I gripe enough about many listers' inadequacy in some other aspects of our forum's discussions, so that I want in passing to say these informed observations by William, Kate, Michael and others, conveying to me interesting things that I in my relative ignorance about their "genre" never knew, are a major reward of the forum for me. I am (too silently) repeatedly grateful to you guys for them.
In a message dated 10/3/08 6:40:31 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > An interesting fact of paleolithic cave paintings is that the artists seem > to have preferred bulges, cracks and other natural features that seem to have > suggested animal forms to them. Thus a bulge in the wall was chosen because > with a few alterations it looked much like a bison or something. We all do > this all the time when we see something we can't identify and say "it looks > like..." except the Paleolithic artist added the necessary, convincing detail. > In the early Renaissance, before anyone had a clue about Paleolithic > anything, the myth grew up around Giotto, who was seen by following generations of > Renaissance artists as the father of the new naturalist art, that as a shepherd > he once saw a rock that looked to him like a turtle and he added a few marks > to make it obvious. > > A perplexing (to us) feature of much Paleolithic cave art is the seeeming > lack of regard artists had for previous painters in the same space. Thus > images overlap in apparently haphazard ways, or like gang graffiti that purposely > overpaints another gang's insignia. Keep in mind that the cave paintings > were made in the same caves on top of one another for tens of thousands of > years! Thus one painting can be obscured by another that was painted thousands of > years later. So we don't know what went on re magic or cancellation of > previous images or just not "seeing" what had been done before (just as we ignore > the ephemera of a few generations ago). We just can't be sure of anything and > can't apply the compositional frame to Paleolithic art, not because they > didn't have a frame in mind but because we can only speculate. > WC > > ************** New MapQuest Local shows what's happening at your destination. Dining, Movies, Events, News & more. Try it out! (http://local.mapquest.com/?ncid=emlcntnew00000001)
