Cave Paintings

LEARNING OBJECTIVE

Explain the types of images found in cave paintings in Europe dating

from the Paleolithic era

KEY POINTS

• Cave paintings can be grouped into three main categories: animals,

human figures, and abstract signs.

• Animals depicted include familiar herbivores—these predominate cave

art—and predatory animals.

• The most spectacular examples of cave paintings are in southern

France and northern Spain.

• Interpretations vary from prehistoric star charts, accounts of past

hunts or mystical rituals for future ones, and shamanism.

TERMS

• Shamanism - A range of traditional beliefs and practices concerned

with communication with the spirit world.

• Polychromy - The art or practice of combining different colors,

especially brilliant ones, in an artistic way.

• Chiaroscuro - An artistic technique developed during the Renaissance,

referring to the use of exaggerated light contrasts in order to create
the illusion of volume.

• Parietal Art - Paintings, murals, drawings, etchings, carvings, and

pecked artwork on the interior of rock shelters and caves; also known
as cave art.

ASM246 Week 7 Reading Cave Paintings 1

Main Article
The Paleolithic, or Old Stone Age, ranges from 30,000 BC to 10,000 BC
and produced the first accomplishments in human creativity, preceding
the invention of writing. Archeological discoveries across a broad
swath of Europe (especially southern France and northern Spain)
include over two hundred caves with spectacular paintings, drawings,
and sculpture that are among the earliest undisputed examples
of representational image-making. Paintings and engravings along the
caves' walls and ceilings fall under the category of parietal art.

THEMES AND MATERIALS

The most common themes in cave paintings are large wild animals,
such as bison, horses, aurochs, and deer. Tracings of human hands
and hand stencils were also very popular, as well as abstract patterns,
called finger flutings. The species found most often were suitable for
hunting by humans, but were not necessarily the typical prey found in
associated bone deposits. For example, the painters of Lascaux,
France left mainly reindeer bones, but this species does not appear at
all in the cave paintings; equine species are the most common.
Drawings of humans were rare and are usually schematic as opposed
to the detailed and naturalistic images of animals.

The pigments used appear to be red and yellow ochre, manganese or

carbon for black, and china clay for white. Some of the color may have
been mixed with fat. The paint was applied by finger, chewed sticks, or
fur for brushes. Sometimes the silhouette of the animal was incised in
the rock first, and in some caves many of the images are only
engraved in this fashion, taking them out of a strict definition of "cave
painting. "

MAIN EXAMPLES OF CAVE PAINTINGS: FRANCE AND SPAIN

France

Lascaux (circa 15,000 BC), in the southwestern France, is an

interconnected series of caves with one of the most impressive
examples of artistic creations by Paleolithic humans.

ASM246 Week 7 Reading Cave Paintings 2

Cave paintings in Lascaux, France

The most famous section of the cave is "The Great Hall of the Bulls,"
where bulls, equines, and stags are depicted.

Discovered in 1940, the cave contains nearly two thousand figures,

which can be grouped into three main categories—animals, human
figures, and abstract signs. Over nine hundred images depict animals
from the surrounding areas, such as horses, stags, aurochs, bison,
lions, bears, and birds—species that would have been hunted and
eaten, and those identified as predators. The paintings contain no
images of the surrounding landscape or the vegetation of the time.

The Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave (circa 30,000 BC) in the Ardèche

department of southern France contains some of the earliest known
paintings, as well as other evidence of Upper Paleolithic life.

The Chauvet Cave is uncharacteristically large and the quality,

quantity, and condition of the artwork found on its walls have been
called spectacular. Hundreds of animal paintings have been
catalogued, depicting at least 13 different species—not only the
familiar herbivores that predominate Paleolithic cave art, but also
many predatory animals, such as cave lions, panthers, bears, and cave
hyenas. Images from the cave's notable "Horse Panel" are seen in .

ASM246 Week 7 Reading Cave Paintings 3

Drawings of Horses from Chauvet Cave in France

The Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave in the Ardèche department of southern

France is a cave that contains some of the earliest known cave
paintings.

As is typical of most cave art, there are no paintings of complete

human figures in Chauvet. There are a few panels of red ochre hand
prints and hand stencils made by spitting pigment over hands pressed
against the cave surface. Abstract markings—lines and dots—are found
throughout the cave.

The artists who produced these unique paintings used techniques

rarely found in other cave art. Many of the paintings appear to have
been made after the walls were scraped clear of debris and
concretions, leaving a smoother and noticeably lighter area upon
which the artists worked. Similarly, a three-dimensional quality and
the suggestion of movement are achieved by incising
or etching around the outlines of certain figures. The art also includes
scenes that were complex for its time—animals interacting with each
other; a pair of wooly rhinoceroses, for instance, are seen butting
horns in an apparent contest for territory or mating rights.

Spain

Altamira (circa 18,000 BC) is a cave in northern Spain famous for its
Upper Paleolithic cave paintings featuring drawings and polychrome
rock paintings of wild mammals and human hands. The cave and its
paintings has been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

ASM246 Week 7 Reading Cave Paintings 4

Painting of a Bison in the Great Hall of Policromes, Altamira, Spain

Altamira's famous Upper Paleolithic cave paintings feature drawings

and polychrome rock paintings of wild mammals and human hands.

The long cave consists of a series of twisting passages and chambers.

Human occupation was limited to the cave mouth, although paintings
were created throughout the length of the cave. The artists used
polychromy—charcoal and ochre or haematite—to create the images,
often diluting these pigments to produce variations in intensity,
creating an impression of chiaroscuro. They also exploited the natural
contours in the cave walls to give their subjects a three-dimensional
effect.

INTERPRETATIONS

Like all prehistoric art, the purpose of these painting remains obscure.
In recent years, new research has suggested that the Lascaux

ASM246 Week 7 Reading Cave Paintings 5

paintings may incorporate prehistoric star charts. Some
anthropologists and art-historians also theorize that the paintings
could be an account of past hunting success, or they could represent a
mystical ritual to improve future hunting endeavors. An alternative
theory, broadly based on ethnographic studies of contemporary
hunter-gatherer societies, is that the paintings pertained to
shamanism.

Article Source: https://www.boundless.com/art-

history/textbooks/boundless-art-history-textbook/prehistoric-art-
2/the-paleolithic-period-45/cave-paintings-273-10732/

Photo Credits:

"Lascaux painting."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lascaux_painting.jpg Wikipedia CC
BY-SA.

"Chauvethorses."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chauvethorses.jpg Wikipedia Public

domain.

"AltamiraBison."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AltamiraBison.jpg Wikipedia Public

domain.

ASM246 Week 7 Reading Cave Paintings 6