BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON This exemplary show of Celtic art digs deep into 2,500 years of astounding abstract beauty He towers above you with his slit of a mouth and his alien frown, eight feet of glowering blond sandstone. The nose is a wedge, the eyes deep shadows and the brows conjured in a single fierce shelf. One arm is before, the other behind, and it draws you into a mystery. For this horned figure is not one man but two: the statue is Janus-faced. He looks like nothing on earth, this frightening man with two faces (or was he a god?). Certainly he does not look Celtic. So it is only right that the British Museum’s staggering new blockbuster should open with this 2,000-year-old statue, found in a German field. For it turns out that the Celts are not quite what we thought. We may associate the word “Celtic” specifically with Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man and Brittany, but the name was first used around 500BC by the ancient Greeks, who used it to describe people living all over northern Europe. Continue reading...
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