ART
The Human Head As though to compensate for a deficiency of humanism in its inter- national sculpture competition, the Institute of Contemporary Arts' current show at its own premises is a sweeping anthology called— aptly but with Dover Street chi-chi--The Wonder and Horror of the Human Head. The exhibits range from prehistoric ivories to Shell- Mex advertising. Between lies a vast assortment, sifted by the individual taste of Roland Penrose, that includes, for example, a Jivaro Indian shrunken head from the Amazon, a death-mask of Napoleon painted blue with white clouds by Magritte, a Bosch Temptation of St. Anthony, together with photographs, drawings, prints in profusion. There are Devouring Heads, Animal Heads, Journeys to the Interior ; only true portraiture is missing. Affinities, prophecies and memories abound, but it would need more anthro- pological training than most of us possess to pick out any really clear-cut threads through this particular maze. One is left rather with a sense of the fantastic deformations to which the human head has been subjected by succeeding ages and cultures, and the constancy with which artists have at all times used it as a symbol for their every thought and emotion.
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