ART IN OLD STONE AGE

PECH- MARLE

That the paintings did have meaning to the paleolithic peoples who made and observed them cannot , however, be doubted. In fect, sings consisting of checks, dots, squares, or other arrangements of lines often accompany the pictures of animals. Representations of human hands also are common. At pech Marle in France, painted hands accompanyrepresentations of spotted horses. These and the majority of painted hands at other sites are “nagative” that is, the painter palced one hand against the wall and then brushed or blew or spat pigment around it. Occasionally, from the moment in 1879 that cave paintings were discovered at Altamria , scholara have wondered why the hunters of the Old stone age decided to cover the walla of dark caverns with animals images like those found at Altamria, pech –merle Lascaux ND Vallon –pont-d’Arc Scholars have proposed various theories including that the painted and engraved animals were mere decoration, but this explanation cannot account for the narrow range of subjects or the inaccessibility of many of the representations .In fact, the remoteness and difficulty of access of many of the images, andindications that the caves were used for centuries,are precisely why many researchers have suggested that the perhistoric hunters attribusted magical propertiesto the images they painted and sculpted.According to this argument, by confining animals to the surface of their cave wall, the Paleolithic hunters belived they were bringing the beasts under theu=ir control. Some  prehistorians have even hypothesized that rituals or dances were preformed in fornt of the images and that These rites served to improve the hunters’ luck. Still others have stated that the animals representations may have served as teaching tools to insruct new hunters about the character of the various species they would encounter or even to serve as target for spears.

In contrast, some schlors have aruged that the magical purpose of the paintongs and relifes was not to facilitate the destrucation of bison and other species.Instead ,they believe prehistoric painters and sculptors created animals images to assure  the surivival of the herds on which paleolithic peoples depended for their food supply and for their clothing. A central problem for both the hunting magic and food –creation theories is that the animals that seem ti have been diet staples of Old Stone Age peoples are not thoes most frequently protrayed.For example, faunal remains show that the Altamrirans ate

ate reed, not bison.

Hall of the Bulls (left wall)in the cave at Lascaux,France ca 15,000to 13,000 BC  Largest bull 11’-6” Long.

Other scholars have sought to reconstruct an elaborate mythology based on the cave pintings and sculptures, suggestings that paleolithic human belived they had animals ancestors. Still others have equated certain species with man and other with women and postulated various meanings for the abstrect sings that sometimes accompany the images. Alomost all of these theories have been discredited overtime,and most perhistorians admit that no one known the intent of these  Representations.In fact a single explanation for all paleolithic animals images even ones similar in subject, style, and compositin (how the motifs are arranged on the surface), is unlikely  to apply universally.The works remain an enigma-and always will, because before the invention of writing,no contemporanceous explanations could be recorded.

PALEOLITHIC CAVE PAINTING

The caves of altamira,Pech-Merle,Lascaux and other sites in perhistoric Europe are a few humdred to several thousend feet long.They are often choked,sometime almost impassably, by deposits,such as stalactites and stalagmites.Far inside these carverns, well removed from the cave mouths early humans often chose for habitation,painters sometimes made pictures on the walls. examples of paleolithic painting now have  been found at more then 200 site,but perhistorians still regard painted caves as rare occurrences,because the images in them, even if they number in the hundreds,were created over a period  large painting approximatly 60 feet longof some 10,000 to 20,000 years.To illuminate the surfaces while working, the palcolithic painters use stone lamps filled with marrow or fat, with a wick , perhapes, of moss.Fordrawing, they used chunks of red and yellow ocher . For painting,they ground these same ocher  into powders they mixed with water before applying.Recent analyses of the pigments used that paleolithic painters eployed many different munerals,attesting to a technical sophistication  surprising at so early a date.Large flat stones served as palettes . The painters made brushes from reeds, bristles, or twings and may large paintings approximatly 60 feet long. Sanz da satuola was certain the bison painted on the celling of the cave on his estate dated back to prehistoric times.Professinoal aercaeologists, however , doubted the authenticity of these works, and at the Lisbon Congress on prehistoric Archaeology in 1880. They officially dismissed the paintings as forgeries. But by the close of the century,othr caves had been discovered with painted walls partially coveredby mineral Deposits that would have taken thousends of years to acumulate. This finally persuaded skeptics that the first paintings Were of an age far more remote then they had ever dreamed.

Spotted horses and negative hand imprints,wall painting in the cave at pech-Merrle, france,ca 22,000 BCE,11’-2” long

The purpose and meanings of paleplithic art are unknown. Some researchers think the painted hands near the Pech Marle horses are“signatures” of communaity members or of individual painters.

The bisons at Altamira are 13,000 to 14,000 years old , but  the painters of paleolithic Spain approached the problem of representing an animal in essentially the same way as the painter of the Namibian stone plaque.

Who worked in africa more then 10,000 years earlier.Every one of the Altamria bison is in profile,Whether alive and standing or curled  up on the ground ( probably dead, althrough this is disputed;  one suggestion is that these bisons are giving birth). To maintain  the profile in the latter case the painter had to adopt viewpoint above 

the animal, looking down, rather then the viewa person standing on the ground would have Modren critics often refer the Altmaria animals as a”group” of bison, but that is very likely a misnimer.

In  the several  have used a  blowpipe of reeds or hollow bones  to spray pigments on out-of-reach surfaces.Some caves have natural ledges on the rok walls upon Which the painters could have stood in order to reach the upper surfaces  of the naturally formed  cahmbers andcorridors. One Lascaux  gallery  has hole in one of the wall that once probably anchored a scaffold made of saplings lashed together.Despite the difficulty of making the tools  and   pigments, modern attempts at  replicating the techniques of paleolithic painting have demonstratedthat skilled workers could cover large surfaces with images in less than a day.

Western Europe

Even  older then the Namibian painted plaques are some of the first sculptures and paintings of western Europe  although examples of still greater antiquity may yet be found in Africa, bridging the gap between the Makapansgat pebble and the Apollo 11 painted plaques.

   Prehistoric Sites in Europe

Human with Feline Head   from Hohlenstein-Stadel, Germany

ca. 30,000-28,000 B.C.E. mammoth ivory 11 5/8 in. high

One of the oldest known sculptures is this large ivory figure of a human with a feline head.It is uncertain whether the work depicts a composite creature or a human wearing an animal mask.Venus of willendroof The composite feline- hman from germany is execptional for the stone Age.The vast majority of perhistoric sclpturees despit either animals or humans. In the earliest art, humankind consist almost excusivly of women as opposed to men and the painter and sculptors almost invariably showed them nude,although scholars generally assume that during the Ice Ageboth Women and Men wore garmentscoverings parts of their bodies.when archaeologists  first discoverds paleolithic statuettes of women,they dubbed them “Venuses” after the Greco-Romen goddess of beauty and love,whome artists usually despited nude The nickname is inappropriate and misleading.It is doubtful that the Old stone Age  figurines represented deities of any kind.One of yhe oldest and the most famouse of the perhistoric female figure is the tiny lime stonefigurineof a woman that long has been known as the Venus of Willendrof after its findspot in Austria.Its cluster of almost ball-like shapes is unusual,the result in part of the sculptor’s response to the natural shape of the stone selected for carving.The anatomical severd as fertility images.But other paleolithic stone women of far more slender proportions exist, and the meaning of these images is as clusive as everythings else about paleolithic art.Yet the preonderance of female over male figures in the Old Stone Age seems to indicate a preoccupation with women , whose child-bearing capabilities ensured the survival of the species.One thing at least is clea.The Venus of willendroof sculptor did not aim for naturalism in shape and proportion.As with most Paleolithic figures,the sculptor did no carveany facial features.Here the carver suggested only  Mss of curly hair or,as some researchers have recently argued,a hat woven from plant fibers –evidence for the art of textile manufacture at avery early date.In either case,the emphasis is on female anatomy.the breasts of the Willendrof woman are enormous,far larger then the tiny forearms and hand that rest upon them.The carver also took pains to scratch in to the stone the outline of the pubic triangle.sculptors often omitted this detai in other early figurines, leadings some scholers to question the nature of these figures as fertility images.Whatever the purpose of these statuettes , the makers ‘ intent seems to have been to represent not  a speecific woman but the female form.
 

Venus of Willendorf from Willendorf, Austria

ca. 28,000-25,000 B.C.E. limestone 4 1/4 in. high

Art Before History

Humankind seems to have originated in Africa in the very remote past. From that  great continent also comes the earliest evidence of human recognition of abstract images in the natural environment, if not the first examples of what people generally call “art.” In 1925, explorers of a cave at Makapansgat in South Africa discovered bones of Australopithecus, a predecessor of modern human who lived some three million years ago. Associated with the bones was a water worn reddish brown jasperite   pabble that bears an uncanny resemblance to a human face. The nearest known source of this variety of ironstone is 20 mile   away from the cave. One of the early humans who took refuge in the rock shelter at Makapansgat must have noticed the pebble in a streambed and, awestruck by   the  ”face” on the stone, brought it back for safekeeping.

Is the Makapansgat pebble art? In modern times, many artists have created works people universally consider art by removing object from their normal contexts .altering them, and labeling them. In 1917, for example, Marcel Duchamp took a ceramic urinal, set it on its side, called it fountain and declared   his “ready-made ” worthy of exhibition among more conventional artwork . But the artistic environment of the past century cannot be projected in to the remote past. For art historians to declare a found object such as  the  Makapansgat pebble an “artwork,” it must have been modified by human intervention beyond mere selection  and it was not . In fact , evidence indicate that, with few exceptions, it was not until three million years later, around 30,000 BCE, when large parts of northern Europe were still covered with glaciers during the Ice Age, that human intentionally manufactured sculptures and painting . that is when the story of art through the ages really begins.                            

  PALEOLITHIC ART

The several millennia following 30,000 BEC saw a powerful outburst of creativity. The works produced by the people of the Old Stone Age or Paleolithic Period (from the  greek    palco, ”old, ”and  lithos , “stone”) are of an astonishing variety. They range from simple shell necklaces to human and animal forms in ivory  ,clay, and stone to monumental paintings, engravings, and relief sculptures covering the  huge wall surfaces of caves. During the Paleolithic period, humankind went beyond the recognition of human and animal forms in the natural environment to the representation (literally, the presenting again –in different and sub statute form – of something’s observed) of humans and animals. The immensity of this achievement cannot be exaggerated.  

Pebble resembling a human face from Makaspansgat South Africa

ca. 3,000,000 B.C.E. reddish brown jasperite

Approximately 2 3/8 in. wide

Three million years ago someone recognized a face in this pebble and brought it to a rock shelter for safekeeping, but the stone in not an artwork because it was neither manufactured nor modified.

 Africa

 Some of the earliest paintings yet discovered come from Africa, and,Like the treasured pebble in the form of a face found at Makapansgat, the oldest African paintings were portable objects.

Animal Facing left from   the  Apollo 11 Cave Namibia

ca. 23,000 B.C.E charcoal on stone 5 in x 4 3/4 in.

Like most other paintings for thousands of years, this very early example from Africa represents an animal in strict profile so that the head, body, tail, and all four legs are clearly visible.