Hi! This is a brief review of
art running from about 30,000 to 9,000 BCE (same as BC)
focusing primarily on the area of Europe.
modern day Europe, so Paleolithic literally means
old stone, so "Paleo" Old, "Lithos" Stone - old stone age.
It's prehistoric. Remember this is a period before
writing, so there are no written records for this period.
We have the archaeology. We have these objects that we interpret as art,
that's really all we have to go from, so we have some ideas about what they ate,
some ideas tools they had but it's very very limited just because its time period
was so so long ago, so very little does survive.
The materials they used were stone, shell, ivory, so things that were naturally occurring.
We are not to the period where people are using bronze or iron.
That's going to come later on. There's an emphasis on
animals and hunting, so of course people are hungry during this period; they do
not have a lot of food available. They are not raising there own animals at this
point. They are not raising their own crops.
They don't have agriculture at this point.
so that they are working out hunting. They
are probably spending a lot of time doing it. They are probably following herds around.
This is a nomadic period. People are moving from place to place
They are not staying settled for extremely long periods of time. Also
there's a focus on women and fertility
so childbirth was probably extremely hard during this time,
so an emphasis on ensuring the survival
a human race making sure that people can
continue to have children, so we think that they were probably creating art
to ensure fertility. To ensure that people
could get pregnant -- women could get pregnant -- that they could have children, and also that
they
could hunt -- that they could have food, so food
children; very very basic needs seem to be
focus of the artwork from this period, so the first work
that we focus on is the Woman of Willendorf, sometimes called the Venus of
Willendorf
if you search for her on the internet, she'll come up probably as the
Venus of Willendorf. Venus
is the name of a goddess from the ancient Roman period -- long after this was created,
so this is just a nickname for these figures because they're
nude, so Venus in the ancient Roman period was often nude
so this figure has gotten that nickname.
She's not a Venue goddess, however. She maybe some kind of
good luck talisman
probably bringing about good luck during the time of childbirth
We definitely see an emphasis on
elements related to fertility, elements related to childbirth
her breasts are enlarged, very exaggerated, her stomach
her genitalia, her thighs, so she very much is
a female figure. All of her female
...or all female attributes are extremely
exaggerated. Her face, however, is
very hidden, so there's no real interest in her individualizing
features. It's more about just this ideal female figure,
And this emphasizes that either she's pregnant or that she has been pregnant
and that hopefully this could bring about maybe another pregnancy
for a woman who owned it. So it's very small
-- about four inches high, and so you could take it with you
Remember these are nomaidc cultures. You could take it with you wherever you were going.
It's important to know that there are
terms that come along describing works of art, so you want to go through them
when you are looking at different works of art. You want to go through: what's the medium?
What's it made of? What's the technique? How is it carved or painted?
What's the size or scale? So as I was just saying this one is four inches.
Some works of art are extremely monumental -- are huge!
So the size and scale, the composition (how are elements arranged?),
so is it really crowded? Are things really spread out?
Is there something right in the center that's really important. So think about
that is as you are thinking about
composition. Space! How does the object occupy space?
or if you have a painting, how does
the object, or how does the painting, give the illusion of space? How is perspective used?
So that's very important. What colors are used?
We react very strongly to color. Color can give you different
emotionally effects, so is the color really intense?
Or is it really washed out? Is it very pastel - ly ?
Is it very light-hearted? So whatever art you're looking at
especially passed the prehistoric, where you tend to see
more pigments, more color added
it's really important to pay attention to that. What kind of
line is used? We'll see that in just a second when we get on to the cave paintings
Is it just a pure outline? Is there some modeling or shading?
Is it very descriptive? Things like that.
And then the texture. Is it smooth? Rough? Worn? A lot of the things look very
rough and worn because they're old, so just keep that in mind. Originally they may
have been very smooth,
so it's important to you think about how things maybe have changed
over a certain period of time. The next work we want to look at is the "Woman holding
a Bison Horn". Both of these -- or all the works we are going over here are
key works -- they have those double stars -- this is a relief sculpture
It's still attached to it background, so the sculpture that we saw of the Venus of Willendorf
or Woman of Willendorf was a sculpture in-the-round
This is a relief sculpture. It's still attached to the background.
It was actually moved from its original location, so cut out
brought to museum to keep it safe. It's larger
A foot and a half tall. She's holding a bison horn
other than that she's quite similar to the Venus of Willendorf
enlarged hips, belly, breasts. She's actually gesturing to her belly here.
See her hand here gesturing to her belly, and then she's also holding on to a
bison horn. This is
the clear difference between the two works, so
the bison horn might be a sign of a ritual. It be a sign of
sign of power -- meaning this figure was a figure that was
was in power
There have been some suggestions that maybe these were matriarchal societies. If women were the one's
bringing fourth life were they seen as very powerful? Were they the figures in
charge? This is very debatable; very hard to
substantiate these claims, so we're not sure about that
or maybe we're they actually worshiping the Great Mother Goddess?
that's another possibility; there's
idea that there was an important spiritual associated
with women and a lot of this probably related to
fertility because women are bringing forth life!
so we see she's holding this bison horn -- ritual power perhaps.
It has 13 lines inscribed on it. You can see
the little indentations here.
And there's a number of ideas about this. So maybe it's commemorating 13
occasions something? Maybe something to do with hunting?
But also the idea of 13 moons per year
You probably have people that were very familiar with when the moon
was coming out because it was there source of light
at night, so you have these 13 lines.
It could all see the 13 opportunities a woman generally has to get pregnant during the
year, so that has a clear fertility association.
Ok, we're going to move on to some representations within caves,
so we have sculptures, these relief and
in-the-round sculptures, but we also have cave paintings and these were
elaborate cave systems; systems that went on
for hundreds of yards. They could be very very long
and so it gives us a sense of people going into these really
dark places and probably bringing some kind of light with them
maybe lit with oil, animal fat
so going into these really dark places, they would illuminate
spaces, small spaces where you might see
an animal here, an animal there and in the case of these
Altamira caves -- this is a cave system in Spain dating from about 12,000 to 11,000 BCE
We see a lot of bison represented
and the bison are sometimes shown as wounded.
They are kind of curled up, and we have an aerial view of them. Or they
may be giving birth, so another idea of fertility -- making sure that
the herds will survive -- that they will carry on.
so those are the two possibilities (wounded or giving birth) for what it could represent
also what's interesting about these artist chose areas at the cave
with stone actually comes out you, so you have this curve
makes the bison seem more alive
as if the stone is holding the spirit or the physical essence
of the bison, so can see the the bison is coming
towards you. So there is a very deliberate selection it seems of
where these paintings were going to be
and also have here noted the word modeling,
and modeling just means that you're going to provide some shading or
shadowing on the outside of a figure
to give it a sense of three dimensionality, so rather than having a
really clean, crisp outline here, you have a little bit shading
along the interior here as well, which gives it a slight three dimensionality.
This is a very advanced artistic technique, so it's exciting to see it at
such an early period. This desire to
create a more three-dimensional form, so very, very important.
The last key work I want to point out is the Rhinoceros, Wounded Man,
and Disemboweled Bison. This work has
three key figures. You have the Rhinoceros here with some
modeling, and you have a man
you can see his phallus here; you can see he's wearing a bird mask
or some kind of mask, and then you have a very agitated looking
bison. You can see the hair
sticking straight on end, and you could see the bowels coming
out here. Possibly he's been successfully speared
and what's exciting about this work is number 1: we very
very rarely see humans in these
cave paintings.
So you clearly have a human figure here -- definitely a man although
he is very stick figure like -- definitely a man
And you seem to have at least two figures interacting with each other. So that's number 2.
Number 2 reason it's so important is that you have these two figures
interacting. There seems to be direct connection between these
two figures here. This figure -- the Rhinoceros -- we're not as
as sure about. But these two seem to be
having some kind of connection, so possibly
a storyline could be that this one was speared by this man
or by one of his colleagues (co-hunters). And you can see that's
he's been speared. He's looking agitated; maybe the story is that this man
ended up being gored or attacked
by the bison and this is being recounted
or maybe this is some kind of ritual or something related to the hunt
but some key things to know. This is at the
very end of a system of caves in France, called the caves of
Lascaux -- a very important cave system
so very very much at the end, so maybe they are histories or
important stories being told over time and added to the cave system.
And also, people (tourists) were originally allowed to come in. This really damaged
the painting in the cave system.
You can see these white growths on the top of the
image here, and so now this is closed to the public but it
was very much damaged in the very brief time that people were allowed to come in
so it's important that we've recorded it, that we can see it
and that was discuss it because it is such an unusual work.
They were allowed to go in, take these photographs, and preserve at least
the memory of these images, and hopefully they will survive for a long time
after. So key ideas from Paleolithic
art: hunting, animals,
trying to figure out ideas related to ritual, and then, of course, women and fertility
and trying to determine what the role of
women was; whether is was
related to this Great Mother Goddess or the idea of a matriarchal
society. Lots of ideas have been put forth,
but it's very hard to substantiate these claims from this
period. Unfortunately, because it is prehistoric -- before the time of
writing.