Saturday, June 18, 2022

ROCK ART APPRECIATION:

Horses, aurochs, and rhinoceroses, Chauvet Cave, France. Photograph worldhistory.org.

As an Art Historian, the subject of Art Appreciation is always there, part of the consideration for any creative construct. Of course, in order to appreciate art we have to have art and a great deal of nonsense is presented about how rock art is not really art. I have addressed that question numerous times and will not rehash my previous arguments. Instead, I will quote from the great anthropologist Ashley Montagu, whose 1957 book “Man: His First Million Years” addressed the question beautifully. “Those pursuits in which the imagination is chiefly engaged, in giving form and meaning to materials with which one works, are known as arts. In this sense arts are probably very old. There is no known people that is without them – drawing, painting, carving, sculpture, music, poetry, storytelling, and the dance.” (Montagu 1957: 215)

Close-up of horses, aurochs, and rhinoceroses, Chauvet Cave, France. Internet photograph, public domain.

As for the motives behind the creation of the images, Montagu agreed with the prevailing theories of the day, that hunting magic of some sort would have been the primary reason the imagery was produced. “Why did these people of Aurignacian culture make the wall paintings in uninhabitable caves, and in the darkest and most inaccessible recesses of these? The most likely answer is that they made them for magical purposes and not in order to decorate the caves. The animals shown on the roofs and walls of these caves are often represented as pierced by spears and arrows. One makes as naturalistic a model as one can of the animal one hopes to kill, and then kills it in effigy; as one does to the drawing of the animal – accompanied by the proper incantations – so one will do in fact to the real animal. One has but to wish in the ritually acceptable manner and one will succeed. Hunting scenes abound in these cave drawings and paintings, and there can be very little doubt that this art, at any rate, was devoted principally to the practical purpose of securing success in the hunt. This does not mean that the artist did not obtain some esthetic pleasure from his achievement, but it does mean that love of beauty was not the principal purpose.” (Montagu 1957:217)


Ceiling of the bulls, Altamira Cave, Spain. Internet photograph, public domain.

“That the artist took pride in his accomplishment and was encouraged to do so is indicated by several facts. In the first place, the skill exhibited by these artists takes a certain amount of training. That such training was available from different centers is testified to by the fact that preliminary sketches on stone of certain animals have been found several hundred miles away from the caves in which the finished polychromes occur. In 1926 an engraving on limestone was found in the half-cave at Geniere in France. This was immediately recognized to be the sketch for the very individually painted polychrome of an old bison on the wall of the cave at Font-de-Gaume, in the Dordogne, some two hundred miles away.” (Montagu 1957: 217-219)

Although Montagu does not mention it, this practicing quite possibly implies instruction in the art form. One does not start with a Masterpiece, there is a learning process, usually through previous practice, or possibly a period of training such as apprenticeship. I have argued in the past that evidence for apprenticeship can be found in rock art images found in high locations that display perspective anamorphosis (elongation to make the image look correct when viewed from an angle – see “anamorphosis” in the RockArtBlog index at the bottom of the column). I do not believe that one goes to these lengths of practice and training to not seek the approval, indeed appreciation, of their results from their reference group, tribe or clan. This anamorphosis may be either the result of someone (the apprentice) up on a scaffold taking directions from someone (the master) down below who is looking up at some extreme angle, or a purposeful design feature meant to make the proportions look correct from the viewpoint of an audience down below and looking up (I do admit the possibility that the proportion of the image could be done that way purposefully without anamorphosis being the aim). But the key concept here is that there was an audience – appreciating the art.

Megaloceros giganteus, Lascaux Cave. France. Internet photograph, public domain.

“Obviously artists who could paint as well as Aurignacian and Magdalenian cave artists must have taken great esthetic pleasure in accomplishing their work, whether inside or outside a cave. It is therefore unnecessary, as some have done, to argue that the first drawings and paintings were made only for magical purposes, only for a practical purpose, and not from the sheer pleasure derived from doing something for its own sake – and doing it as well as possible.” (Montagu 1957:219-220) Indeed, the personal satisfaction of creating something is very compelling, but as I said above, I believe that the creators were also seeking the approval of their peers. This is, by definition, Art Appreciation. Now I certainly do not believe that the images were produced as “art for art’s sake,” just to entertain others. But I do believe that appreciating the images was a part of the experience that accompanied the primary motive for their creation whether “hunting magic” or something else.

Boar, Altamira Cave, Spain. Internet photograph, public domain.

Coincidentally, while I was writing this my May/June 2022 issue of Current World Archaeology magazine arrived with an op/ed by Neil Faulkner (who I am sorry to say is deceased) on “Interpreting Art.” In this, Faulkner, was expressing concern with the use of terms from Art History or Art Appreciation in describing objects instead of using phraseology that he seemingly believes have “real” meaning (archaeological terminology no doubt).

“Art can be hugely important in offering insight into the thought worlds of past people. So we have to take interpretation seriously. And that requires us to try to situate the art in the context of contemporary belief and ritual. So this – an example taken at random – will not do: ‘Cave painting is considered one of the first expressions of the human animal’s appreciation of beauty and a representation of a mystic or sacred side to life.’ I have no idea what is meant by an ‘appreciation of beauty.’ It is one of those trite phrases you find repeated a million times in art books. As for a ‘representation of a mystic or sacred side to life,’ does this not beg the question: what is this side of life, and why bother to represent it at all? Cave art can attract nonsense – nonsense which dissolves as soon as one thinks about it critically. One example is the claim that paintings of animals were teaching aids for apprentice hunters. The best way to learn practical skills – as we all know – is to practice on the real thing. You learn how to hunt – probably from a very early age – by joining older family members on a real hunt. It used to be said that when archaeologists cannot explain something, they claim ‘ritual use.’ So perhaps it has become too tame and unimaginative to say that a prehistoric painting of a bison, or a Greek sculpture of a goddess, or a medieval religious fresco were for ritual use. But they were.” (Faulkner 2022:65)

Bison, Chauvet Cave, France. Internet photograph, public domain.

And again:“Archaeologists should beware of lazy and pretentious interpretations of art derived from modern and highly misleading concept of ‘fine art.’” (Faulkner 2022:65) For the record I have never said that rock art represented “fine art” in Faulkner’s use of the term.

If I correctly interpret the intent of Faulkner’s editorial, it is to express the feeling that art historians sometimes try to hide a lack of real knowledge with the use of grand phraseology. On February 22, 2020, I wrote an editorial on RockArtBlog titled “A Case of Hypervocabulitis – Using Big Words to Sound Impressive.” In this I described the recent experience of reading a book by an archaeologist which was crammed full of exactly this type of terminology, and I coined the phrase hypervocabulitis to describe it. The examples I gave from that volume off of a handful of pages included “Androcentrism, Commodification, Decontextualization, Emic/Etic, Hegemonic masculinity, Indeterminancy, Intersectionality, Polysemy and Semiotic.” Now, admittedly, these words do have meanings, but there are much easier and clearer ways to phrase those meanings, and I, as an Art Historian, pointed that out in the context of a book written by an Archaeologist. So back at you Faulkner!

In the words of the great Mark Twain referring to commentators on research into the civilizations of Pre-Columbian America, “The researches of many commentators have already thrown much darkness on this subject, and it is probable that, if they continue, we shall soon know nothing at all about it.” (www.jimpoz.com) I believe we know exactly what he was talking about.

So to sum up, yes there was Art Appreciation in the history of rock art, from Cave Painting right on down to historic times. I have admired certain rock art panels, you have too. Whenever someone said, or even thought, that the creator of an image did a good job on it, that was by definition Art Appreciation. And I will bet that they managed to do it without the hypervocabulitis that too many modern commentators, including archaeologists, employ to impress their audiences. Montagu did not, my favorite writers do not, and I don’t either.

NOTE: Images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Faris, Peter, 2020, A Case of Hypervocabulitis – Using Big Words to Sound Impressive, 22 February 2020, https://rockartblog.blogspot.com/2020/02/

Faulkner, Neil, 2022, Culture Thinking Aloud: On Interpreting Art, Current World Archaeology, Issue 112, April/May 2022, Vol. 10, No. 4, p. 65

Jim’s Favorite Famous Quote, Quip, Axiom and Maxim Repository, https://www.jimpoz.com/quotes/Speaker:Mark_Twain, accessioned 20 February 2020.

Montagu, Ashley, 1957, Man: His First Million Years, The World Publishing Company, Cleveland and New York.

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