putting paid to the idea of progress/modernity - in art

"The first cave paintings, discovered in the late 19th century, were dismissed as forgeries: they seemed too good to be the work of "savages". 

That idea of progress from Primitive to Modern, from "Savage" to Civilised and Modern Man  is challenged. Again ! 

The White Western  myth of bringing' civilization' to the under developed/ has to be developed, savage  and primitive Other, is exposed as the racist  political ploy that it always was.  I think it is time Artists from the Rest of the world woke up to the political construction  the reality of the Art ' HIstory'  they are force fed and lap up.

Time to rethink the reality of that idea of 'Progress' and Modernity . 

Ice Age Art at the British Museum: 'Not even Da Vinci surpassed this'

The British Museum's show of ice-age art is full of wonders and mysteries. But does showing them alongside modern works really shed any light on these ancient masterpieces?

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• Jonathan Jones
• The Guardian, Tuesday 5 February 2013 16.44 GMT
• Jump to comments (116)

Human bodies in this show are overwhelmingly abstract, while animals are portrayed with gobsmacking accuracy … an image of a reindeer, carved into a reindeer bone, from Ice Age Art at the British Museum in London

Ice Age Art is subtitled Arrival of the Modern Mind. Its thesis is that 40,000 years ago, when humans migrated from Africa into a comparatively temperate Europe, and were then caught for thousands of years amid the freezing temperatures and furry beasts of the last great freeze, something miraculous happened. Art appeared: art so sophisticated, it proves that the cognitive faculties we value so highly today were fully evolved tens of thousands of years ago (the works here were made between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago). Only a modern human mind, the argument goes, could create a masterpiece like theZaraysk bison (it is named after the town near Moscow where it was discovered). But this show isn't just an encounter with the first modern minds. It also reveals how peculiar and mysterious those minds were. Why make art at all? Why shape figures to look like animals and women?

Unlike Matisse, Moore, Mondrian and Picasso, the creators of ice-age art belonged to a world where people hunted to stay alive; they portrayed animals that are now extinct; and they lived in a world without cities, writing or agriculture. These ice-age humans may have been like us biologically, but they had ideas we can only guess at. The women they carved in ivory, and even moulded from clay in the Danube Valley, are utterly enigmatic. Could they be fertility goddesses? That question simply reflects the fact that it's hard to associate them with later, erotic images of the nude. We don't even know if they were carved by men or women; no evidence exists. There is no reason to believe the first artists weren't women: these figures may be emblems of matriarchal power.

The tiny human faces featured in this show include "the oldest portrait of a woman", as the gallery titles one little masterpiece made in the Czech republic 26,000 years ago. The woman's disfigured eye suggests this is an individual portrait, drawn from life. But such verisimilitude appears to have been an exception: human bodies in this show are overwhelmingly abstract, while animals are portrayed with gobsmacking accuracy – from line drawings of reindeer to lions carved on ivory. While humans have been done better, no one – not even Da Vinci – has ever surpassed these ice-age animal portraits. The first cave paintings, discovered in the late 19th century, were dismissed as forgeries: they seemed too good to be the work of "savages". Nowadays, dating techniques have silenced such doubts.

 As this fascinating exhibition reveals, the modern human mind begins with the same questions about gods and monsters, the same curiosity about nature and capacity for fantasy, that have shaped it ever since.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2013/feb/05/ice-age-art-jonathan-jones