(GPWA) Module Review

Module Review

This review has been designed to help you narrow down the most important works of art covered in this module. It is NOT meant to be a replacement for reading the text or other class activities, but to serve as a supplement. You are responsible for keeping up with the reading in your text as well as provided supplemental readings/websites.

 

The Global Prehistory Overview

• Introduction to art history: Why study it? You will learn to write about an object and place it in a context. You will learn the vocabulary: form, content, style; context; learning to look; the concept of style; identifying work through descriptive and analytical writing.
• The birth of art in the Paleolithic era and the relationship of imagery to those who created it, its context, magic, and ritual are studied. Transformations into identifiable cultures are studied with the specialization of art making and the artist. Stylistic comparisons between Neolithic and Paleolithic works are studied.
• Influences of geography, economics, political structures, and agriculture on the nature of art are examined.

Prehistoric Painting and Sculpture

It is 25,000 BCE, give or take a thousand years, and a tribe lives in the southern part of Europe. They have chased wild animals out of a cave and taken up residence. This tribe has made clothing from animal pelts and rough tools from stones lying around. The sick and malnourished members of the tribe die young, while others sometimes die violently. Hundreds of feet into the dark depths of the cave, by the light of animal-fat lamps, members of the tribe are holding sticks dipped in a mixture of dirt and fat, and painting on the rock ceilings and walls. They are creating the earliest surviving paintings and sculptures produced by humankind.

The most notable paintings are found at the caves of Lascaux in southern France and Altamira in northern Spain. What did the earliest artists draw, and what inspired them? These artists depicted what probably was the most important to them: the animals their tribe hunted, including bison, deer, wild boars, and horses. Some of the figures are quite large — one at Lascaux is 18 feet long. The quality of the work is amazing; the proportions are correct, the poses are lifelike, and the outlines are strong. Figures are occasionally shaded to suggest the volume of the animal, stippled to indicate the texture of its pelt, and even drawn on a natural protrusion of the rock to give its form more three-dimensionality.

Why did early humans expend the time and effort to execute these drawings? Archaeologists may never know for sure, but they have many theories. These paintings were not mere wall decorations. This is not the Flintstone's living room! In fact, at Altamira traces of human habitation exist in only one painted room. This separation of living quarters from the paintings suggests that the paintings served a ritual or possibly spiritual function. The major theories are that they were created to ensure a good hunt or to promote the fertility of the animals the tribe hunted.

In contrast to the animals, the few human images are small, roughly drawn stick figures, and the sculptures of humans lack faces.  Portable art was necessarily small and mainly consisted of either figurines or decorated objects. These things were carved (from stone, bone or antler) or modeled with clay. The exaggerated features of the figurines often referred to by the collective name of "Venus", are unmistakably females of childbearing build.

Are these images fertility fetishes or a "mother earth" goddess?  The truth is, scholars really do not know for sure why these prehistoric works were created, and it is likely that they never will. Whatever their function in the past, the prehistoric works are significant today for the simple, but incredible, fact that they exist.

Review the major works from this module in the Art Gallery presentation below.

Module Summary

The art of the Stone Age represents the first accomplishments in human creativity, preceding the invention of writing. While numerous artifacts still exist today, the lack of writing systems from this period greatly limits our understanding of prehistoric art and culture. What can we really know about the creators of these paintings and what the images originally meant? These are questions that are difficult enough when we study art made only 500 years ago. It is much more difficult to contend meaning for the art of people that had not yet developed the social or language structures that have shaped us today. Are the principles and tools of art history even applicable? If we want to understand the prehistoric people that made this art, we must truly understand our creative passions and ourselves. The desire to wonder and guess based on what we see as well as the little available physical evidence is speculative, but the study of the beautiful early works is so gratifying.

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