|
Thought this
might be interesting from a scientific POV as well as the comments about art
itself. - KWC Exquisite
Cave Art Offers New Perspective on Development By Guy Gugliotta,
Washington Post Staff Writer, Monday, Jan. 12, 2004 @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8312-2004Jan11.html
But a growing body of
evidence suggests that modern humans, virtually from the moment they appeared
in Ice Age Europe, were able to produce startlingly sophisticated art. Artistic
ability thus did not "evolve," many scholars said, but has instead
existed in modern humans (the talented ones, anyway) throughout their existence. Last month in the
journal Nature, anthropologist Nicholas J. Conard, of Germany's University of
Tuebingen, added to this view, reporting the discovery in a cave in the Jura
Mountains of three small, carefully made figurines carved from mammoth ivory
between 30,000 and 33,000 years ago. The artifacts at Hohle
Fels Cave -- of a water bird, a horse's head, and a half-human, half-lion
figure -- made up the fourth such cache of ancient objects found in Germany.
All are more than 30,000 years old, and, taken together with cave paintings of
a similar age in France's Grotte Chauvet, constitute the oldest known artworks
in the history of modern humans. A handful of other sites more than 30,000
years old are under study. "It was a big
cave, filled with ivory-making debris," Conard said in a telephone
interview from his Tuebingen office. "We found 270 pieces of ivory waste,
a half-dozen beads and a good number of bone and ivory tools. Whoever made the
figurines spent a lot of time there." And did remarkable
work with primitive implements. All three figurines are skillfully shaped, and
the water bird is exquisite -- its long neck extended in flight and its wings
swept back with decorative ridges to mark layers of feathers. "It confirms the
sophistication of the art of that early period," said archaeologist David
Lewis-Williams of South Africa's Rock Art Research Institute and author of
"The Mind in the Cave," a discussion of the origins of art. "If
there were earlier periods when they made cruder art, why haven't we got
them?" Also, noted
Lewis-Williams, Conard and others, the Hohle Fels artifacts and the Grotte
Chauvet paintings are as sophisticated as art produced thousands of years
later. "Those who argue for development from primitive scratches are
perhaps unconsciously extending the idea of human evolution to encompass other
forms of human endeavor," Lewis-Williams said. Still, though the
development of figurative art may not be a marker for biological evolution,
many experts suggest that its emergence is a major "threshold event"
for cultural development, comparable perhaps to the invention of agriculture,
the domestication of animals or the development of metal tools. "The crucial move
seems to be when humans make something that stands for something else,"
said Oxford University art historian Martin Kemp. "It usually starts with
'indirect tools,' implements that go beyond simple sharpened tools or a needle
and thread. This conceptual step is the evolutionary aspect of ancient
art." Also, noted Kemp and
others, art itself does indeed "evolve," but these changes are more
likely to be dictated by the purpose served by the art, or by advances in
technology or materials, than by the supposed attainment of progressively
higher levels of "talent." "What these
people achieved is amazing, given the bare subsistence in which they lived and
the tools they had," said Cornell University psychologist James E.
Cutting, a specialist in perception. "There's a sense that they were just
as smart as we are but didn't have societies in which information could be
passed, or places where they could work. It's not easy to paint on the walls of
a cave." But while "cave
artists often drew better than anyone today except those trained highly in
drafting or technical illustration," other elements of artistic technique
are virtually absent in prehistoric work, added John M. Kennedy, a perception
psychologist at the University of Toronto at Scarborough. Chief among these is
perspective, the ability to create the illusion of three dimensions on a
two-dimensional surface. There are several techniques involved, but common ones
include drawing a figure that is smaller and higher on the surface of the image
than the principal foreground character, using an imaginary "vanishing
point" to create the illusion of depth or receding distance, and using
shading to add three-dimensionality to a figure or object depicted in two
dimensions. So far, the only
perspective technique found in cave painting is "occlusion," in which
one foreground object partially obstructs the viewer's ability to see what's
"behind" it. Cutting suggested that occlusion, which is also
frequently used alone in Egyptian art, may have been the first technique
employed by humans to depict depth. But Kennedy noted that
cave painters "never painted 'scenes' -- they did not set themselves the
problem of placing multiple objects around an observer." Asking why they
did not use other perspective techniques "may be the wrong question."
More important, he said, was what the art meant to them -- quite likely a
question that will never be fully answered. Also, several experts
noted that formal perspective did not exist in art -- not in Egypt, Greece or
China -- until the Florentine artist and architect Filippo Brunelleschi
demonstrated in the early 15th century that a rigorous application of geometric
principles in a painting could create an illusion in two dimensions that
rivaled what people see in the physical world. "Perspective is
very exceptional in the history of art, because it is one of those rare things
that is both precise and teachable," Oxford's Kemp said. "Anybody can
learn it, but learning it doesn't mean you're going to produce a painting
that's going to be attractive to anybody." In an evolutionary
context, Kemp said the invention of perspective was akin to the impact of jazz
alto saxophonist Charlie Parker after World War II. Anyone who came after
Parker had to know how to play scales like Parker, but his genius did not make
Parker "better" than those, such as Louis Armstrong, who preceded
him. "Within any given
period of art, there is amazingly sophisticated use of the techniques available
at the time," Kennedy added. "At any particular time, the
practitioners are usually as good as their techniques will allow them to
be." |
<<image001.jpg>>
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
