Re: [Futurework] What does art say about cultural development?
Thanks Karen, There was a time when I had to sing my German and Italian songs for real Germans and Italians. They were terrific in their gentility. Then a Japanese singer who didn't speak English came here and sang a pop song in perfect pronunciation and a nice musicianship. It was a weird feeling. I believe we artists need to walk more into the worlds of science, law, philosophy etc. and draw our conclusions about them from artistic reality. Perhaps they, like me would begin to get a feeling for how their comments about art are read by those of us who actually do it and make a living at it in this modern pre-historic world. On the other hand, commenting from each of our places can be useful at arriving at consensus. But that means that we have to ask the experts for their expertise and rely upon the security of our own. The key word is always "respect" and scientists don't have much when it comes to art. They could start by calling themselves "civilians" or the operant word in the arts "amateur" which means "one who does it for the love of it." I like it when people take their space, I don't like this "we are all people here" attitude makes us re-invent the wheel or a duck as the situation may be. The hardware is the body, the primal systems are the six perceptual modes with aesthetics being the organization principle, emotion and intellact is RAM and the professions are the software of civilization. Why should it be surprising that a person with a finely developed primal system should find their way into the profession of artist 30,000 years ago? Art has always been about the ability to imag-ine. REH - Original Message - From: Karen Watters Cole To: [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. 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 b
Re: [Futurework] What does art say about cultural development?
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. Ed - Original Message - From: Karen Watters Cole To: [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. 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 to
