CHAPTER TWENTY
THE NATURE AND FUNCTION
OF CELTIC ART
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Ruth and Vincent M egaw
E
lusive, curvilinear, ambiguous, shape-changing, miniaturist, often abstract and
minimalist, symbolic and non-narrative, the art of the pre-Roman peoples we
know as Celts is one of the glories of the European past. It is quite different from, but
just as important as, the art of Greece and Rome. Clearly visible for half a millennium
before the Christian era, it survived the Roman conquest to re-emerge as the
Hiberno-Saxon art of the Early Christian gospel books, and continued to influence
Romanesque art. Partially eclipsed by the Renaissance rediscovery of all things
classical, it has, in the twentieth century, appealed to Modernists and Surrealists, since
it goes beyond external appearance to probe the underlying meanings of reality.
THE NATURE OF ART
Debates about definitions of art have filled many library shelves. Distinctions
common in our own post-Renaissance western society between 'high' art, popular
art and craft are and have been alien to most other peoples at most other times: in
many contemporary indigenous cultures of the Third and Fourth Worlds there is no
word equivalent to 'art'. The art of the Celts was not 'art for art's sake', but was
deeply embedded in the context of their economic, social, intellectual and religious
life, as well as being influenced by available technology and the range of accessible
materials. There is some evidence that general estimations of what constitutes quality
in technical skill are transcultural (e.g. Jopling 1971), yet it is uncertain that what
we today find attractive about the 'art' of peoples thousands of years ago is the same
as those qualities which they themselves valued. We have in the past offered a defini-
tion of Celtic art as encompassing 'elements of decoration beyond those necessary
for functional utility' (Megaw and Megaw 1989a: 19).
Our perceptions of the nature of Celtic art are undoubtedly skewed by having to
rely largely on a limited range of artefacts. While it is obvious that textiles and wood-
working played an important role in the European Iron Age, we have tantalizingly
little tangible evidence since they rarely survive. Again, the difficulty of finding early
La Tene settlements means that much material comes from graves, and this biases our
sample. Little statuary or architecture remains and most painting is confined to pots.345