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?