The critics were perhaps asking this question some 27,000 years ago in a cave in France, when an artistic individual produced what the experts are convinced is the oldest known image of a human face:
The eye is a bold horizontal slash that connects to a downward diagonal apparently signifying a nose; below is a thinner line suggesting a mouth. These features are drawn in black on a face-shaped rocky mass in a cave near Angoul̻me in western France; discovered in February, the image has only now been made public after scientific testing by French archaeologists that has apparently convinced them of its authenticity and age Рthey claim the drawings in it were done 27,000 years ago, which makes the Vilhonneur grotto one of the oldest sites of rock art in the world.
As I’ve written before, after reading the brilliant The Mind in the Cave, while our cultures may be very, very different, what we do share with these cave-visitors is our brains – in fact they are biologically exactly the same, so at an unconscious, and probably sub-conscious, level (where most reaction to the best art occurs) we might be surprisingly alike.
So the critics from back then might appreciate the latest art-world spat in London, over a plinth being mistaken for an artwork. (The head intended to be attached to it became accidentally detached during packing.)
Mark Lawson concludes:
The head part of the artwork is fairly familiar, heavily reminiscent of the laughing heads in the work of the great Spanish artist Juan Muñoz. But the vast slate slab supporting its fragment of skeleton has a peculiarity and spookiness that makes it unusual; dismissable as art only by those who believe that good art necessarily requires heavy effort.
The style of the ancient image suggests those paleolithic critics might agree.
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