Interesting. I consider the art of Lascaux and Chauvet so sophisticated that it was probably based on generations of development, much like the medieval art of Europe was. It could not have been created instantly, but had to be part of a long tradition. Somewhere, there must have been other caves, or perhaps if one scratched away the upper layers of paint at Lascaux or Chauvet, one would find earlier, more primitive, renderings.
As the article urges: Perhaps we need to think about human existence on a different model than the objective processes which form a large part of the "content" of human existence. Darwin (and some others) invented "evolution". I do not believe the theory of evolution evolved over generations like Darwin thought the evolving species did (and even this has been called into question by the more recent notion of "punctuated evolution").
Man is not a thing in the world but rather a perspective upon the world.
The article says there is indeed progress, in a kind of Kuhnian sense of paradigm shifts. But, within a paradigm, sophistication may come early.
The article is, I believe, wrong on one point: The Chinese discovered perspective in painting before 1400CE, albeit the exact extend of precedence is in question due to scholarly disagreement whether the epochal painting in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC) is a forgery.
Greatness is in the beginnings.
(--Heidegger/Holderlin)One of the most amazing things about human beings is how degraded a self-understanding of themselves they often work very hard to have.
\brad mccormick
Ed
----- Original Message ----- *From:* Karen Watters Cole <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> *To:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> *Sent:* Monday, January 12, 2004 6:04 PM *Subject:* [Futurework] What does art say about cultural development?
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* Sophisticated Ancient Works Suggest Talent for Art Is Not Tied to Evolution
By Guy Gugliotta, Washington Post Staff Writer, Monday, Jan. 12, 2004 @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8312-2004Jan11.html
What does it take to become an artist? Do you need to study it first, or do you just pick up a brush or a knife and do it?
This question lies at the heart of a prolonged debate among archaeologists and anthropologists over the origin of figurative art -- drawing, sculpting or otherwise creating recognizable images of figures or objects -- and what it implies about human cultural development.
For years, scholars regarded the appearance of figurative art as the initiation of an evolutionary process -- that art became progressively more sophisticated as humans experimented with styles and techniques and passed this knowledge to the next generation.
<javascript:void(0)> Small bird figurine of mammoth ivory found in Germany's Hohle Fels Cave was likely carved 30,000 years ago by Europe's first modern human inhabitants.
(Hilde Jensen -- University Of Tuebingen Via AP
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."
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--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
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