Ice Age Art at the British Museum

This is a wonderfully Intimate exhibition, I’ve already been round it four times and I expect I’ll go round again, there’s so much to take in. Firstly the shear age of the artefacts, it really blows my mind, and I find it hard to really get my head round the dates. It’s just such a long time ago. To me the art confirmed that these people thousands of years ago were thinking and creating objects the way we do today. These people were as intellectually and as creatively developed as us. People don’t change, just the technology around them. It shows what mankind is capable of creating. That’s why the modern art had been placed next to the prehistoric pieces, but I felt this didn’t really work.  It was an unnecessary extra, and I didn’t pay much attention to it (something which I’d normally get excited about). The ice age pieces really spoke for themselves, and the craftsmanship and beauty was enough for me.

Sadly the famous lion man statuette is a replica in this exhibition, however as they’ve recently found more parts in Stadel Cave in Germany, I feel this is much more exciting. I look forward to one day seeing Lion Man as a whole.

 The exhibition space is the area in the top of the reading room, it’s very small, which is fine as the pieces themselves are small, and would be drowned in a larger area. However it was hard to see some of the pieces at times as there were so many visitors, the main difficulty being to see the detail of the art you have to get very close, blocking others views. I guess this is always going to be a tricky issue for such a popular exhibition, but I always seem to struggle with viewing artefacts at the British Museum exhibitions.

The room where they’ve projected the cave art onto the walls didn’t work for me, it would have been better to make this section bigger, and project on more walls, possibly with a winding effect as you’re walking in, as if you’re squeezing through into a cave. There was an exhibition a few years ago at the Hayward gallery where the artist had built tunnels out of cardboard, and that’s the kind of thing I imagined. Conveying the claustrophobic and narrow spaces, and sense of quietness. 

I’d encourage anyone to go visit this exhibition. As the British Museum website states ‘An exhibition 40,000 years in the making’. Definitely worth the wait.