May 10 2012: I'm also surprised that you would consider it "primitive" A close look at the panel of Lions, for example, shows extraordinary feeling and sensitivity for the subject; there are indications of composition throughout the cave, using buttresses and wall structure to convey sign, all done in dimly (?) lit space. We have no idea what other activities went on (music/bullroarers, ritual??), if any. And, after all, it was Picasso who strove to return his art to the primitive, to more childlike expression. It may have been a prototype of fresco, most definitely "a technology of painting on rock", with rock (ground minerals). We have yet to tap out the form, fortunately.
May 10 2012: I like Picasso's sentiment that, to paraphrase, we've learned nothing new in 20,000 years (leaving Lascaux). I read David Lewis-Williams's "Mind in the Cave" some years ago and studied cave painting some; the things that touched me most were evidence of gender differences in the hand prints, evidence of a child, held in an adult's arms while the adult blew the child's print on the wall, the extraordinary execution in difficult, cramped spaces. We haven't changed significantly, for all our technological mastery
I enjoyed Herzog's movie immensely, and deeply appreciated him documenting Chauvet for posterity; though I couldn't follow him on some of his more somber, cryptic digressions. The albino crocs seemed a stretch.
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A reply on Conversation: What does cave art mean to you?
A comment on Conversation: What does cave art mean to you?
I enjoyed Herzog's movie immensely, and deeply appreciated him documenting Chauvet for posterity; though I couldn't follow him on some of his more somber, cryptic digressions. The albino crocs seemed a stretch.