Ice Age Art at the BM | Forum — The Modern Antiquarian

S

Sanctuary Jan 25, 2013 07:52:35

Replying to Rhiannon

Rhiannon wrote:

A little sneak preview of some of the art / artefacts

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2013/jan/24/ice-age-art-british-museum-in-pictures

mmm I really must arrange to go

In what many consider a 'tool-less' age it really is quite remarkable what they did.

M

moss Jan 25, 2013 08:17:09

Replying to Rhiannon

Rhiannon wrote:

A little sneak preview of some of the art / artefacts

mmm I really must arrange to go

Love John Berger's quote, we've got it booked as has BuckyE and Loie....

T

tjj Jan 25, 2013 08:30:35

Replying to Rhiannon

Rhiannon wrote:

A little sneak preview of some of the art / artefacts

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2013/jan/24/ice-age-art-british-museum-in-pictures

Thanks for the reminder Rhiannon, have promised myself a day trip to London to see this. It has been talked about for some time now so good to know there is still plenty of time to get there. A must :)

L

Littlestone Jan 25, 2013 14:34:20

Replying to Rhiannon

Rhiannon wrote:

A little sneak preview of some of the art / artefacts

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2013/jan/24/ice-age-art-british-museum-in-pictures

mmm I really must arrange to go

moss and I’ll be there on Friday, 22 of Feb. along with a couple of other TMAers. Not much point going round the exhibition together but if anyone feels like meeting up afterwards (lunch, dinner or just a drink) that might be fun.

Bit more here by the way.

J

juamei Feb 9, 2013 16:58:57

Replying to Rhiannon

Tonight at 17.30 on BBC2
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qrmpz

Andrew Graham-Dixon travels to Northern Spain to visit some of the world's oldest works of art, hundreds of meters beneath the surface of the earth. In limestone caves he is astonished to find a series of vivid paintings, some of which are over 33,000 years old, which appear to link modern man to our ice age ancestors.

Back in London, the British Museum is staging one of its most ambitious exhibitions yet, Ice Age Art: Arrival of the Modern Mind. Andrew gets a behind-the-scenes preview of the extraordinary highlights and discovers that the world's first commissioned artists were producing highly sophisticated work tens of thousands of years before he previously imagined.

The programme includes contributions from the British Museum's director, Neil MacGregor, and artist Antony Gormley.

Am gonna be watching the rugby but its on record to watch later...

B

BuckyE Feb 10, 2013 05:09:05

Replying to Rhiannon

Mini-Mega-Meet!

Loie and I ****WILL BE AT*** the museum Friday, March 22, at 10:20 a.m. We've already booked our tickets for that timed entrance. Be there with us and we'd be delighted. We think it would be wonderful to tour the exhibit with an informal group of TMAers. I've just sent an email:

"Dear Ms or Mr Samuels,

Loie and I will be visiting the museum Friday, March 22 ay 10:20 to tour the Ice Age exhibit. (We're coming from Westminster, Maryland, USA to London specifically to see this exciting exhibit! This will be our 12th Driving the Stone Age trip: http://lovebunnies.luckypro.biz/01_stuff/05_other/drivingthestonea.html and gosh, I need to update that page.)

We're hoping that some of our British friends will also be able to attend with us. If that's the case, is there a chance we could have a docent accompany us, or speak to us about the exhibit? Any advice you could give would be greatly appreciated.

Yours truly,
Bucky Edgett"

So we'll see if that gets any results.

Littlestone also suggests:
1. The 14.00–15.35 showing of the film. [Loie and I have seen it twice. Interesting footage but lousy movie. So that we'd probably skip, but...]
2. A drink in The Museum Tavern around 5-ish would be very welcome. [Yes! with all our TMA friends!] The Museum Tavern is not the greatest place but it’s very convenient being right across the road from the BM. [Trust him to know where to go for a drink.]
3. A meal later for those who want to (remembering that some people would need to think about heading home no later than 7-8 or so).

Please chime in, and remember that we'd be thrilled to see any and all of you!

T

tjj Feb 25, 2013 21:53:50

Replying to Rhiannon

Visited today, thoroughly lived up to expectations. Really enjoyed the 'simulated cave' of rapidly changing images from Chauvet, Lascaux, Pech Merle and Niaux.

L

Littlestone Mar 23, 2013 14:30:17

Replying to Rhiannon

Rhiannon wrote:

A little sneak preview of some of the art / artefacts

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2013/jan/24/ice-age-art-british-museum-in-pictures

mmm I really must arrange to go

Couple of things that might be of interest to anyone planning to go.

Most of the objects are small (some really tiny but with fantastic detail) so if you wear glasses take along those that will let you see the details properly (or even take along a small pair of binoculars!). There are usually several objects in one case, and you can walk around most of the cases.

It’s a pity the objects, and the printed descriptions below the cases, are not numbered so that you could quickly link one to the other. There’s a small audio/video guide available which might help, though those who were using it seemed to be spending more time looking at the a/v guide than the objects themselves!

Werner Herzog’s 2010 Cave of Forgotten Dreams 3D film has a couple of showings each day in the downstairs lecture hall. If you plan to see the film after the exhibition allow yourself an hour and a half to two hours for the exhibition. The catalogues are available at the end of the exhibition (couldn’t see any on sale in the main bookshop). They're heavy hardbacks and it might be worth getting one sent mail-order before seeing the exhibition itself.

On a personal note, I’d say both the exhibition and the film are something of a revelation. The exhibition because it shows the exquisite delicacy and detail of the objects up close, and the film because it takes you to a place where you can imagine some of those objects (and paintings) being made. I came away thinking it (the human condition) is all about memory – the collective memory of our species and how we try to protect and preserve it. People 30,000 - 40,000 years ago were at the beginning of that memory and, as Herzog perceptively says at one point in his film, “We are locked in the past – they were not.”

B

BuckyE Apr 13, 2013 00:25:35

Replying to Rhiannon

Raging success. Sorry we couldn't see more of y'all.

5 hours over two days, if it hadn't been for Museum Fatigue we would have done more.

"Coldest March in 50 years." Ahem.

Miss you and hope to have a good meet sometime soon.

H

hedgedruid Apr 15, 2013 11:46:46

Replying to Rhiannon

Too far for us but i managed to buy the accompanying book
"Ice age art " arrival of the modern mind by Jill Cook . The British Museum Press. Very interesting book beautifully illustrated lots of reading too.

L

Littlestone May 1, 2013 12:24:36

Replying to Rhiannon

“Sculptures of the female form are a feature of the exhibition Ice Age art: arrival of the modern mind. Here, exhibition curator [at the British Museum] Jill Cook and artist Ghislaine Howard explore these representations of women in Ice Age and contemporary art.”

Due to popular demand the exhibition has been extended to 2 June.

T

thesweetcheat May 14, 2013 18:01:25

Replying to Rhiannon

We finally got round to going, the exhibits are breathtaking and it's a privilege to see them all in one place. The carving is exquisite and the addition of a few modern pieces merely reinforces Picasso's much quoted line that modern artists "have invented nothing". To see the Robin Hood's Cave horse carving up close is wonderful.

Unfortunately, the arrangement of the exhibition is pretty rubbish, in my opinion the worst organised exhibition we've been to. There are empty areas around the periphery, which could have been utilised much better to space out and emphasise what are generally small exhibits. Instead, they were crammed into small cases taking up less than half of the available space, mostly in the middle of the rooms. Everyone was crammed up against these cases, shuffling along into the next tiny gap. It was also headache-inducingly dimly lit, and the info panels weren't labelled or numbered, making it sometimes a little difficult to work out which piece it related to. A real shame, that something that could have been completely awe-inspiringly phenomenal was a bit of a let-down. Poor show, BM.

L

Littlestone May 15, 2013 11:46:54

Replying to Rhiannon

Rhiannon wrote:

A little sneak preview of some of the art / artefacts

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2013/jan/24/ice-age-art-british-museum-in-pictures

mmm I really must arrange to go

Still about three weeks left Rhiannon. Meanwhile this, beginning on Sunday (BBC2) may be of interest.

E

Evergreen Dazed May 16, 2013 11:25:57

Replying to Rhiannon

Finally got around to booking tickets for this. Can't wait.

L

Littlestone May 17, 2013 19:03:58

Replying to Rhiannon

For those up north who might not be able to make it to the BM show this might be of interest.

Thanks to moss for finding it.

Edit: Oops, wrong bump.

E

Evergreen Dazed May 30, 2013 09:59:51

Replying to Rhiannon

Went along to this on Tuesday. Absolutely stunning.

Hard to take in to be honest, even as you are staring at the objects. I've since been thinking about the circumstances under which some of these were created, the possible reasons, the kind of life those people led and what those pieces of art meant to them.

Strangely, perhaps, considering the other wonders on offer, my favourite piece was a small fish, made of bone c13,000BC, from Lespugues, France.
But it was all fantastic.

If you're thinking of seeing it, its on until 2nd June and the site says advance tickets are sold out but some may be available on the door. Worth investigating that possibility as its a superb collection.