there is no progress in art , only change.

There is a deeper politics behind the idea of 'Progress' . And the Myth of Modernity is part of that Politics.The Politics of creating  Histories as  Hegemonies that are about the idea of linear growth towards the white, western idea of the  Modern  .

The idea of Change, change that is a  continuing cyclic change,  appeals more to me. That idea is , somehow, Eastern and therefore suspect. But it is an idea that rings more true. 

Ice Age Art: Arrival of the Modern Mind – review

British Museum, London

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• • Laura Cumming
  • The Observer, Sunday 10 February 2013
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The oldest known portrait in the world, left, sculpted from mammoth ivory, c26,000 years old: ‘You could hold this little head in the palm of your hand, which is exactly how the artist must have held it, day after day, working away at this obdurate ivory with a sliver of flint.’ Photograph: Sang Tan/AP

The oldest portrait in the world has arrived in Britain. She is carved from a mammoth's tusk. Her long slender face, with its almond eyes and hint of a dimple, is straight out of Modigliani. One of her eyes is lively, but the other droops downwards as if injured or sad, and there is rueful twist to her smile. Dug from the earth of Moravia in the Czech Republic, she is 26,000 years old.

And not the least truth of this great exhibition is that art arrives in the world fully formed. Potent, subtle, imaginative, brilliantly skilled: ice age art stands equal with what follows, proving anew the old adage that there is no progress in art only change.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2013/feb/10/ice-age-art-british-museum-review

Other artefacts – such as a 32,000-year-old lion-headed man from Hohlenstein-Stadel in Germany, carved with consummate skill from a mammoth tusk – suggest that Ice Age artists were capable of imaginative works. Such fantasies may hint at the existence of myth or story.

At the opposite extreme is what Cook calls a "hyper-real" landscape picture of deer pausing at a stream, scratched into bone about 14,000 years ago. "The artist has carefully chosen the right piece of bone, and prepared the surface, which suggests a preconceived plan," said Cook. "The figures of the deer occupy just the right amount of space to give you a sense of perspective. The texture and colour of the deer's coat have been carefully depicted, even its white bottom. These are exactly the considerations that a modern artist would make. The key concepts of drawing are all there."

ww.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/jan/24/ice-age-art-british-museum





For the pictures of the Art

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2013/jan/24/ice-age-art-british-museum-in-pictures?intcmp=239