PREHISTORIC ARTTFA 20 – History of the

Western Visual Arts

Prehistoric Art

• Prehistory: all of human existence before the emergence of writing

• Prehistoric art is significant in the understanding of early human life and culture

• Most exciting and speculative area in art history: specialists can answer when and how works are created, but conclusions and interpretations for their motives are only hypotheses

The Stone Age

Paleolithic period(Greek: paleo,“old” + lithos, “stone”)

Upper PaleolithicMiddle PaleolithicLower Paleolithic

Mesolithicperiod

(“middle”)

Neolithic period(Greek:

neo,“new” + lithos, “stone”)

• 120,000 years ago• Africa -> Asia -> Europe -> Australia ->

America• Period of early human development of stone

tools, weapons and figures• Homo sapiens sapiens (modern humans)

vs. predecessors: cognitive capability to create and recognize symbols and imagery; the ability to make and understand art

• Arrival of modern humans in certain regions is associated with the advent of image-making

The Stone Age

The Paleolithic period

• Lower paleolithic (2.5M years ago)- Africa: early humans created simple,

sharp-edged stone tools- Although not art, they are as

important as they document a critical development in our evolution: humans’ ability to transform the world around them into specific tools to complete a task

The Paleolithic period

• Teardrop-shaped hand axes (1.65M years ago)

- Eurasia: appearance of more sophisticated stone tools, displaying significant changes in our ancestors’ cognitive abilities and manual dexterities

The Paleolithic period

• Middle Paleolithic (400,000 years ago)

- Homo sapiens subspecies, Neanderthal, inhabited Europe

- Eventually replaced by Homo sapien sapiens because of their mental capacity to solve problems of human survival

The Paleolithic period

• Upper Paleolithic (38,000 BCE in Australia, Africa and Europe)

- emergence of the subspecies, homo sapiens sapiens- Evolutionary origin of art: the capacity to think

symbolically and to create representational analogies between one person, animal or object and to recognize and remember these analogies

• homo sapiens sapiens- Recognized and benefited from variations in natural

environment- Managed social networking and alliance making

(skills for organized hunting)

The Paleolithic period

• Blombos cave ocher

- South Africa: world’s earliest pieces of art

- Two engraved blocks of red ocher probably used for coloring objects and shell ornaments

Paleolithic Architecture

• Upper paleolithic woodland shelter: circular or oval huts (15-20 feet dia) of light branches

• Widespread appearance of durable architecture concentrated in village communities did not occur until the beginning of the Neolithic period

Paleolithic Architecture

Paleolithic sculptures

• Sculptures in the round (30,000 BCE)- Small, self-contained, three dimensional

figures or figurines of people and animals made of bone, ivory, stone and clay

• Relief sculpture- Carving on stone, bone and ivory to form

a background that sets off the projecting figure

• Most human figures found were female

• Lion-human- Complex thinking and

creative imagination: unique human ability to conceive and represent a creature never seen in nature

- The possibility of animals and humans as parts of one common group of being

• Woman from Willendorf• Carving a well-nourished

female body = artist’s expression of health and fertility

• Subtle forms of nonverbal communication among small isolated groups of hunter-gatherers: signal for interaction and/or mating

• Produced during worst climactic conditions = need for interaction and alliance building

• Woman from Dolni Vestonice

- Marks a very early date for humans to use fire to make durable objects out of soil and water mixtures

- Figures explode in kilns before completion of firing: earliest records of performance and process art

• Woman from Brassempouy

- Memory image: generalized elements that reside in our standard memory

- Abstraction: the reduction of shapes and appearances to basic yet recognizable forms that are not intended to be exact replications of nature

Cave Paintings

• Decorated caves held a special meaning, with people returning to them time after time over many generations

• Discovery of new caves = correct earlier errors of interpretation

• 19th century: the love of beauty• Early 20th century: products of rituals, ceremonies and

sympathetic magic• late 20th century: rejection of earlier ideas based on

scientific method and current social theory• Privileged hunting knowledge• Shamanism: shamans travel outside bodies to mediate

between the worlds of the living and the spirits

• Chauvet: earliest known site of cave paintings

• Lascaux: best known cave paintings

• Altamira- First cave

discovered and attributed to the upper paleolithic period

- Yellow + brown iron-based ochre = red

- Charcoal = black

Cave sculptures

• Two bisons- modeling:

shaping the damp clay of the cave’s floor

- Place for important group rites

Cave sculptures

• Stone lamps- Functional and

aesthetically pleasing

- Fueled by animal fat

Neolithic period

• Modern humans gradual exertion of control over the land and its resources

• Origin of plant and animal domestication: adoption and adaption of of new sets of technologies, skills, and plant and animals species that allowed them to produce food

• Balance of hunting, gathering, farming and animal breeding = steady food supply

Neolithic architecture

• People developed a new attachment to the land, and with settlement came a new kind of social life

• Beginnings of architecture in Europe: people building their social environments

• Mixture of shelter, architecture, art, spirit ritual and ceremony at Neolithic sites = indefinite distinction between “domestic” and “sacred” architecture

• Neolithic worldview: clear and repeated emphasis of death, violence, animals and male body parts replaced old interpretations of the mother goddess cult (female body, human fertility)

• Located at defensible sites: near rivers, plateaus and swamps

Neolithic architecture

• Catalhoyuk (7400 BCE)- Central Turkey: first traces of a Village- Importance to art history: the picture it provides of the

use of early architecture and the sensational art found within its buildings

• History houses- Aside from shelter, their houses were an emblem of the

spirit of the history of the community, seasonally replastered and repainted for several years

- Dead buried under the floor connected the communities’ past, present and future

- Decorated interiors: violent and wild scenes between people and animals

Neolithic architecture

• Sekslo- Stone-based, long

lasting structures in one part of the village and less substantial mud, clay and wood buildings in another part

Neolithic architecture

• Megalithic architecture- Building of ceremonial structures and

tombs- Death and burial: fundamental,

public performances in which individual and group identity, cohesion and dispute played out; death as theatre

Neolithic architecture• Newgrange- Stones engraved with

rings, spirals and diamond shapes = hallucinatory

- Key entopic motifs were positioned at entrances and other important thresholds inside the tomb, which played important roles in rituals that centred around death, burial and the visitation of the deceased by the living

Neolithic architecture• Stonehenge- Most famous megalithic

structure- Not the largest, but one of

the most complex with eight different phases of construction and of different types of stone (bluestone and sarsen)

- Site of ceremonies linked to death a burial

- The meaning of stonehenge therefore rests within an understanding of the larger landscape that contained the places of the living

Avon River connects Stonehenge and the Durrington Walls by banked avenues = connecting the worlds of the living (wood settlement) and the worlds of the dead (stone circle)

Sculpture and ceramics

• The Neolithic way of life was marked by the ability to make ceramic vessels

• Shift from reliance on skin, textile and wooden containers to the use of pots made by firing clay

• No one set of social, economic or environmental circumstances that led to the invention of ceramics

• Neolithic figurines: starting point of the body as a central role in politics, philosophy and art of historical and modern times

• Neolithic people made thousands of miniature figures of humans

• Emergence of the human body as the core location of the human identity

Metallurgy

• 3000 BCE: Technology of metallurgy is closely allied to that of ceramics

• Metals: first used for ornamentation (gold as jewelry or ornament clothing)

• Adorned the dead bodies for special burials = death and its attendant ceremonies as focus for large and visually expressive displays of status and authority

Bronze Age

• Period that followed the introduction of metalworking

• Bronze (tin and copper alloy): stronger and harder substance than copper

• Introduction of bronze = power shift within communities

• Bronze objects were circulated as prized goods

Rock carvings• Bohuslan- 40,000 images from 1,500

sites- Motifs: boats, animals,

wheeled vehicles and ploughs, weapons, and majority of which are boats

- Rock art connects sky, earth and sea = reflection of he community’s view of the three part nature of the universe

- Possible boundary between the living and spirit world