PREHISTORIC ART

TFA 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 Paleolithic
Middle Paleolithic
Lower Paleolithic
Mesolithic
period
(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: worlds
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 = artists
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
19
th
century: the love of beauty
Early 20
th
century: products of rituals, ceremonies and
sympathetic magic
late 20
th
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
caves 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 communitys view of
the three part nature of the
universe
- Possible boundary between
the living and spirit world