Art: Very Old School

There have been many interpretations on the cave art found in the Lascaux Caves, but all of them revolve around animals and specifically those that were sketched on to these walls. One of the ideas is that the painters drew them almost as a “how to” schematic for hunting, deduced from observing the fact that specific parts of the animal were marked with arrow like symbols or slashes. Another theory is that the painters were big fans of the mythical world, that is there culture might have been heavy on shamanism and putting a lot of religious belief in these animals, or what is known as totemism. Yet there is still another explanation to why the painters drew what they did and this one revolves around the idea that they were constructing some sort of calendar to document time. They documented time by using the proposed unit of a season (e.g. summer), and would chronologically depict biological development of the animal with changes in morphological structures. This also could have helped them categorize which animals were reproductively ready.

This heavy emphasis on animals, and the total absence of the human species, shows that the painter’s culture was heavily influenced by animals, and specifically the cow and horses. Just as some churches glorify Jesus Christ on the stained glass windows, the painters here glorified the animals.

These paintings give us insight to our aspects of these painters’ lives. For example, they indirectly let us know about the craftsmanship of these skillful artists, that back then were just exiting the cycle of evolution from our early primate ancestors to our early human species. To draw these paintings in the first place they would have had to develop the tools to do them, and such tools have been found and show the advancement and the intrinsic quality of those tools, like the lamp.

The innovation of the lamp was accomplished due to the fact that these early drawers had some difficulties to face. Here, the lamp was made to aid them in the underground, dark caves and illuminated their canvases.

No matter what time era you analyze or what type of art you think is the best, they all serve one common purpose and that is to document what is happening during the time of conception of the art work. Either it be early renaissance art or early cave sketches of horses, artists have indirectly and unconsciously helped document time. Another purpose all art serves is to help convey and express what was of concern during their time.

 

This type of art, known as performance art performed by people like Marina Abramovic, this helps to functions once again as another time point in the history of humans and marks the era of modernism and contemporary art. She also conveys important ideas of our time such as the imbalance of power between males and females, and conveys the idea of attention in here very last work, “The artist is present.” However, this type of art has no specific culture except those who are interested by what goes against “the norm.” This both includes those that love the unusual, and those that believe that what she does, does not fit what is accepted in society today. This type of art, performance art that is, opens up a lot of possibilities to explore one’s status and role in both society and with their self. 

must watch, James Franco even participated: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Trw9vYV_g6c&feature=related&noredirect=1