how carefully incised and delineated much of the decoration is when one considers the difficulty of working so minutely with an edged tool one must make first by napping a flint.

'Incised Drawing of Young Male Reindeer', La Madeleine, Framce,
Reindeer Bone, 16,000 - 12,000 Years Old

As the European climate warmed appreciably approximately 20,000 years ago Palaeolithic art experienced something of an innovative Renaissance and It's fascinating to watch these drawing skills evolve from the earlier painstaking patterns of hatched lines and dots into the elegant, fluid, linear mode used to describe game animals in the exhibition's later pieces.  Matisse would be proud of such line work.

'Incised Drawing of Two Deer', Le Chaffaud Cave, France, Prepared Bone,
16,000 - 12,000 Years Old

This transition from early to later styles is particularly interesting with reference to the depiction of the female form.  It's hardly surprising that fertility and reproduction would preoccupy such a small, vulnerable population attempting to prevail against hostile conditions.  As the show demonstrates, early female figurines were numerous and often place stylized emphasis on pregnant bellies, full breasts and ripe fecundity.  Stylized female genitalia number amongst the earliest cave wall pictograms and one small carving in the exhibition even seems to depict the act of giving birth.  There is evidence that many Paleolithic artists may actually have been female. [2.]  

'Dolne Vestonice Woman', Dolne Vestonice.
Czech Republic, Fired Earth,
31,000 - 27,000 Years Old

However, it's striking that later representations of women, from the period after the ice sheets retreated north, tend to be sleeker; more abstracted; even more polished.  Could it be that, at a time of slightly easier living conditions and, one assumes, growing human populations, a woman's aesthetic sex appeal became as important as her fertility?  Did a wider range of available food sources partially liberate some men from constant hunting to develop their own ideals of more objectified feminine beauty?  Might the integration of ornate decoration and ingenious functionality in the later tools and weapons; the presence of a fascinating spinning disk 'toy' and a flamboyant set of delicate beads and garment 'trimmings', indicate the value of status symbols; the enjoyment of leisure (or play) time; or even fashion consciousness, amongst our distant forebears?  It's hard not to see some of the obsessions of our own decadent, pleasure-addicted societies emerging even back then.

'Willendorf Venus', Willendorf, Austria, Limestone
& Red Ochre, Approx. 25,000 Years Old.  The Most
Famous of All Palaeolithic Female Figures

'Female Figure', Laugerie Basse,
France, Mammoth Ivory, Approx.
13,500 Years Old

The exhibition left me thinking hard and feeling rather moved by the whole experience.  Certainly, it offers a powerful affirmation of our own identity as a species and it's hard not to feel a kinship with those distant ancestors, (a little of whose DNA we all now share), resolutely defying the odds to instigate everything we have become.  However, I felt a powerful personal connection too.  Evidence of specific 'studio' areas of certain caves filled with discards or practice pieces [3.], and researches into the time needed to produce many of the artifacts, suggest that the practice of art and craft was valued and validated as a specialism right from the get-go.  It appears that the sensibilities and activities intrinsic to my own sense of self are, rather than a peripheral, mildly eccentric indulgence as sometimes suggested, actually fundamental to what makes us all Human. 

On protesting legs, I hobbled out of The British Museum into 21st Century London, and thought about the vast distances we've all walked to get this far.

'Ice Age Art, Arrival of the Modern Mind' runs at The British Museum, London, until 26 May 2013.  Trust me, - you should take a look.

[1.]:  German Experimental Archaeologist Wulf Hein has analyzed the sculpture by using authentic techniques to make a painstaking reproduction from fossilized mammoth ivory.  He estimates it took approx. 400 hours of constant work to produce the original, suggesting the artist may have been excused those duties more associated with mere survival, at least during its production.  The tusk was carefully cut to allow the apex of its internal pulp cavity to form the division of the statue's legs.

[2.]:  Early cave paintings include numerous examples of negative prints produced by spitting pigment around the artist's left hand.  Overall dimensions and individual finger length indicate that many of these were female.  The prime example is the 'Panel of Hands' from Spain's El Castillo cave.

[3.]:  Numerous fragments of equine sculpture, found together at the Spanish Istuaritz site, may indicate the existence of a designated sculptor's studio within the cave at least 13,500 years ago.