SIGN AND GESTURE IN ROCK ART - PART 2: THE CREATIVE PROCESS:

A horse raid,

Comanche rock art, La Vista

Verde site, New Mexico. Photo

used with permission of

Severin Fowles.

One final aspect of the subject of motion in rock art involves the motions that created the imagery in the first place. Severin Fowles, the chair of the American Studies Department and an Associate Professor in the Anthropology Department of Barnard College, Columbia University has investigated exactly that in Comanche petroglyphs in the Rio Grande river canyon in northern New Mexico.

Drawing of the panel, 

Comanche rock art, La Vista

Verde site, New Mexico. Photo

used with permission of

Severin Fowles.

In an area with a large quantity of pecked rock art the imagery identified as Comanche is composed of faint scratches. "The Comanches scratched rather than pecked their images, however, presumably because the performed gesture was as, or even more, important than the icon produced. The pecked horse may look like a horse in the end, but the process of pecking - of repeated staccato impacts - does not have any quality of the horse about it. The Comanche horse icon, on the other hand, was composed of arcing lines that move in a very horse-like way across the rock surface. This is nicely depicted in Figure 3a, which documents a horse raid in progress. One could call the horses scratched on this panel stylized, or even abstract, but only when referring to the icon left behind. During the process of creation - during the image's performance - the artist would have been representing the horse and its characteristic galloping motions quite faithfully, very much as a Chinese calligrapher might seek to mimic the flight of geese in the movement of his wrist as he painted lines on parchment. Figure 3b offers another example of a horse raid in progress. The original, like so many others, is barely visible in the field. However, in the sea of arcing lines, one senses again that it was the repetitive hand motions that would have most palpably signified the movement of the horses and the impressive size of the herd. A successful Comanche raid in which many horses had been captured was being recollected and reenacted through iconographic performance. From a Comanche perspective, these performances need to be understood as an extension of the Plains Sign Language (PSL) tradition, in which the Comanches were renowned participants." (Fowles 2013: 74-5)

Lines of motion from the panel,

Comanche rock art, La Vista

Verde site, New Mexico. Photo

used with permission of

Severin Fowles.

In other words, the viewer, recognizing the imagery, mentally associates with it the motions that go along with its creation. We can picture a Comanche warrior telling the story of the horse raid described by Fowles (above) making a wavy motion with his hand and arm to illustrate how the herd of horses ran, and that the curved lines of the backs of the horses illustrated in the rock art panel also convey this motion.

In the vernacular of modern art this would be called "performance art", the image is only a remaining vestigial record of the gestures/performance that were the point in the first place. The modern beginnings of performance art were influenced by Jackson Pollock whose "drip" paintings could be seen as a record of all of the motions he made to produce them. "Bolstered by photographs of Jackson Pollock in his studio, moving dance-like around a canvas on the floor, artists began to see the artist's creative act as equally important, if not more so, to the artwork produced. In this light, Pollock's distinctive drips, spills, and splatters appeared as a mere remnant, a visible trace left over from the moment of creation." (Spivey 2019)

Eventually, of course, "performance art" evolved to the stage where it was only action or situation or action with no physical remaining vestige, but that development goes beyond the scope of my discussion here. What I believe Fowles is saying, and certainly what my point is here, would relate to the early stages where there is a physical remnant of the performance, in this case the Comanche rock art panel of a horse raid. Had the imagery been the only important goal, then why would they not have made the lines deeper, more permanent and visible. Of course, such light scratching is more visible when freshly produced, but soon weathers to the state we now find it in. It does not appear to have been consciously produced primarily to be a perpetual record. In Fowles words: "the rock art's illegibility becomes, paradoxically, its greatest virtue. Simply put, it would be very difficult to argue that these images were created in order to be viewed, after the fact, by and audience (archaeological or otherwise)." (Fowles 2013:72)

Comanche rock art, La Vista

Verde site, New Mexico. Photo

used with permission of

Severin Fowles.

So, here we seem to have a probable case of gesture recorded in rock art. Does this apply everywhere, to all rock art? Most certainly not, indeed, most petroglyphs were created with lines of varying depth to be a long-lasting record or image. But Fowles has illustrated that, at least in this case, it may just be, as he put it "indeed the primary 'image', we propose, was not the scratched icon left behind, but instead the gestural hand and body movements of the rock art as a performative event." (Fowles 2013:67)

NOTE: I wish to thank Severin Fowles, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Barnard College, Columbia University, for providing me with the illustrations, his paper, and the permission to use them. 

REFERENCES:

Fowles, Severin, and Jimmy Arterberry

2013 Gesture and performance in Comanche Rock Art, pages 67-82, in World Art 2013, Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, UK.

Spivey, Virginia B., Dr.

2019 When Art Intersects With Life, https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/global-culture/conceptual-performance/a/performance-art-an-introduction.