Ancient Arts and Modern Parodies

Abstract

THE exhibition entitled "40,000 Years of Modern Art", which opened at the Academy Hall in Oxford Street, London, just before Christmas and closes at 10 p.m. on January 29, makes no claim to a scientifi approach—to which, indeed, so cavalier a title would have been rather ill attuned—yet it possesses surpassutg interest for anthropologists, and may well do a good service to science by inducing them, and other visitors, to look at primitive art in new ways under the shock of the juxtaposition with a sufficiently aggressive selection of modern paintings and sculptures. The Institute of Contemporary Arts, 6 Fitzroy Street, London, W.I, a recently formed body devoted to the good cause of encouraging new trends in all the arts (but the approach of which is perhaps not yet quite so wide as its scope), is to be warmly congratulated and thanked for assembling what is almost certainly the most impressive display of primitive art ever held in Great Britain outside the great ethnographical museums.