Ice Age hubris
February 10 2013
Picture: British Museum/Guardian
Jonathan Jones goes overboard in his Guardian review of the new ice-age art at the British Museum:
[...] 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 Leonardo – has ever surpassed these ice-age animal portraits.
Update - a reader writes:
Re Jonathan Jones's article on cave-painting; the later printing has a remarkable correction at the end:
• This article was amended on 6 February 2013 because it referred to Leonardo incorrectly as "Da Vinci" as if it were the artist's surname. Da Vinci refers to the Vinci district near Florence.
Previously I have railed against this new habit of talking about 'Da Vinci' but I'm not sure it merits an apology.
Cave-art and Leonardo are clean different things, but cave-art is - still - the best painting of animals in life and movement I have ever seen. And seeing what fossil animals really looked like is unbelievably exciting.
