Yesterday I went to see this exhibition at the UEA, Norwich.  In the main it consists of two collections of small, ancient humanoid figurines from Japan and from the Balkans, two areas which were never in contact but which, in this instance, produced remarkably similar artefacts.  There are several ancient specimens from other cultures which reinforce the point that the making of such figurines was a pretty universal human activity.

The figurines are of varying degrees of complexity in both imaginative and technological abilities.

All this is very interesting in various spheres.  It might well interest the archaeologist, the historian, the ethnologist, the sociologist, even the technologist and the craftsman.  Well and good.  But with typical obtuseness the exhibition seeks to point out non-existent links with (gulp) modern Art.  So one of the exhibits is this:

I think it's by the Chapman Brothers (Jake and Dinos) and I think it's called "Dead Guys" - but I'm open to correction here.  Anyway, it's supposedly inspired/based on one of Goya's macabre etchings of body parts hanging in a tree.

But what on earth does it have to do with the rest of the exhibition?  It's not alone in its inappropriateness - there's a sort of Barbie Doll presented in a glass case, and a 1960s Japanese plastic toy featuring small figures of an Emperor and a concubine.  It's part of this loony desire to establish modern Art as the inheritor of a hundred thousand years of human creativity.  But these ancient figurines are a mystery.  We do not know what they were for, what purpose they were created to fulfil.  We do not even know whether all the old artefacts in this exhibition were created for similar purposes.  We cannot know this.  We do not know how the creators of these artefacts and their societies functioned on a physical level, let alone the intellectual or spiritual context in which they were made.

But we can be sure of one thing: the creation of these ancient figurines was not attended by the cynical money-grubbing of the modern Art World.  And the shaping and firing of the simplest of the figurines required a great deal more technological sophistication in the manipulation of materials than that needed for sticking a few bits of Lego together.  Or putting a barbie Doll in a plastic case. 

(Originally published 09/08/2010)