Periods of Art History I:
from Prehistory to Trajan
II. ‘PREHISTORIC’ ART
or
WHERE DOES IT START?
Plan of the lesson
1. Introduction: Since when can we talk about ART? Visual
culture before and after the “Ice Age Revolution”
2. Cave art in Western Europe: Altamira, Lascaux, Chauvet
3. Earliest forms of sculpture: ”Venuses” and other objects
4. Conclusion: Avant-guard reception of prehistoric art and
problems of its interpretation
Prehistory History
3 millions years to
c. 3’300 BCE
c. 3’300 BCE to nowadays
AntiquityNeolithicPaleolithic Middle Ages Modern Age Contemporary?
3 millions to
10’000 BCE
10’000 to
3’300 BCE
3’300 BCE
to 476 CE
476 to 1453
or 1492
1453–1789 1789–2024 etc….
Makapansgat pebble, found in
South Africa, ca 3 millions BP
MANUPORT: the earliest form of art?
Erfoud manuport, found in Morocco, 300,000-
200,000 BP
Pareidolia
Blombos cave, South Africa, deposits with artifacts
(engraved and cross-hatched ochre), dated between
103,000–73,000 BCE
Ice Age Technological Revolution
Visual culture before “Art”?
Pazyryk tribe tattoo, ca 600-300 BC
Painting of a pig and three human figures, Leang Karampuang, Sulawesi, Indonesia, 51 200 BP
First dated cave painting in
La Pasiega, Spain
c.a. 64,800 BP
Distribution of primary Palaeolithic cave-art locations in Eurasia.
“The precursors of Raphael and Michelangelo, or the Birth of the Arts of Drawing
and Sculpture in the Age of the Reindeer” 1870
CAVE ART
Altamira (20 – 16 000 BC)
discovered 1868
Lascaux (15 – 10 000 BC)
discovered 1940
Chauvet (32 – 30 000 BC)
discovered 1994
Altamira cave, 20,000–16,000 BCE,
Santillana del Mar, Cantabria, Spain
ALTAMIRA
cave, 20,000–16,000 BCE,
Santillana del Mar, Cantabria,
Spain
Cave of Pech Merle, France, 16–25 000 BP
LASCAUX
15 – 10 000 BC
Montignac. France
Discovered in 1940
“Hall of the
Bulls”, or
“Rotunda”,
Lascaux,
18,000–17,000
BCE,
Montignac,
France
"I think that the power that we see expressed here for the first time is the power of anticipation: the forwardlooking
imagination. In these paintings the hunter was made familiar with dangers which he knew he had to
face but to which he had not yet come."
CHAUVET
Grotto of Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc
(Ardèche, France),
38,000–32,000 BCE
Discovered in 1994
The Chauvet “Venus”?
Altamira
16 – 20 000 BP
Leang Sakapao, Sulawesi, Indonesia
Hand stencils estimated between
35,000–40,000 BP
Cuevas de la Manos, two different periods: 13,000–9,000 BCE
and 7,000–3,300 BCE, Argentina, province of Santa Cruz,
Patagonia
Yves Klein, Peinture de Feu. Couleur sans titre (FC
21), 1961
Vassily Kandinski, Empreintes des mains de l’artiste,
1926, Centre Pompidou, Paris
Function(s) and perceptions of the cave art
Lamp, found in the Lascaux grotto, 11 x 22,5 x 3 cm, 17,000 BCE
Flute, Hohle Fels Cave in southern Germany, 42,000 BCE
Löwenmensch figurine, Hohlenstein-Stadel (Germany), mammoth ivory, 31,1 x 5,6 x 5,9 cm, c. 35,000 – 40’000 BCE / Museum Ulm
“VENUSES”
Venus of Willendorf, limestone,
c. 28,000–25,000 BCE
Venus of Dolní Věstonice,
ceramic, c. 29,000–25,000 BCE
Venus of Lespugue, ivory,
c. 26,000–24,000 BCE
Venus of Laussel, 18,000–25,000 BP
Dame de Brassempouy (France) 3,6 x 1,9 x 2,2 cm, mammoth ivory, c. 26,000 – 24,000 BCE / Musée d’archéologie
nationale, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, discovered in 1894
Female face, ivory carving, Dolní Věstonice, Gravettian, 28 000 - 22 000 BP
Fertility symbols, images of Mother Goddess and/or totemic and protective amulets?
“I am struck by the fact that new light is shed on our
birth at the very moment when the perspective of
death is appearing”
Georges Bataille, Lascaux ou la naissance de l’art, 1955
Bull, Lascaux cave paintings, 18,000–17,000 BCE Pablo Picasso, Bull, 1945
“After Altamira, all is decadence”: Pablo Picasso
Louise Bourgeois,
Harmless Woman,
1969Venus of Lespugue, ivory, c. 26,000–24,000 BCE
PROBLEMS IN THE STUDY OF PREHISTORIC ART
1. The field of paleoanthropology and human evolution is a fast
developping discipline
2. The still limited corpus of artefacts: every new discovery challenges the
hitherto narrative of “primacy”, “origins” or “development”
4. Problem of dating: often only indirectly
5. Absence of other forms of “art” that do not preserve in time
6. Local vs. global
Distribution of primary Palaeolithic
cave-art locations in Eurasia.