Back to the age of ice

Thank you to all who responded so sympathetically to my blip of yesterday - he's not the easiest of subjects. I'm sorry I don't have time just now to reply or comment.

My sleeping quarters here in London leave something to be desired in the heating department: after I borrowed a Keep Warm and Stay Well thermometer last night, this morning's reading of 9C. in my room warned Risk of Hypothermia. Snow was falling as I did the shopping and by mid-afternoon much of it had settled when I headed off, appropriately enough, to see the exhibition Ice Age Art at the British Museum. I've been determined to get to this and I wasn't disappointed (NB you have to book!)

The remit of the exhibition is to reframe the earliest-known human-made creations as art, not simply artifacts. So the setting resembles an art gallery with the pieces presented as art works, singly or in small groups, thoughtfully arranged and beautifully lit. The objects have been sourced from across Europe, all gems of their kind: unique, fragile, fragmentary and beyond value - the oldest up to 40,000 years old. Yes, forty thousand years!

One reviewer, the poet Kathleen Jamie, has written that the exhibition has the effect of dissolving time Perhaps because we were Paleolithic for such an age, the artworks we see before us are deeply, if strangely, familiar. We peer, and half-remember. It can make one feel a bit homesick. I also experienced a sense of straining for connection with something beyond comprehension - but only just, like the struggle to recapture an evanescent waking dream that was just there but now is gone.

The exhibition is curated by a woman and emphasis is placed upon the preponderance of female forms in these very ancient art works. They range from slender pubescent girls to hulking earth mothers/grandmothers, and many are depicted as pregnant. The suggestion is made that these objects may have been made by women for women, as emblems of hope and reassurance for a safe labour and a successful birth.

Another aspect of paleolithic life is evoked by the intense observation of animal forms. Tools and weapons are etched with animal representations but additionally there are indications that carvings and sculptures may have been 'animated' in simple but powerful ways, to generate movement and perhaps sound. There were flutes made from swan bones and some pieces have holes which suggest they may have been spun or swung, perhaps with flickering firelight to add an extra dimension of mystery and power. We can't know but our brains are not dissimilar so there's no reason to suppose we can't tread the same pathways of imagination.

It was another No Photography exhibition but I sneaked a few. This is a low relief sculpture on ivory of a leaping lion from the Pavlov cave in the Czech Republic. It's been radiocarbon dated to 26,000 years ago. The way the lion is carved resembles the predatory pounce on to the back of its prey (eg. a buffalo) and conveys the momentum of that springing motion. The shadow is no accident: it's been hypothesized that, suspended, 'the shape would create a shadow on the skin walls of a tent or cabin where firelight might further animate this dangerous enthralling moment, creating a theatre of shadows during the evening time when a lion prowling around the camp would fill people with nervous anxiety and deprive them of sleep.' Is this a projection of our own fantasies, or are our modern minds still tuned to ancient heartbeats?

Back in the modern world outside I found that the snow had melted but it will be another icy night.