Essay #1b
Perception and Reality
QUESTION: Is it possible for a modern viewer’s "perceptions" to either create or alter the "reality" of a specific Paleolithic, Mesolithic or Neolithic Period cave painting or carving?
PART ONE:
SUMMARY: What I learned from this question was much more than just art. It was the exploration of the human mind, because while perception and reality are one in same, as the world changes so does the human point of view.
REASON: This question is being asked to not only discover the differences in the art work of people today and people of the prehistoric age, but also to discover how different people think now and then, and why and how the world around us impacts that change in perception.
PURPOSE: The reason I chose to answer this question is because I like exploring the similarities and differences between people in ancient time and people now.
DIRECTION: Answering this question will help me to understand the way that people thought back in the prehistoric age and how that affected their art and how now in the industrial age that we live in changed the way we think and see the world and how our art represents this.
IMPRESSIONS: I think it is true what they say when a person is ultimately a product of their own environment. That environment is the cause of human behavior. The behavior is result of the way we think and see the world. People say that art imitates life. Well, that is true up to a certain point. We all live in what we like to call “reality.” The only problem with this reality is that every individual person has their own life and live among their own circumstances, making it inevitable that there are no two people in this world that perceive the world with the same eyes. Everyone is going to look at it differently based on their personal experiences. This is why I don’t necessarily believe that art imitates life. I think it imitates every individuals own perception of the world. This is why prehistoric art and modern art are so different, because the world itself was different.
PART TWO:
ANSWER: It’s hard to look at a Paleolithic cave painting and try to imagine what their reason or motivation was to draw it. I can only guess, because I didn’t live back then. It was a completely different world and a completely different time thus making the people who lived in it different from people today. I look at some of these paintings and find the work exquisite while others all I see is art that looks like it came from the mind of a child. Maybe it did. But who I am to know? Like I said I can only guess. A modern viewer will never look at a Paleolithic painting and think and see the same things they did while they were creating it. It’s impossible for your mind to understand a place it’s never been. All we can do is imagine and create our own story of the painting. I feel like their art truly tells stories. I think they are sharing their experiences through their art. I don’t think that is the case in modern day art. I really believe most art today is rooted from human expression and emotion, which I think makes a person in a different mind frame than sharing an experience. Perception and reality is a curious thing. I think it can be said that they are one in the same, but that doesn’t mean the way we see reality is necessarily the truth. Suffice to say we can stare at a Paleolithic painting all day long, but will we ever really know the truth behind the painting? We know our truth, but not their truth. This is what defines the barrier between prehistoric art and modern art. Reality, truth and perception.
Prehistoric:
“Paleolithic art is the art of stone age man. Stone Age man differs from previous man because he is able to create and recognize symbols and recreate things that he has seen. At this point in history glaciers covered Europe, humans took refuge in caves and were hunter/gatherers.
The first art of this era was made about 30,000 B.C. it took the form of painting on cave walls and small sculptures of humans and animals from bone, stone, clay. The primary focus of this art was survival.
Why did they paint? Our answers are totally speculation based on archeological discoveries. But we suspect that they were trying to control the animals, used for ceremonial or religious purposes related to good luck in hunting or possibly for training young hunters. The latter is supported by chips in the walls and arrowheads found at the base of the paintings.
What materials did they use? They painted on ceilings and hard to reach places in the deepest, darkest areas of the caves. To do this they had to make scaffolding to reach these areas and lamps out of moss and animal fat to illuminate the darkness. The paint was made of a pigment for color and some material to bind that pigment to the wall. The pigment came from red and yellow ocres found in the soil and from charcoal. This pigment was mixed with animal fat, beeswax, urine or spit to make it stick to the wall. They used their hands, reeds, bones and plants to spread or blow the paint on the wall. The hand prints from the cave at Pech-Merle are an example of liquid paint blown through a reed.
What subjects did they paint? Their subjects were almost always animals. These animals included bison, mammoth, ibex, deer, rhino and horses. Some of these animals are now extinct in Europe. Visually, these animals were painted in strict profile to show the entire animal. We believe that they wanted to fully describe them for the purpose of controlling them. These animals are often life size with great attention to details. Realism is a term that can be used to describe them. Twisted Perspective is where the head is painted in profile, which shows, on a bull for example, that he has two horns. Twisted Perspective was done for the purpose of describing the entire animal. In addition to animals, symbols called tectiforms are found painted and carved into the cave walls.” (http://myhomepage.ferris.edu/~norcrosa/2006WEB/Paleolithic.html)
Woman From Brassempouy
“Though the finders did not record its archeological context, recent studies prove it to be authentic and date back to 30,000 BCE. The carver captured the essence of a head or what psychologist would call the memory image. Those generalized elements that reside in our standard memory of a human head. The image is an abstraction. The reduction or shapes and appearances to basic yet recognizable forms that are not intended to be exact replications of nature. The result in this case looks uncannily modern to a contemporary viewer.” (Art History, Marilyn Stokstad/Michael W. Cothren, Fourth Edition/volumn 1, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., page 7+8)
Wall Painting With Horses, Rhinoceroses, and Aurochs
“The earliest known site of prehistoric cave paintings, discovered in December 1994 in the Chauvet Cave in south-eastern France-a tantalizing trove of hundreds of paintings. The most dramatic of images depict grazing, running, or resting animals. This includes wild horses, bison, mammoth, bears, panthers, owls, deer, aurochs, rhinoceros, and wild goats. Though also included humans, both male and female, many handprints, and hundreds of geometric markings such as grids, circles, and dots.” (Art History, Marilyn Stokstad/Michael W. Cothren, Fourth Edition/volumn 1, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., page 9)
Bird-Headed Man With Bison
“Discovered in a remote setting on a wall at the bottom of a 16-foot shaft. It was the only painting in the cave that seemed to tell a story and is stylistically different. A figure who could be a hunter, greatly simplified in form but recognizably male and with the head of a bird or wearing a bird’s head mask, appears to be lying on the ground. A great bison looms above him. Below him lies a staff, or baton, or a spear-thrower. The long diagonal line slanting across the bison’s hindquarters may be a spear. The bison has been disemboweled and will soon die. To the left of the cleft in the wall a woolly rhinoceros seems to run off. Why did the artist portray the man as only a sticklike figure when the bison was rendered with such accurate detail? Does the painting illustrate a story or myth regarding the death of a hero? Is it record of an actual event? The painting may also depict the vision of a shaman.” (Art History, Marilyn Stokstad/Michael W. Cothren, Fourth Edition/volumn 1, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., page 11)
Sculptures Of Bison
“Caves were sometimes adorned with relief sculptures as well as paintings. An artist simply heightened the resemblance of a natural projecting rock to a similar and familiar animal form. Other reliefs were created by modeling, or shaping, the damp clay on the caves floor. Here the sculptor created two bison leaning against a ridge of a rock. Although the beasts are modeled in a very high relief, they display the same conventions as in earlier painted ones, which emphasis on the broad masses of the meat-bearing flanks and shoulders. To make the animals even more lifelike their creator engraved short parallel lines below their necks to represent their shaggy coats. Numerous small footprints found on the clay floor of this cave suggest that important group rites took place here.” (Art History, Marilyn Stokstad/Michael W. Cothren, Fourth Edition/volumn 1, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., page 12)
Modern Art:
“Modern art encompasses a wide range of styles and genres, but the overriding element is a rejection of the representational model of traditional art that preceded it. There is also a concern with pure form and color for their own sake within much modern art, as well a commentary on the influence of pop culture in later modern art schools of the latter half of the twentieth century. The turn of the twentieth century is generally considered the beginning of the modern art period. Although the movement away from traditional representation and perspective had begun with the Neo-Impressionists, modern art typically is placed into the evolution of art as a twentieth century contribution. Modern art differs from the artwork before it by virtue of being a movement toward the nonrepresentational and the abstract. Artists began to break away from the real world around them that could be seen and touched and gravitated to the idea of creating art from the more nebulous arena of experience.” (http://www.ehow.com/about_4611865_what-modern-art.html)
German Expressionism
“The first really successful form of modern art was German Expressionism. Expressionist paintings is concerned with psychological symbolism and social expression. These works tend to be dark hued and feature very intense subjects. The brush strokes may be considered almost crude, but this is an attempt to express the pain of existence. German Expressionism is far more accessible than other later modern art because it still retains a semblance of representational expectations.” (http://www.ehow.com/about_4611865_what-modern-art.html)
Cubism
“Cubism is a form of modern art that many people immediately think of when they think of modern art. Pablo Picasso is the foremost Cubist artist and his paintings of two-dimensional figures made up of clearly defined geometrical shapes are the keystone of this genre. The mask-like appearances of the figures is Cubist art often gives it a nightmarish effect.” (http://www.ehow.com/about_4611865_what-modern-art.html)
Surrealism
“Surrealism is one of the more accessible forms of modern art and is typified by artists like Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte and Georgio deChirico. Surrealism is concerned with creating art that gives the feeling of being lost in a dream. Dream imagery is combined with Freudian psychological theory to plumb the subconscious desires of the mind and dress them in often bizarre imagery to hide their true meaning.” (http://www.ehow.com/about_4611865_what-modern-art.html)
Abstract Expressionism
“Modern art that is most often savaged by critics is abstract expressionism. With abstract expressionism modern art moved entirely away from the representational and into the world of the totally abstract. Those masterpieces that look like splattered paint or just a few wide strips of paint against an otherwise bare background are examples of abstract expressionism. While the joke is that any kid could paint in the style of abstract expressionism, actually the masters of this style like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline represent some of the most disciplined artists of the era.” (http://www.ehow.com/about_4611865_what-modern-art.html)
Pop Art
“Modern art that transforms pop culture into high art. Andy Warhol's paintings of Campbell's soup cans is an attempt to reveal the marriage between art and commercial in the twentieth century, while Roy Lichtenstein looked to the Sunday comics and comic strips to create giant canvases that turned this most disposable of commercial art forms into esteemed works of art. (http://www.ehow.com/about_4611865_what-modern-art.html) ”
Prehistoric and Modern Art
"Art History is the emotional and spiritual History of humankind. It is a remembering of its most sublime feelings materialized in works of art that transcend time. Altamira and Lascaux are primitive examples of this human desire of expressing its emotions. In my opinion, there is not any artistic era superior to another one in its initial impetus to create a material proof of an emotion or a spiritual pleasure. On the other hand, I believe there have been art eras superior to others since the human being has improved its technique. In the same way that scientific progress always goes up, artistic progress, which needs technology to advance, evolves with an increasing trend. However, this evolution is not continuous, since it depends on two factors: technique and spiritual emotion. Art is not just a feeling. Art is the feeling being materialized, incarnated, sculpted, written with skill and technique. The cavemen had only a few tools at their reach; consequently their art is more primitive than Baroque Art, to give an example. The problem lies in the fact that technique and emotion do not always move along parallel lines. As a result, we can sometimes find art periods with a greater and purer emotional and spiritual impulse, even though they relied on inferior technique. On the other hand, we sometimes can find other periods with better means, in which the art is weaker due to the human soul was soured, repressed, or manipulated. When the human spirit undergoes a sublime and free period, accompanied by a superior technique, then we will refer to this period as a Golden Art Age." (http://modernart-painting.com/)
