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 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."