Monday, February 21, 2011

Week 4 Blog Post


When I think of illustration, I usually don’t think of cave paintings for some reason. But I was looking up vintage illustrations and I started to wonder about even older art, so this is what I came across. These paintings are from the Ice Age and are in a cave in Southwest France. The materials used to make it are natural pigments and charcoal.

When I’m in Art History we talk a lot about wealthy patrons paying famous painters money to create these beautiful paintings so they can hang them in their homes. And while I respect that practice, it seems interesting to consider that cave paintings (while we can’t know exactly what their purpose was, when they often lack a written word to explain them) could have easily had great significance in documenting what animals were around to hunt, paying homage to who killed what animal, keeping a historical record to remember a person’s life with, telling legends, and in general expanding upon what the human imagination could do.

I’ve read somewhere before, that ancient hunter gatherer societies actually had a lot of free time. It seems interesting to imagine that as soon as people were fed and had shelter, they thought; “Hey, let’s crush up this flower and make lines with it on the wall!” And thus, art was born.

4 comments:

  1. Come to think of it, that's actually a pretty striking image: light and dark guide the eye through the piece just right, there is a certain illusion of depth, and, hell, I just like it. Must be subconscious.

    Do you know where, geographically, it is from?

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  2. This is a very great image of the piece. It's true, the lighting is fantastic. I have always loved looking at cave paintings because it is amazing to think about how they made them. I think the line work is very interesting, the way they depicted the fur is clever and how they showed the bulls muscles is intriguing.

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  3. The craziness involved in making these wall paintings is intense, and a bit unappetizing. They are actually airbrushed, okay I am being very generous with the term but for the most part it is true. They would chew ash, clay, flowers and other natural materials and spit it as a fine mist onto the walls of the caves. How did they get those clean lines? They used their hands as impromptu stencils. Pretty much low tech graffiti.

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  4. If anyone's wondering, this painting is from Dordogne in Southwest France, but my source wasn't specific on which cave. It's one of these: Font-de-Gaume, Bernifal, Lascaux II, Rouffignac, Cougnac, or Peche Merle. All of those caves have ancient paintings; they might be cool to check out.

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