Ice Age art: arrival of the modern mind - Tapa dura

"A superb book to accompany a stunning exhibtion". - Yoga & Health

"First-rate... Jill Cook has achieved the difficult feat of making art made in the mists of time feel almost familiar".

The Sunday Times Culture magazine lists Ice Age Art by Jill Cook as one of its "most colourful art books of 2013".

An intelligent and informed assessment of an extraordinary period in human history ." Current World Archaeology

"Probably the exhibition of the year... As the exhibition was not to be missed, so is the book". Drome Magazine

The lavish exhibition catalogue provides colour photographs for the first time of some of the Museum s other objects, of which in the past only monochrome images were available. ...A useful account of the history, technology and aesthetics of many fine objects and a good general introduction to Paleolithic portable art. Antiquity --Richard Dorment, The Telegraph

This unique book explores the extraordinary sculpture and drawings created during the last European Ice Age, between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago – the oldest known figurative art in the world. Over 100 objects are featured alongside stunning illustrations, including small but exquisite sculptures made from mammoth ivory, engraved drawings, and jewellery from the age of the great painted caves, in addition to celebrated masterpieces. Featured are the Swimming Reindeer (13,000 years old), the so-called Willendorf Venus (25,000 years old) and the Vogelherd horse (32,000 years old), examining them in a new light. This compelling narrative is also illustrated with a wealth of contextual images, from classical sculpture to twentieth-century painting and even contemporary advertising campaigns, which demonstrate surprising aesthetic parallels between these ancient works and familiar modern pieces. In this way, Ice Age Art will bring home the point that the minds that created these objects in all their diversity and inventiveness were modern minds like our own, capable of highly sophisticated thought and expression.