Icy art world warms to the curvy Venus

 
Ice Age Art
AP
6 February 2013

Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, welcomed guests to the Ice Age art exhibition with typically witty remarks. “This exhibition would be a nightmare to UKIP — it is about a Europe of the past without borders. Mind you, the UK itself did not do so well out of it. The few people who were living in the region then came here only briefly before deciding the climate was too cold so they went off to the Dordogne.” Much of the art in the exhibition comes from caves in that part of France.

MacGregor introduced Antony Gormley, who opened the exhibition despite a leg injury which meant he had to be hospitalised last week in Belgium. Gormley spoke enthusiastically about one particular exhibit, the Venus of Lespugue, a statuette of a voluptuous woman dated to between 26,000 and 24,000 years ago.

Other guests included Sir David Attenborough, playwright Michael Frayn and artist Grayson Perry, wearing a dark blue quilt dress rather than the outfit of his alter ego Claire.

“I designed the dress myself,” said Perry.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in