- Cave ArtOur PickBy Bruno David
- Dawn of Art: The Chauvet Cave (The Oldest Known Paintings in the World),By Jean-Marie Chauvet and Eliette Brunel Deschamps
- The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World's First ArtistsBy Gregory Curtis
- What is Paleolithic Art? Cave Paintings and the Dawn of Human CreativityOur PickBy Jean Clottes
Important Art and Artists of Cave Art
Lion-man of the Hohlenstein-Stadel (ca. 38,000 BC)
This impressive 12-inch composite creature, carved from the ivory of a mammoth, fuses animal and human elements. Its beastly attributes include a lion's head and the elongated body and forelimbs of a big cat, while the legs, feet and bi-pedal stance are clearly modeled on the human form.
An important prehistoric work, the sculpture was discovered in Germany in the Hohlenstein-Stadel cave in 1939 and is the oldest example of an imaginary form in history. The fact the work is a composite creature emanating from the artist's mind disproves any notion that the earliest humans were unintelligent or unimaginative, while the time involved in its creation also suggests a capacity for sustained and concentrated thought. According to author Jill Cook, "an experiment by Wulf Hein using the same sort of stone tools available in the Ice Age indicate that the Lion Man took more than 400 hours to make... This was a lot of time for a small community living in difficult conditions to invest in a sculpture that was useless for their physical survival. "
Whilst we may never know the reason this work was created, the time spent on it in an age of nomadic hunter-gatherer routines is proof of its importance to the individual or community concerned. According to Cook, "the Lion Man makes sense as part of a story that might now be called a myth. The wear on his body caused by handling suggests that he was passed around and rubbed as part of a narrative or ritual that would explain his appearance and meaning. It is impossible to know what that story was about or whether he was deity, an avatar to the spirit world, part of a creation story or a human whose experiences on a journey through the cosmos to communicate with spirits caused this transformation." "Perhaps this hybrid", she concludes, "helped people to come to terms with their place in nature on a deeper, religious level or in some way to transcend or reshape it. "
Panel of Horses (33,000-20,000 BC)
Known as the Panel of Horses, this painting found in the Chauvet cave in fact features nineteen other types of animals, including deer and rhinoceroses, as well as its famous equine subjects in side profile. This beautiful and elaborate frieze is one of the most significant works in the Chauvet complex. As well as providing an important historical record of the animals that existed in prehistoric France, this painting gives a sense of the detail and realism with which early artists could capture the world around them.
The sophistication of technique, including figurative detail and perspective, characterizing the pieces at Chauvet has been frequently discussed. According to writer James C. Harris, the Chauvet drawings "are highly realistic, and many show perspective and utilize the contours in the cave wall, sometimes to suggest movement." F ocusing on the Panel of Horses, he notes "the presence [of] rhinoceroses at the bottom of this panel", with "small arched ears, crossed horns, and leg positions suggesting movement. Meanwhile, "the heads of the four horses in this panel most powerfully engage the viewer...The one showing the greatest detail [with] its open mouth suggests the horse is whinnying. "
The early artistic technique of stump drawing is evident in this painting. As archaeologist Jean Clottes explains, here, "the artist has crushed charcoal and mixed it with the soft whitish substance that covers the walls to obtain shades that range from black to dark blue, and he (or she) has skillfully spread the pigment inside the head and the body [of the horses] to create their contours, using the process currently known as 'stump drawing. '" Like many other works of ancient cave art, The Panel of Horses offers extraordinary insight into minds set far apart from ours in time yet sharing certain vital emotional, social, and creative instincts.
Venus of Willendorf (24,000-22,000 BC)
Perhaps the most well-known work of three-dimensional art from the Paleolithic period, the Venus of Willendorf is a sculpture of a woman with exaggerated female features including breasts, hips, and pubic area. A small work, measuring little more than four inches high, the statue has no distinguishing features other than a head full of coiled rows of hair, suggesting an archetypal character, perhaps meant to sum up certain principles of femininity or fertility, rather than an individual human being.
This work, discovered in Austria in 1908, is amongst several carved female figurines uncovered in caves across Europe. Their small size means the works were portable, contributing to debate over their intended purpose. As archaeologist Bruno David explains, these figures "have provoked many different interpretations ranging from children's dolls to 'mother goddesses'. They have been thought by some commentators to have acted as symbols of fertility in a harsh Ice Age environment where fecundity was highly valued, by others as images of women's bodies by and for men, and by others again as self-representations by women, or as obstetric devices to monitor the growth of the foetus and to aid with childbirth, or as a standardized way of stylized depiction to facilitate information exchange between communities. "
The documentation of the "Venus" figures is also an interesting example of the potential pitfalls of titling works after the fact. David asserts that these figures "have become a useful way of exposing the sociology of our own Western biases. " We think of Venus as the Greek goddess of love, and so by giving these works such a title we imply, with no basis in fact, that there is a sexual element to the figures. According to author Joshua Learn, "some experts believe they represent everything from self-depictions of women to ancient pornography. But many of these interpretations have now been discredited for the inherent sexism they carry." These interpretations were probably given extra currency by the "Venus" tag.