A bison from the Altamira cave ceiling, one of the most famous paintings from there.

In France and Spain alone there are over 300 caves containing some of the most monumental art the world has ever seen.  After a visit, Picasso famously exclaimed "after Altamira, all is decadence".

What they saw now forms part of Spanish and World culture. The Altamira site is one of the greatest collections of cave paintings ever discovered. One critic called the cave the "Sistine Chapel of the Quaternary". The paintings of bison, red deer, boar and horses date from 14,000 years ago, and were saved from the ravages of time and erosion by an earlier landslide, which left them entombed and protected. Experts were amazed at the life-like details and something remarkably akin to perspective, supposedly "invented" during the Renaissance. The animals appear to come to life through the careful use of the uneven surface of the walls. Everything is achieved with just three colours: ochre, red and black. In particular, the bisons of Altamira have become an essential element in Spanish iconography like Velazquez's Meninas and the roadside Toros of Osborne. A popular brand of cigarettes (bisonte) even sports a picture of one of the bisons on its packet.  http://www.iberianature.com/material/altamira.html

Picasso also noted this:  Upon exiting the cave, an awed Picasso declared, "We have learned nothing in twelve thousand years."

I used the bison to begin this discussion because to me it is the most beautiful painting of an animal I have ever seen.  I have had very little by the way of education in Art History. I am not familiar with theories of composition or theme or other aspects of what should go into a painting.

Art is inexplicable. At least that is one perspective that I seem to see over and over again in the literature.

Yet, if you do not understand some of the rules, I do not understand how you can grasp what the artist was attempting to say. You cannot appreciate the European tapestries and paintings classified as Pre-Renaissance if you do not grasp the fact that symbols appear in almost all of these expositions of human creativity. There is a language at work.

Going back to the Altamira Great Bison, there is what I call balance. You can turn it 45 degrees, 90 degrees, 180 degrees and, to me anyway, it is a marvel. The eye, just looking at the eye, you are beholding a sacred icon that appears throughout human populations around the globe. And time has nothing to do with it. Five thousand years ago or five days ago, the eye appears in art.  

The eye is the Greek Noos. Think about this:

We will see you through these tough times.

You do not say that we will hear you through these tough times. We, Homo Sapiens, went from  auditory and olfactory stages directed; to  being  an organism primarily sensing the world through the eyes. I swear that the Egyptian eye that appears in the ancient hieroglyphics is no different than this great Bison eye.

The tail and the antlers appear as afterthoughts and yet they 'make the piece'. The muscular torso seems to accentuate the back of this monster as well as the thighs.

Now there is enhancement that has been going on here. But I believe we 'see' this god of a sort as it appeared 15 thousand years ago. And the chemists tell us that there are three main ingredients in the palate of this ancient artist.  Charcoal is present. And the red is from a clay. An ocher. And just as an aside the ancient word ADAM means red ocher clay. The kind found around the Euphrates river in Iraq where some believe the Garden of Eden once entertained the guy with no navel. Adam was formed from red clay, not dirt, not dust but this magical substance.

The fourth dimension to this painting is the actual cave wall. A cave wall is a unique canvas. It has bulges and cracks and demonstrates 'deformities' of all kinds and shapes. The artist uses the three dimensional aspect of the cave wall.

Now the next picture is what looks like a sketch pad in charcoal:

Great hall of policromes of Altamira, published by M. Sanz de Sautuola in 1880.

Looking at this sketch pad I see wondrous and magical spirits. I was taught as a kid that until the Renaissance, artists (I assumed Western Artists) lacked perspective. A three dimensional 'perspective' was missing. Well, that is not correct. Just look at some of the paintings of the ancient Romans. Look closely at what they found at Pompeii and many other beautiful depictions salvaged from ancient Rome  on the walls and even on the floor tiles.

And certainly this 3D perspective is present in these sketches.

And this 'sketch pad' demonstrates just about every single manner in which you can view a bison. 

Cave painting of a Bison from Altamira.

Take a look at both the New World Encyclopedia and Wiki under Altamira of course. I never know how these pix will show up on the blog.  But this third painting makes use of a bulge in the cave wall for the most powerful muscle on the great beast. The front shoulder just bulges.  And the red and green and even some charcoal can be discerned. The eye is quite faded here and therefore does not appear to have the commanding aura of the first bison depicted here.

An expert wrote this in the Washington Post:

He was overwhelmed by paintings of life-size bison on the cave's ceiling; this was, writes Curtis, "the first time we know of that an artist from the distant Stone Age touched the soul of a modern person."  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/14/AR2006121401459.html

Maybe that is what instills such awe in me as I review these paintings. I am not there, obviously. I am not in the haunted caves. But even thousands of miles away through photographs, I am nevertheless stunned. An artist from the ancient caves has touched my soul.

Guernica, 1937, Museo Reina Sofia

I never understood Picasso. And it is not like there was one Picasso. The fellow went through different 'periods' the experts tell me. Frankly, looking at paintings from those periods demonstrate totally different artists to the unlearned like myself.

He, this 'modernist' or 'abstract painter' loses me. I just don't get it. But I have stared at pictures of Guernica for more than fifty years and there is something or some things calling to me from 1937. 

Now I have read from some 'experts' that you do not find 'faces' of men in this cave cinematic experience. There is also a lack of fauna. In these hundreds of caves you will find a lot of 'stick men' as well as some head dressing or hair styles from time to time. That is why this particular Venus struck me as so beautiful and odd at the same time:

The Venus of Brassempouy

25,000 years ago somebody crafted this piece of art from the tusk of a mammoth.

Elephant and mammoth tusk ivory comes from the two modified upper incisors of extant and extinct members of the same order (Proboscidea). Mammoths are believed to have been extinct for 10,000 years. Because of the geographical range in Alaska and Siberia, Mammuthus primigenius tusks have been well preserved. Therefore, Mammuthus primigenius is the only extinct proboscidan which consistently provides high quality, carvable ivory.

Even though the head was discovered so early in the development of modern archaeology that its context could not be studied with all the attention it would have deserved, there is no doubt that the Venus of Brassempouy belonged to an Upper Palaeolithic material culture, the Gravettian (29,000-22,000 BP), more precisely the Middle Gravettian, with "Noailles" burins circa 26,000 to 24,000 BP.[5]

She is more or less contemporary with the other Palaeolithic Venus figurines, such as those of Lespugue, Dolní Věstonice, Willendorf, etc. Nonetheless, she is distinguished among the group by the realistic character of the representation  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Brassempouy

Like the bison, this figure just wows me. I do not know how better to describe her. (After all you cannot refer to an icon like this as an 'it', because that would be pure blasphemy.)

Notice the hair do. I mean that is what it is. This is not a representation of some matted wad of cilia on the pate of some animal/man. This is art in itself; just the 'do'.

The eyes are there but missing as is the mouth. That says to me that there were some added decorations on this beautiful piece of art. There were eyes along with a mouth 'painted' or 'pasted' on the piece.

Other pieces called 'Venus figures' are representations of fat and ugly women. They are dubbed fertility goddesses with large pregnant bellies and accentuated genetilia. Sometimes they do not even have heads.

Oh and I mentioned this months ago, but there is some evidence, based upon the outline of hands throughout the 300 or more European caves that the women might have even played a larger part in the art than men.

That is the end of my lecture for the day. I can only tell you after viewing these masterpieces for half a century, that I have reached a conclusion.

The human mind has not changed that much in the last 200 centuries.

The end.