We went to the ice age art exhibition at the British Museum. It was awesome in the full sense of the word to see artefacts created by humans 20,000-30,000 years ago. It is a great exhibition.
But ... these marvellous objects have been hijacked by the artists (yes, I know, the clue is in the title). And they've interpreted everything in their own terms (imagination, religion etc). When really, they might well have been engineering diagrams depicting literally the world around them. I know I have a BA now, and I'm working for my MA but I'm still the BSc computer nerd at heart. And the world is ours, too.
There were some really interesting carvings of women but the interpreters had used modern values to group them as 'young, slim and erotic' or 'old obese and not erotic'. ITS NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE.
My favourite bit was the description of a carved duck, which was 'positioned in the void between the upper and lower cosmos' meaning 'there's a lot of blank space around it'. And then they'd added 'Or its a picture of a meal with a useful bundle of feathers'. That one got through the Pomposity Enforcers.
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