Cave Art #3 - Yellow Horse (Lascaux, France)

Here are some ideas and questions for leading a discussion about the Yellow Horse cave art from Lascaux, France.

This is the cave the boys and dog found in 1940. Almost thirty years later the first boy who discovered it still worked at the cave as a guide! This is also the cave that intrigued Douglas Mazonowicz enough to inspire his life long achievement of capturing and documenting accurate replicas of cave art before they were destroyed.

• Do you see the three colors from the earth?
• Describe for me the places where you see the red, the black and the yellow.
• Do you see any difference between how the mane might have been painted and how the rest of the painting was done? Look very carefully at the edges.
• What is the difference? Describe how it looks different and the different ways the artist may have put the colors on the cave wall.
• With hands?
• With a brush? Could they have made brushes? What might they have used to make a brush?
• Was any part painted or drawn with the edge of something hard? How can you tell?
• What do you think all these symbols are?
• What is a symbol, anyway? (Give some examples for those who don’t know. Sometimes children know more than they (or we) know they know. They just don’t have the vocabulary for it. You can always start out by asking about the word or idea. Then you can break it down into examples they will definitely know.)
• For example: A symbol of an idea, concept, feeling and place, all wrapped up together? – The flag. Even the kindergarteners can be introduced to the term. You ask about it. They shrug their shoulders. Then you can look around the room and say, “I’ll find an example. I see something in this room that is a symbol of the United States. It isn’t the country itself. It stands for the country. It means the country. What is it?
• Symbol of an amount ? a number. I see something in this room that is a funny shaped thing. It stands for an amount of something. If I have five things I make this shape to show that. What is it?
• Symbol of a sound? a letter. (For this one use a consonant, rather than a vowel.) I see something in this room that is the symbol for the sound mmm. If I want to tell someone about that sound what do I write on the paper?
• (Does anyone remember Kandinsky’s pictures we looked at? (Man on a Horse, The White Dot, Rows of Symbols) Do you think he might have been inspired by cave art?)
• Why is the horse so fat looking?
• Why might that be important to the artist?

I have story about this one, too. A fifth grade boy once asked me when looking at this print, “If they were hunters, why are those pictures of plants in there?” I said, “Maybe the plants were important, if it was what the animal ate.” Then he told me that he had been thinking about something while looking at this picture. “Well, I’ve been thinking and I’m not saying this to be funny but you know how there are piles of manure wherever there are horses? Well, you know how after a while, plants sprout from manure? Well, maybe that’s why there are those pictures of plants around horses, because plants grew around the horses’s manure.”

I loved this story and this observation. The child and the artist were alike in their ability and willingness to observe nature. I also thought it was as though the boy were watching, in his mind, what the stoneage artist had watched and then theorized as to what these observations might have meant to that person so long ago. I said something like, “Manure, plants, sprouting…That’s fantastic! What an idea! Was the large animal seen as even more magical because its manure sprouted plants? Maybe. In time maybe it was these kinds of observations and thoughts that lead to people trying their hand at planting seeds. Couldn’t those people have observed that the same seeds eaten by the horse grew out of the manure? I think that’s possible and that you have said something very important here today!

I promised the class that I would write to Mr. Douglas Mazonowicz and tell him of the great observations made and theories developed by them. I did write and Mr. Mazonowicz wrote back, telling me that he has learned to never underestimate children.

Which of the three examples of cave art is their favorite, for any reason at all?

Cave Art #2 - Engraved Deer from Les Combarelles, France

Here are some questions to use for leading a discussion about the "Engraved Deer" cave art from Les Combarelles, France from about 30, 000 years ago.



This is not a drawing but a carving or engraving into the cave wall.

• Can you think of some examples of modern day carvings like this?
• cemetery headstones, initials on metal jewelry, images on coins, anything else?
• How are they done? –Do machines do the engraving?
• How did this artist scrape or carve those lines into the cave wall?
• What did the artist use for a carving tool? (The stone scraping tool must have been harder than the cave wall stone.)
• What would you use?
• Did the artist do a good job? Why do you think so?
• How did the artist from about 30,000 years ago before there were any machines, no electricity, not even metal, do that?
• They used hard flintstone, which they had chipped into a sharp edge, to scrape and carve into the softer limestone.
• Does it look real?
• What do you think of the antlers? Aren’t they beautiful and graceful?

What is the deer doing?

I have to tell you about a conversation I had years ago with a class. A student asked me what those light marks were down at the bottom of the picture. I replied that I thought it was just the color of the rock. The student replied, “It looks like water.” I explained that I didn’t think so because I thought the water was over where the reindeer was sticking its tongue out. Another student spoke up and said, “I know what he’s talking about. I see it, too. It looks like the reindeer is standing in water.” I decide to join the class to get a better look at what they were talking about. When I joined them and looked at the print from a distance I could see what they meant. I was very excited. “You’re right! It does look like it’s standing in water, not just next to it.” A third student added, “And that might explain that line at the top of his leg. He’s standing in water up to there.” I told the class that I had been very puzzled by that line because I kept reading how perfect cave art was, that there were never any cross-outs or mark-overs. Yet, I couldn’t explain that heavy line right there cutting through the leg nearest us. But if the water came up to there, that would be the water line. This would explain why the closer leg shows more clearly and the leg on the other side fades away. If it were being viewed through water, we would have difficulty seeing it clearly. The artist had suggested this very artistically. I told the class that they had made a very important discovery because there was no book to turn to, no expert to explain this. Yet, they had discovered and explained it. I was so grateful that they had the confidence to continue to observe and express themselves to me, despite the fact that I had not agreed with them, and that I had listened.

Cave Art - #1 Standing Bison from Altimira, Spain

Here are some questions to use in leading the discussion about the first painting in the CAVE ART series - Standing Bison from Altimira, Spain.

• What is a bison? Does it look like any animal we have nowadays and in the U.S.?
• These are painted on the ceiling.
  
• Do you remember when we spoke about the difficulty of painting the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo? (I guess he wasn’t the first to suffer for his art.)
• Consider asking the children to stay seated and lean back while reaching up and pretending to paint a ceiling above their heads. For how long can they hold their hand up? Yes, they will get dramatic and moan and groan but they will also get the point that this was difficult and that to continue, it must have been important.
• The artist sometimes used bulges in the natural rock formations to make the drawings seem more life-like.
  
• Where do you think the bulges for this one are?
  
• Why do you think so?
• Have you ever gone looking for rocks that remind you of something and then you add paint to complete the image? That’s fun. If you haven’t tried that, do so sometime.
• What kind of light did the artist use to when making these drawings in the dark caves?
• Did they need a little light or a lot?
• What do you think the drawings looked like by fire and torch?
• I am told that when these beautifully drawn and shaded pictures with these natural bulges in them are seen by candle light, that the flickering light casts shadows and causes the appearance of the animal in motion. Isn’t that something amazing?
• Do you like the soft shading?
• How did the artist achieve that effect?
• Do you think the bison looks real? What makes him look real (or not real)?
• How did the artist get to know the animal?
  
• Could the artist go to the library and take out a book and spend hours studying the picture and tracing it?
  
• What did the artist study?
  
• How?
• Have you ever looked at something so much and for so long that you could draw it without even looking at the object?
  
• Maybe you can do this with your pet.
  
• Or maybe you can do this with something that you love and have practiced drawing over and over.
  
• How did this artist study?
• Was it easy or safe to study the living animal?
• Why was the bison important to the artist?
• How did the artist feel when it was time to kill and eat the bison?
• What did the artist do with those feelings?
• Why did the artist paint the bison?

Cave Art - Introduction

In the book, The Beginnings of Art, by Philip Van Dorenstern, the author says this of ancient art: “The more one studies Paleolithic Art, the more fascinating it becomes. All other arts are derivative from earlier work, and no matter how independent an artist may try to be, he cannot completely escape the influence of those who have gone before him. But in Paleolithic Art, one can see man’s first encounters with creativity and trace the evolution of styles. Here is where the study of art history must begin, for this is the very foundation of all the art that mankind has ever created.” Even what we see today, in this unit, is so evolved, I can’t help but wonder how long it took people to advance from circles and lines to these beautiful and accurate representations of animals.

The pictures we view this month are beautiful, accurate silkscreen copies of cave art. They were made by Douglas Mazonowicz. He spent most of his life visiting, photographing, sketching, studying and writing about cave art. Mr. Mazonowicz had this encouraging advise for those viewing cave art, “No true artist ever leaves a mark without trying to communicate something. So do not simply look at the paintings, observe them, too. No matter who you are or what you do, it matters little. Your personal theories and opinions are of value.” He is in complete agreement with the message we try to pass along to the children with the Docent Art Program! What wonderful validation for us!

He also encourages everyone to seize any opportunity to view and discover the secrets of the past. We can’t enter the caves he studied anymore, though. The caves with art in France and Spain are usually closed to the public. People’s presence brought in new elements that were damaging to the art. Their feet brought in bacteria. Their breath raised the temperature, causing molds to grow on the walls. Sometime people knowingly damaged these sights with graffiti or by taking samples as souvenirs. Sometimes people unknowingly damage ancient sites with bulldozers during development. We can encourage the children to have mini-archeological digs right around here. They could look for campsites, pottery fragments and arrowheads.
The prints we see this month are from the Paleolithic time or “Stone Age”, about 15,000 to 35,000 years ago. During this time the Cro-Magnon people lived, invented, hunted, observed animals and plants and changes in the moon and in the seasons. They survived floods and glaciers. Despite enormous hardship, art was an integral part of their daily life. It wasn’t something that was just for entertainment. It was a necessity. What is represented in their art was of life saving importance. They drew such things as food to eat, plants growing and babies being born.

The places chosen for the artwork is of interest, also. Some of these caves were very difficult to reach. Some were dangerous to enter. They were not places of comfort. Sometimes there wasn’t even enough room for the artist to view the artwork. Yet, when the photos are pieced together, we see that they are in correct perspective and expressed with exquisite detail and lifelike form. Some people compare the caves with their art to churches and temples with innermost, holy chambers. Even if only certain privileged and talented people drew the pictures, perhaps all knew of them and were comforted by them. Did the artists tell of the paintings and others told stories and others sang and danced stories about them? We don’t know the answers but the class can ponder some of these mysteries and we can all think about the role that art plays (or doesn’t play) in our own lives.

It is very important that at some point in your visit, you communicate to the class that these people were very much like we are today in terms of intelligence and a desire for quality. They constantly improved the design of their tools and utensils. They also created beautiful utilitarian objects. We might think that they didn’t “have” to. Then why did they? There is even evidence of methods of counting and keeping track of time periods with calendar-like charts that date back to 15, 000 years ago. Ask the children (before showing them any pictures.) what cave people or stone age people were like. In addition to the stereotypes of inability to communicate, you will most likely also hear the long lasting image of women being dragged back to a cave. You can promise the class that the pictures will prove that these people could not have been like that at all.

Children make important discoveries.

Many of the most important discoveries of cave art were made by children. Aren’t they always exploring, discovering, even seeing things unseen by adults? Sometimes these children were outplaying with friends or walking their dog. After discovery, sometimes the cave was used for a while as a secret “hideout” before they told others about it. Sometimes these caves were named for the young explorers. In 1879, a nine year old Spanish girl and her father were out walking when she discovered the cave of Altimira. That was the first discovery of prehistoric art and it was so beautiful that people thought that it was hoax. They had not believed cave or stone-age people to be capable of such intelligence and sensitivity. In 1968, again in Spain, a teacher and his young students were accustomed to hiking in the hillsides where they carefully looked for examples of signs of early humans. Their eyes had been trained to know what to look for, such as scratches on the rocks or rocks that had been chipped into scraping and cutting tools. They wrote a report about their discoveries and sent it to the Spanish government, bringing national attention to their little village.

Consider an introduction:
Consider speaking with the class before showing them any pictures. You can ask them, as I suggested earlier, about cave people and stone-age people. To assist in unraveling those stereotypes you could then suggest that they imagine being left out in the woods with nothing, not even clothes. (They’ll only be silly for a second.) What will they eat? How will they protect themselves from the cold? What will they do for shelter? How will they make a fire? In order to solve these problems, will it take intelligence? Could a stupid person survive? Could a stupid person invent and make tools? They will soon see that the people who survived glacier times with tools made from only stone, wood, rope and bone were just like us, only stronger.

Questions that apply to all of the prints:

• Why did the people make these paintings? (After hearing their ideas you can tell the children that some of the paintings were difficult to make and the caves were dangerous to crawl into.)
• Why do people draw and paint and sculpt at all?
• For fun?
• To communicate? To communicate what?
• For telling stories?
• For religious reasons?
• For magic?
• To sell for money?
• For fame?
• Any other reasons?
• Are the reasons for making art different for us than they were for the Cro-Magnon people? Why do you think so?
• How do you think the color was made? Did they go to an art store? Were there chemists to mix things for them?
• What would you use for these colors? (The youngest children usually say berries and water.)
• They used basically three colors – red iron oxide, black from carbon and yellow ochre from clay. All three colors were made from minerals from the earth. I wonder if they knew that these elements would last thousands and thousands of years. Imagine that! And we can’t get house paint to stay on for ten years.
• Did they sign their work? Do you sign your artwork? Why do you? (Individual names were not signed, that we know of, even though individual styles are evident. However, all over the world, in the U.S., in Spain, France and Africa, there is the hand symbol, which seems to say, “I was here. I did this.” The image was formed by blowing ground-up pigment (color) from the earth’s rocks, through a hollow bone over the hand, placed against the wall. When they lifted their hand a negative stencil was formed, leaving the outline of the hand.