BIRD OF THE WEEK NO. 26

Hohle Fels Water Bird

IN A LOCAL STORE, my wife discovered a book created by an organization called the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism. The archive, I learned, is a compilation and explication of human-made symbols from all over the world and from all time periods, sorted by type, and the book is a summary of its research, handsomely illustrated. Many of the archetypes involve animals and it naturally includes a section on “Bird.” Individual authors are not identified, which is a shame because the opening essay on the Bird archetype is particularly eloquent. With three other artists, I opened an exhibit last week entitled Outside In, and this unnamed author echoes our intentions with such precision that I let out a little gasp. The essay discusses the carving of a water bird discovered in 2008 in a cave in Germany at Hohle Fels. There, archeologists are turning up human artifacts from 30,000 years ago—the so-called Upper Paleolithic which is associated with the development of stone tools. This two-inch-long bird, carved of ivory and “powerful in its simplicity,” is one of the oldest works of art known to us. The author writes:

“It is the image of a water bird, its wings folded as if it is about to dive. It makes us realize that 30,000 years ago someone was able to move between worlds—like the bird who can move between the elements—from the outer world of the senses to an inner vision. Something moved this carver to begin to shape a piece of ivory into a new form, an image of a bird. And with this, something was changed, the world was no longer the same. It was this shift into a creative act that made us human.”

That ancestor moved outside in.