Antony Gormley: How Art Began

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Antony Gormley

Maxime Aubert

Adam Brumm

Adrian French

Michel Lorblanchet

Alistair Pike

Augustine Unghango

Morag Tinto

Laura Miller

Alistair Pegg

Christopher White

Tristan Lancey

Tom Dixon-Spain

Billie Shepherd

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Paul Bahn

Edmund Coulthard

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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

26/01/2019

BBC Two - Antony Gormley: How Art Began

Antony Gormley sets out on a journey to see for himself the very beginnings of art.

Britain's most celebrated sculptor Antony Gormley is setting out on a journey to see for himself the very beginnings of art.

Why do humans make art? When did we begin to make our mark on the world? And where? In this film, Britain's most celebrated sculptor Antony Gormley is setting out on a journey to see for himself the very beginnings of art.

Once we believed that art began with the cave paintings of Ice Age Europe, tens of thousands of years ago. But now, extraordinary new
discoveries around the world are overturning that idea. Antony is going to travel across the globe, and thousands of years back in time, to piece together a new story of how art began. He discovers beautiful, haunting and surprising works of art, deep inside caves across France, Spain and Indonesia, and in Australian rock shelters. He finds images created by hunter-gatherers that surprise him with their tenderness, and affinity with the natural world. He discovers the secrets behind the techniques used by our ancestors to create these paintings. And he meets experts making discoveries that are turning the clock back on when art first began.

Finally Antony asks what these images from millennia ago can tell us - about who we are. As he says, 'If we can look closely at the art of our ancestors, perhaps we will be able to reconnect with something vital that we have lost."'.

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