ART

Celtic art has often been compared with classical art, the art of Iron Age Greece and Rome, and been found wanting. European and North American artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries tended to look to classical models.

Celtic art comes closer in spirit to some of the art movements of the twentieth century. The Celtic artist looked at a model, whether human or animal or part of the physical landscape, and tried to reduce it to its raw essentials. The aim was to simplify and so draw attention to certain raw qualities or characteristics. The carving might be done with care, without necessarily producing a “realistic” representation of the model. The same is true of the bronzes, many of which have survived in good condition. The Matisse-like figurine of a naked woman dancing is a superb piece of Celtic art: rhythmic, free, and uninhibited.

As for the images, reduced to their essentials, they could appear rough, crude, and massive. These works can be visually reminiscent of Henry Moore’s sculptures, and they have a similar presence.

Sometimes there was a desire to make images ambiguous. It is difficult to be sure whether the legs of Cernunnos have actually turned into writhing serpents or if he is simply standing behind the snakes. It is as if the artist was deliberately setting up a visual riddle. The pairing of Cernunnos, the antlered god, with his companion, the stag, in itself suggests a bond between them. But to give both stag and god identical antlers is taking the statement a step fiorther, toward shapeshifting. Can the stag and the god actually transform into one another? Are they in fact two manifestations

Of the same being?

The weirdness of some images is intentional; this is the weirdness of the Otherworld—the dream world where people and gods can mingle, and where the living can meet the dead. It is the strange world we inhabit, or migrate to, when we fall asleep.

One of the finest pieces of artwork from Britain in the first century AD is the Battersea shield—if judged by classical standards. This piece of Romano-Celtic bronze parade armor was deposited in the Thames River at Battersea, and probably left there deliberately.

The bronze-covered iron helmet found at Agris in Charente must have been made for ceremonial use. It is covered in fine detail in low relief, with gold and coral inlays added: an astonishingly sophisticated piece of metalwork, more crown than helmet.

The distinctive art style that we generally recognize as Celtic is really the linear art that began with the La Tene culture. It consists of a decorative line that curves sinuously in an S-shape, often repeatedly and rhythmically, sometimes symmetrically, and sometimes not. The S-shape was often developed with eddies and circles to make very elaborate patterns. The style reached its peak long after the La Tene culture was over, indeed long after the Celts generally had lost their political and cultural dominance in Europe, when even their religious beliefs had been overwhelmed and supplanted. The peak was reached in the illuminated gospels drawn and painted by monks in the eighth and ninth centuries AD, works such as The Book of Kells and The Lindisfarne Gospels.

The minutely elaborate detailing of The Book of Kells was described by a visitor in 1185 as “the work of an angel,” and so it still seems. It is so ornate, so exuberant, so controlled, and so perfect that it can scarcely be the work of human hand. The intricate design was not a sudden late invention, but part of a long tradition that went back to the fourth century BC.

It is hard to single out specific artworks as representing the pinnacle of a culture, but there is general agreement that the illustrated manuscripts of the eighth and ninth centuries AD are the finest productions of Celtic art. There is a certain irony in this. The Celts of pre-Christian, pre-Roman Europe were reluctant writers; the miraculous fusion of elements in the early medieval The Book of Kells is really a masterpiece of calligraphy, the most elaborately decorated writing ever conceived.