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A little off-topic, the art in the first picture is stunning, the colors, shadows, shapes, lines. I've always imagined random individuals painting in caverns. B

by elboru 8y ago

A little off-topic, the art in the first picture is stunning, the colors, shadows, shapes, lines. I've always imagined random individuals painting in caverns. But looking at this paint makes me wonder how many generations of painters have to pass in order to get into that level of complexity.

netcan 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvet_Cave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvet_Cave It's kind of the paleolithic sistine chapel. It's used as a sort of type example of early sapien "behavioral modernity," proof their minds were like ours. If you go back in time from that point, sapiens existed for a long time but the artifacts they left behind were not that different from other species' artifacts. If current dates are good, there're almost 1,000 generations between the Chavet art and the art in the picture you liked, most of the upper paleolithic. They look similar to me, but idk anything.
wazoox 8y ago
I've visited several caves this summer (Lascaux, Combarelles, Font-de-Gaume, Rouffignac, and a couple others) and there is a constant: the artists weren't amateurs, they were extremely skilled. First, in many places it was impossible at the time to see the entirety of the drawing at a glance because of the very low height, or the wall curvature, but the proportions are right anyway (most visited caves have been dug out; back then you had to crawl for hundreds of meters in pitch darkness to reach the drawings). Similarly, the animals are drawn with a very high anatomical precision. Even animals that didn't exist locally, like mammoths (which mean that the artist had seen mammoths earlier, very far away).
jawilson2 8y ago
One of my favorite quotes about this: > This wasn't just any cave, however -- its walls were festooned with striking pictures of horses and bulls that date from the Ice Age, all rendered with exquisite sophistication and symbolic force. Upon exiting the cave, an awed Picasso declared, "We have learned nothing in twelve thousand years."[1] [1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/14/AR2006121401459.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12...

by elboru 8y ago

netcan 8y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvet_Cave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvet_Cave It's kind of the paleolithic sistine chapel. It's used as a sort of type example of early sapien "behavioral modernity," proof their minds were like ours. If you go back in time from that point, sapiens existed for a long time but the artifacts they left behind were not that different from other species' artifacts. If current dates are good, there're almost 1,000 generations between the Chavet art and the art in the picture you liked, most of the upper paleolithic. They look similar to me, but idk anything.

wazoox 8y ago

I've visited several caves this summer (Lascaux, Combarelles, Font-de-Gaume, Rouffignac, and a couple others) and there is a constant: the artists weren't amateurs, they were extremely skilled. First, in many places it was impossible at the time to see the entirety of the drawing at a glance because of the very low height, or the wall curvature, but the proportions are right anyway (most visited caves have been dug out; back then you had to crawl for hundreds of meters in pitch darkness to reach the drawings). Similarly, the animals are drawn with a very high anatomical precision. Even animals that didn't exist locally, like mammoths (which mean that the artist had seen mammoths earlier, very far away).

jawilson2 8y ago

One of my favorite quotes about this: > This wasn't just any cave, however -- its walls were festooned with striking pictures of horses and bulls that date from the Ice Age, all rendered with exquisite sophistication and symbolic force. Upon exiting the cave, an awed Picasso declared, "We have learned nothing in twelve thousand years."[1] [1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/14/AR2006121401459.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12...