Ritual sacrifice or performance art

Talking to friends today about the Ice Age art exhibition at the British Museum and the proposal that shattered figurines suggested performance art, the question arose whether ritual sacrifice, if that is indeed a valid explanation of the fragments, could be termed performance art.  This is in reference to the finds at Dolni Vestonice, Moravia, where breakage was found to be so extensive.  The works in question date back to the Last Glacial Maximum, 26,500 years ago, when vast ice sheets spread south over the North European Plain.

These figurines, and many animal sculptures, were made not of clay but of loess -" a yellowish brown loamy deposit believed to be chiefly deposited by the wind" (New Penguin ED) - which the exhibition catalogue says does not break when heated because it is so porous, allowing air to escape, although, it also explains that when kneaded, the porosity is reduced and air and water might be trapped in some internal holes.

Still, should the idea of ritual sacrifice hold, it still feels inappropriate, we felt, to call it performance art.  Contemporary artists understand the significance of their endeavour within the system of beliefs we call 'Art', something that is largely self-referencing as currently evaluated.  We might perceive the birth of the modern mind when we consider these artifacts created over 25,000 years ago, but we can be sure their cultural references were not ours. It feels uncomfortably complacent and arrogant to suggest that our self-conscious acts have any bearing upon rituals performed by early people struggling to survive in an unbelievably hostile environment, who nevertheless were capable of representation unutterably reverential in its expression.   If such artifacts were to be ritually destroyed, it was in homage to an urgency far outside the references of contemporary art practice.