Post by jonsdigs on Sept 29, 2006 20:27:55 GMT -5
This is from the New York Review of Books, Volume 53, Number 16 · October 19, 2006
Secrets of the Cave Paintings
By William H. McNeill
The Nature of Paleolithic Art
by R. Dale Guthrie
University of Chicago Press, 507 pp., $45.00
The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World's First Artists
by Gregory Curtis
Knopf, 278 pp., $25.00
Secrets of the Cave Paintings
By William H. McNeill
In 1879 a Spanish landowner named Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola was searching for prehistoric artifacts on the floor of a cave on his family property in northern Spain when his young daughter interrupted, calling out "Look, Papa, oxen" as she looked up at the cave's ceiling and "saw vivid yet delicate paintings of bison, almost fully life-sized, that appear to be tumbling across the sky." Her discovery swiftly brought ancient cave paintings to widespread public attention, and set off a complex history of dispute about their origin and meaning. Since then, thousands of similar paintings have been discovered in more than two hundred caves scattered through southwestern France and northeastern Spain on either side of the Pyrenees. Argument still rages about them and the contrasting viewpoints of the two books under review carry the controversy forward.
A century of study widened the initial focus on the Altamira cave, where Sautuola's daughter made her discovery, but all the additional images and reliable radiocarbon dating of bits of charcoal used to make black paint for many of the drawings have not diminished disagreement about the nature and purpose of the sometimes masterful, sometimes enigmatic, yet often hasty, or even clumsy, cave art of Europe.
In 1879 expert opinion was unanimous in rejecting Sautuola's timid suggestion that the ceiling paintings in his family's cave were made by the same prehistoric hunters whose stone and bone artifacts he had been collecting from the cave floor. He was accused of forgery and not until 1902, when discovery of similar paintings in several French caves supported Sautuola's claim, did experts agree that they were authentic relics of Paleolithic times.
The Nature of Paleolithic Art
by R. Dale Guthrie
R. Dale Guthrie flatly rejects that assumption, for which, he declares, "there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever." Instead, he writes,
I shall primarily be examining Paleolithic images for clues quite aside from their aesthetic significance, digging into the underlying human context behind the art making.
He is not an art historian, having retired a decade ago as professor of zoology at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, where he has lived for forty years. He specialized in Pleistocene paleozoology and found the portraits of ancient animals on cave walls in France and Spain an important source, confirming his own observations of animal behavior and supplementing skeletal remains. He also tells us, "I once was an adolescent cave explorer, growing up on the northern edge of the Ozark Plateau, a hilly limestone country remarkably similar to the Périgord," where French cave art is thickest. And as an adult in Alaska he hunted moose year after year. His entire life, in short, and especially his "forty years of experience with wildlife in the far north" underlie his book and lead him to reject the older interpretation of cave art as magical and religious.
Full article:
www.nybooks.com/articles/19435
Secrets of the Cave Paintings
By William H. McNeill
The Nature of Paleolithic Art
by R. Dale Guthrie
University of Chicago Press, 507 pp., $45.00
The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World's First Artists
by Gregory Curtis
Knopf, 278 pp., $25.00
Secrets of the Cave Paintings
By William H. McNeill
In 1879 a Spanish landowner named Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola was searching for prehistoric artifacts on the floor of a cave on his family property in northern Spain when his young daughter interrupted, calling out "Look, Papa, oxen" as she looked up at the cave's ceiling and "saw vivid yet delicate paintings of bison, almost fully life-sized, that appear to be tumbling across the sky." Her discovery swiftly brought ancient cave paintings to widespread public attention, and set off a complex history of dispute about their origin and meaning. Since then, thousands of similar paintings have been discovered in more than two hundred caves scattered through southwestern France and northeastern Spain on either side of the Pyrenees. Argument still rages about them and the contrasting viewpoints of the two books under review carry the controversy forward.
A century of study widened the initial focus on the Altamira cave, where Sautuola's daughter made her discovery, but all the additional images and reliable radiocarbon dating of bits of charcoal used to make black paint for many of the drawings have not diminished disagreement about the nature and purpose of the sometimes masterful, sometimes enigmatic, yet often hasty, or even clumsy, cave art of Europe.
In 1879 expert opinion was unanimous in rejecting Sautuola's timid suggestion that the ceiling paintings in his family's cave were made by the same prehistoric hunters whose stone and bone artifacts he had been collecting from the cave floor. He was accused of forgery and not until 1902, when discovery of similar paintings in several French caves supported Sautuola's claim, did experts agree that they were authentic relics of Paleolithic times.
The Nature of Paleolithic Art
by R. Dale Guthrie
R. Dale Guthrie flatly rejects that assumption, for which, he declares, "there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever." Instead, he writes,
I shall primarily be examining Paleolithic images for clues quite aside from their aesthetic significance, digging into the underlying human context behind the art making.
He is not an art historian, having retired a decade ago as professor of zoology at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, where he has lived for forty years. He specialized in Pleistocene paleozoology and found the portraits of ancient animals on cave walls in France and Spain an important source, confirming his own observations of animal behavior and supplementing skeletal remains. He also tells us, "I once was an adolescent cave explorer, growing up on the northern edge of the Ozark Plateau, a hilly limestone country remarkably similar to the Périgord," where French cave art is thickest. And as an adult in Alaska he hunted moose year after year. His entire life, in short, and especially his "forty years of experience with wildlife in the far north" underlie his book and lead him to reject the older interpretation of cave art as magical and religious.
Full article:
www.nybooks.com/articles/19435