Ice Age Art: Arrival of the Modern Mind

The British Museum's current blockbuster is a gathering of artefacts made around the turn of the last Ice Age. It argues that the existence of these 40-10,000 year old objects proves that by then man had evolved into what he is now, with the same instincts and capacity for thought. It goes on to argue that the discovery of specialised workshops and work done by experimental archeologists suggest specialist artists existed, and that means there must have been organised social groups - one hunts, another makes - and given that there are individual caves where there are similar paintings made thousands of years apart then these social groups must have retained very consistent values over an enormous length of time.


One thing I was delighted to see was the acknowledgement of, or maybe even obsession with, the fact that we will never know what the purpose of the objects was and although its fun to guess its ultimately futile. As such the secondary message was that we can't do other than appreciate these as we would contemporary art. To this end the exhibition tried to show how art had been influenced by the discovery of these objects but I found this a half-hearted distraction - a photograph of Picasso's studio, a stone Henry Moore, a couple of Matisse prints.

So what of the objects themselves? They range from the very famous - the Venus of Espugue that obsessed Picasso, a reproduction of the lion-man (the original is in a lab in Germany as some of the missing bits have recently been discovered and are being re-attached) - to things that were completely new to me. I will concentrate on just a few.

The lion-man is an underwhelming object in photographs, but in the (false) flesh it comes to life. Carved from a mammoth tusk, it is a man with a lion's head. It is simple, relaxed and stylised yet utterly sure of itself. What really struck me was its size. It is the perfect size to be grasped around the waist by a man's hand. Indeed this is really evident in the video that shows someone making a reproduction with Ice Age tools. When you consider its feet are cut at an angle so that it would not be able to stand on its own you can't help but wonder. It could have been made to lean against a wall or in a niche but with its back leaning forwards as it follows the curve of the tusk it would look like it were cowering - hardly lion-like. So surely it was made to be held. Even today, held above your head there would be a kind of "By the power of Greyskull" moment, or held in front of you before a crowd or between you and an individual there would be a clear statement of power. I know I said its futile to guess, but that's my point. These objects are so engaging, ambiguous and alive that its very difficult not to be carried away into a realm of imagination by the best of them and that is what sets them apart as masterpieces few artists are capable of matching.

Perhaps my favourite object is the tiny diving bird. It half the size of my little finger and utterly compelling. When you scour the web there is an assumption it is diving through the air and even the card accompanying the exhibit in the show speculates about the spiritual role of birds in flight. I disagree. It looks an awful lot like a cormorant underwater to me. The neck is perhaps a little short but I think the distortion from the surface of the water accounts for that. I see cormorants along this stretch of the river every day and, if I'm lucky and the water is clear and the sun is in the right direction, when I'm up high sometimes I glimpse them underwater. This reflects where, for me, a lot of the strength of the work comes from. To be able to accurately carve something moving that quickly, which you will only ever glimpse, requires an unimaginable understanding of your subject. This is a point Andrew Graham Dixon picked up in the preview show on the BBC when comparing the horses of George Stubbs with the the work on display here. Stubbs dissected horses. He knew every sinew and every vein and it shows  in his paintings. Ice age men would perhaps have spent a large chunk of their lives killing, gutting, butchering and eating the subjects of their art. They are likely to have known the appearance, texture, weight, smell and taste of every part of their subjects anatomy in a way no modern artist does, even if they didn't understand the function of each part as we do.

I do wonder about the most common raw material, tusk. The drawings in particular have a particular quality which is consistent across thousands of miles and thousands of years. They feature very clean, precise yet lively lines. I suspect it is inherent to the process - scratching with a very fine and sharp implement on a surface which maybe has softer and harder areas. Most of the lines seem to be a constant width yet the effect is of a width that varies, so I would speculate the lines are deeper in some areas than others. If I can find an equivalent material I would like to explore this further.

In conclusion, it is a compelling exhibition which is thoroughly recommended. Man has been capable of extra-ordinary things for a lot longer than we might think. As an artist, the key lessons are not new but are of fundamental importance. Rigour is everything. Learn your subject intimately through observing it every which way you can. Then take your time and anything is possible.