Cave Painting

Cave Painting

Artistic Movements, Periods and Styles in 5 Points

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Cave Painting

 

• Cave painting is the earliest known artistic manifestation of human beings. We can say that it is the beginning of art, although perhaps its meaning was not necessarily “artistic.” The first cave paintings that were discovered (in the 19th century) were those of the Altamira cave, about 15,000 years before Christ. Later, paintings up to 40,000 years old (and lately even older) were discovered, but since those of Altamira were the first and the most dazzling, the cave is called “the Sistine Chapel of prehistory.” (Some people reverse the terms, and humorously call the Sistine Chapel “the Altamira of the Renaissance.”)
• Cave painting refers to the prehistoric paintings painted on stone, usually on the walls of caves (which are obviously the ones with more chance of being preserved over the millennia, as opposed to those exposed to the elements). The colors were limited: black, red, yellow, and ochre. Pigments were obtained from plants and minerals and were mixed with resin or grease. The paintings were usually done with the fingers. The paint was also spit or blown through a reed. Burnt branches were used as if they were “pencils,” or resin balls with mineral dyes. Powdered pigments were also rubbed directly against the stone.
• Generally, they represent animals (bison, mammoths, deer), human beings, and elements of nature in a very synthetic manner. And it is considered that, more than an artistic expression, the paintings probably had a magical sense of invocation, of a ritual prior to the hunt.
• When cave paintings were discovered with their capacity for synthesis, for abstraction, for converting real things into signs, the anthropologists’ idea of the human beings of that time (Upper Paleolithic) changed since they imply a remarkable capacity for abstract thought, which is a sign of intelligence. At the same time, they were also surprised with the technical skill and the degree of refinement that these paintings demonstrate.
• With the arrival of modern art and the avant-garde movements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the admiration for primitivism (the art of ancestral and exotic cultures) and the path towards abstraction, the phrase (often attributed to Picasso) was born, which says, “After Altamira, everything is decadence.”

 

Image: Bison of Altamira (ca. 15.000 B.C.). Altamira Cave, Spain

 

Recommended links:

Altamira, the Sistine Chapel of Prehistoric Art.

Artistic Movements I: from Classical Antiquity to Rococo.

Artistic Movements II: from Neoclassicism till the end of the 19th century.

Primitivism in Modernity.

Six examples of primitivism.

Artistic Movements, Periods and Styles in 5 Points: When does Modern Art Start?

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