Ice Age art...

"arrival of the modern mind" is on at the British Museum in London and I'm gonna miss it! Boo hoo. Many items are carved from ivory or bone and show animals and imaginative half animal and half human creatures such as the 'lion man.' The oldest pieces are from 40,000 years and demonstrate in their beauty and craft that humans back then were capable like us of abstracting the world into symbols and signs. These ancients were closer to nature than us and particularly keen to represent and objectify the animals they observed, lived among, hunted, domesticated and ate.

Like us these ancient types were particularly fond of horse and this is ably shown through many horse sculptures including one labelled simply "Can". An abstract piece "Can" asks us to think of horse but in a can. We are challenged to imagine not only a can but within it a horse or part thereof. Are we so removed from our grizzled forebears sitting at the mouth of some damp cave carving shapes? Lips pursed in concentration to help them better classify food. This most prescient piece reaches across 40,000 years to ask a fundamental question as important then as it is now: just because it says horse on the label can we be sure it's horse in the can? Of course, the question today is one of beef on the label and horse in the can but I think we catch their drift.