Just_for_Upload

There are a lot of theories about the reason prehistoric humans drew and sculpted. Some say that it's pure art, other believe that it's a communication form, let it be from shamans, magic, beliefs or knowledge. On top of these two comes a third theory where humans back there were on drugs which allowed them to draw symbols the mind sees when in transe. First let's take the oldest cave drawings discovered until now in Chauvet caves. ''The wall paintings of Chauvet are instinctive and emotional; they reveal a choiceless impulsiveness, unpolluted by the intellect. there were homo sapiens who “had distinctly pre-modern minds, have been little given to symbolic thought, have had no great interest in communication and have been essentially self-taught and untrained” through the disciplined, hierarchic and dedicated artists of history to erratic and expressive modern artists all the way to postmodern artists with their anarchic minds (Humphrey). It is the degree of purity of instinct, emotion, freedom and self-consciousness wrapped in intelligence and mastery of technology that an artifact carries in a natural way that separates utilitarian crafts from creative arts and “high art” from “lesser art”. Those are the paradoxical hints to understand for the modern human that “knows that he/she knows” that the genius of art is not something the intellect can understand by pondering over it or know just by being an observer to it'' Paradoxically, an insightful investigation also divulges intellect as the root of freedom inherent in true art. Language, conscious communication, technology, and even self-consciousness reflect the emergence of human intellect in Chauvet cave art. In its naturalness, Chauvet cave art displays instinctive impulsiveness of creativity and freedom of communication rooted in intellect that is recognizable as the substratum in all artistic endeavors'' ¹ Let's study some of the paintings drawn in this cave: ''In some cases we know that the paintings had a special significance for the people who created them because of their location. For example, the famous "hunting accident" in the Cave of Lascau, is painted near the bottom of a twenty-foot shaft in a remote corner of the cave, with room enough only for a single person to view it at a time. The extreme rarity of the images and the fact that they depict human beings or human-like entities also suggest their unique importance. the images have been interpreted variously as sorcerers, mythic ancestors, gods, and human hunters in costume. However, if we accept David-Lewis' interpretation of the geometric images on the walls of the Paleolithic caves, it is likely that therianthropic paintings depict shamans in states of trance. On this interpretation, the bird-headed human figure painted in the shaft at Lascaux is not the victim of a hunting accident, but a shaman whose ecstatic trance state is represented by an erect penis, hard to account for in other interpretations. The bird-headed staff, perhaps was a ritual instrument, and the bison spilling its entrails an animal spirit encountered and perhaps killed in the other world, in an act of hunting magic such as Abbe Breuil described.''² ¹̵ http://www.academia.edu/1585182/Truest_Art_of_Them_All_Paleolithic_Cave_Paintings_of_ChauvetTruest_Art_of_Them _All_Paleolithic_Cave_Paintings_of_Chauvet ² http://www.faculty.umb.edu/gary_zabel/Courses/Phil%20281/Philosophy%20of%20 Magic/My%20Documents/Therianthropes.htm "The most obvious interpretation of the scene in the Shaft is that it is connected with hunting magic, perhaps the re-enactment of a hunting accident. But the most obvious explanation may not be the correct one, for three pairs of dots separate the rhinoceros from the rest of the scene'' "The beautiful paintings on cave walls found near Lascaux, France represent the earliest surviving examples of the artistic expression of early people. Using the natural rock contours that suggest the volume of the animals, these 'primitive' people of the Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) painted evocative and startlingly accurate representations of the animals that were such an important part of their lives. Cows, bulls, horses, bison, and deer are among the animals seen on the subterranean walls of these caves. These paintings were found deep underground, and were undoubtedly painted by the light of torches. Moreover, images are painted over previous images, and it is thought that these caves were continuously used for thousands of years. Through sympathetic magic, perhaps these early humans believed that by drawing these images, they would help to guarantee plentiful herds and good hunting. Another theory is that it was believed that man had to paint these images to 'replace' the animals that he would hunt and kill. Whatever the motivation, it is clear that the painting of these images was important, and the careful observation of nature that is evident here is remarkable" '' A good way to understand how important art is and always was for humans would be to imagine the time it took for the cave art to be made. Surely, one could assert that the ice-age artists were taking shelter in the caves in any case and the traces of vast amount of animal fat that have been burnt in the caves happened to be the result of that habitation. But archeological evidence suggests overwhelmingly that the Chauvet caves weren’t regularly inhabited and the work of art happened during spring and summer months. There are 416 figures some of which are well bigger than ten to twelve meters as well as numerous engravings (done with bear claws) that are one to four meters long (Hays). The labor for such undertaking, even spread over millennia, points to strong intention and drive on the part of the artists. And it seems to have gotten even stronger with time.''¹ But would really a cave man go to these extremities to draw something he finds beautiful' ''Many caves have recognizable, but crude, portraits of ibex, reindeer, bears, horses, mammoths, and mastodons. But the grand caves of Altamira, Lascaux, and Chauvet have animal portraits with rounded perspective and subtle colors worthy of Delacroix or Rubens, despite the archaic lineage of the artists. In these caves, Cro-Magnons, gradually supplanting the more primitive Neanderthal species, created beautiful and realistic drawings and paintings of the animals they hunted.''² For example Niaux cave, a simple drawing means simply what is represented, which makes the purpose sending a message or just random drawing: ¹ http://seco.glendale.edu/ceramics/lascauxcaves.html ² http://www.cosmosclub.org/web/journals/2001/platt.html ''The cave painters had rituals that involved taking drugs (undoubtedly plants) that they consumed in a frenzy to get to this creative state. The non-ordinary visual experiences were often characterized by similar kinds of abstract geometric patterns, which he classified into four categories of form constants: (1) gratings, lattices, fretworks, filigrees, honeycombs, and checkerboards; (2) cobwebs; (3) tunnels and funnels, alleys, cones, vessels; and (4) spirals,” they write, citing peyote research. “Intriguingly, these form constants turned out to resemble many of the abstract motifs that are often associated with prehistoric art from around the world, including Paleolithic cave art in Europe.”¹ ¹ http://www.alternet.org/drugs/paleolithic-cave-painters-were-high-psychedelic-drugs-scientists-suggest-using-ingenious¬ Personally I think that every theory is right. A person A had an urge to draw something he saw in its every detail and turns out to have a mammoth rendered beautifully on a cave he discovered ( he of course had talent). Another person B wanted to teach his children how to hunt or tell them a story so he drew primitive drawings. Person C was on guard at night, got bored and decided to draw, and let's imagine that A was passing by and didn't like that clumsy drawing so he rendered it. The shaman D discovered a plant that made him see shapes and he drew them. Person E saw a white cow, got stunned by it, decided to draw it and other people came to believe it's respectable too. And I want to say that art communicates messages too, it's not only something beautiful, it has meanings and purposes which makes it count as message. And the hand prints on the wall may signify that several people drew, and if it's in different times that means their purposes were different. ( If we presume that the purpose of these hands are a signature). Now about the sculptures: Woman of willendorf: ''The first suggestion is that it was a "Venus figure" or "Goddess," used as a symbol of fertility. Apart from being female, the statue has an enlarged stomach and breasts, its pubic area is greatly emphasized, probably serving as a representative of procreativity, and the red ochre pigment covering it has been thought to symbolize or serve as menstrual blood seen as a life giving agent. The second suggestion is that the figurine may have served as a good luck charm. Its diminutive size led archaeologists to assume that it may have been carried by the men during their hunting missions in which it served not only as a reminder of their mate back at home but also as a charm to bring them success in their hunting. This is further strengthened by the facelessness of the figurine giving it an air of mystery and anonymity which suggests that it may have been of more importance as an object rather than as a person. Also, the figurine's hair is braided in seven concentric circles, seven in later times being regarded as a magic number used to bring about good luck. A third possible significance put forth is that of the figurine serving as a mother goddess (earth mother or female deity). This comes from a suggestion that the statue was a woman whose specialness was indicated in her obesity since women in a hunter gatherer society would probably not have had the opportunity to get as obese"¹ Over the years the figurines from Brassempouy have served several different masters. They have been variously appropriated by advocates of fertility magic, goddess ideology, original matriarchy and militant feminism, most of whom have ignored the rather messy and oppressive origins of the Venus terminology they so willingly employ. In the melee, their original and spontaneous integration into acolonial ideology of racial inequality, in which human differences were seen asevolutionary stages, seems to have been largely overlooked.² ¹http://www.thenagain.info/webchron/world/Willendorf.html ²http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/anthro/programs/csho/Content/Facultycvandinfo/White/Women%20of%20Brassempouy%20Final%20red.pdf ¹ Believed to be a toy for a little boy. All that means that every work of art has a meaning or purpose different from the other. which lets suppose that prehistoric art is an art form and a form of communication at the same time ¹http://www.slideshare.net/loveart1/usersfaadesktopprehistoric-art