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 It belongs to a 2,500-year-old red sandstone warrior who
marked a grave in present-day Germany. His bulbous "ears" are in
fact a "leaf-crown" headdress denoting high rank. His
hollowed-out eyes mesmerize.
Too fragile to travel from the German museum of which he is the
centerpiece, even in replica he is a presence from deep
pre-history.
The warrior and his creator were Celts, although they would not
have said so. Greek writers first used the term in about 500 BC
to describe "barbarian" tribes in northern Europe.
The exhibition "Celts: art and identity" plots how the word
Celtic has been used and co-opted to define identity over time.
The Celts were not one ethnic group and, while Celtic languages
would have been spoken in much of the landmass, they had no
common tongue, although their art demonstrates cultural
connections across Europe from the Atlantic to the Black Sea.
"In a way, what brings them together is what they are not," lead
curator Julia Farley said.
"These are people who are deciding that they want to have an
abstract art style rather than following the trend towards
increasing naturalism that we see in the classical world."
Instead of Greek and Roman art's realistic representations of
people and animals, beasts and stylized human forms are "hidden"
among the curved, interwoven lines traced over Celtic jewelry,
weaponry and feasting utensils.
Many of the items in the exhibition, organized with National
Museums Scotland, were unearthed from the graves and other
buried hoards of the elite.
For centuries, the Celtic well-to-do wore torcs, or neck rings
forged in gold, silver and other metals and the exhibition shows
they evolved as art styles and ideas crossed the continent via
trade links and even military conquest.
Fast forward to the present and Celts are confined to the
Atlantic fringe of Britain, Ireland, northwest France and
Galicia, Spain, where Celtic languages live on in varying
degrees of health.
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The 19th-century Celtic revival, which asserted identity in the face
of Britain's industrialization, looked back to the past, prompting
an upsurge of romantic literature and paintings of harp-wielding
Welsh druids resisting the English oppressor.
"Claiming the name of being a Celtic nation and speaking Celtic
languages is very much a statement of difference. It enables,"
Farley said.
Celtic art lives on and continues to define identity. The exhibition
includes images of murals painted on the sides of houses during the
unrest in the British province of Northern Ireland.
In one, the mythical Irish hero Cuchulainn is a symbol of Irish
nationalist resistance to British rule, in another he is evoked by
the pro-British "loyalists" opposing the nationalists.
For Farley the "showstopper" exhibit is the richly decorated silver
Gundestrup cauldron, found in Denmark but probably made in the
Balkans around 150-50 BC.
It is not Celtic art but it portrays people, gods and animals using
and wearing the torcs, weapons and other objects that make up the
exhibition.
"It is a reminder that these people did have this incredibly rich
inner world of heroes and heroines, gods and goddesses. Even if we
have lost the details and the names, objects like that remind you
that it's there," Farley said.
The exhibition continues in London until Jan. 31 before transferring
to the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh from March 10 to
Sept. 25, 2016.
(Editing by Michael Roddy and Angus MacSwan)
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