Monday 5 October 2015

The Palaeolithic artist: part 26

Wassily Kandinsky
"Every work of art is the child of its age and, in many cases, the mother of our emotions. It follows that each period of culture produces an art of its own which can never be repeated. Efforts to revive the art-principles of the past will at best produce an art that is still-born. It is impossible for us to live and feel, as did the ancient Greeks. In the same way those who strive to follow the Greek methods in sculpture achieve only a similarity of form, the work remaining soulless for all time. Such imitation is mere aping. ... There is, however, in art another kind of external similarity which is founded on a fundamental truth. ... An example of this today is our sympathy, our spiritual relationship, with the Primitives. Like ourselves, these artists sought to express in their work only internal truths, renouncing in consequence all consideration of external form. This all-important spark of inner life today is at present only a spark. Our minds, which are even now only just awakening after years of materialism, are infected with the despair of unbelief, of lack of purpose and ideal. The nightmare of materialism, which has turned the life of the universe into an evil, useless game, is not yet past; it holds the awakening soul in its grip." Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the spiritual in art, 1912.

Kandinsky's last sentence, here, is prophetic. In part 16 of this series Jung says:
“… what did Dionysus mean to Nietzsche? What he says about it must be taken seriously; what it did to him still more so. There can be no doubt that he knew in the preliminary stages of his fatal illness, that the dismal fate of Zagreus was reserved for him. Dionysus is the abyss of impassioned dissolution, where all human distinctions are merged in the animal divinity of the primordial psyche – a blissful and terrible experience. Humanity, huddling behind the walls of its culture, believes it has escaped this experience, until it succeeds in letting loose another orgy of bloodshed. All well-meaning people are amazed when this happens and blame high finance, the armaments industry, the Jews, or the Freemasons.” [Jung notes (44): "I wrote this passage in spring, 1935"] C.G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, p.89f. First Princeton / Bollingen Paperback printing, 1980.
Running as a thread through all of the above, is an awareness that we have lost, and might never regain the self-awareness of the Palaeolithic hunter. For many years, I have noticed that whenever I reach far enough into the unconscious mind synchronicities occur: This Brain Pickings article was published on my birthday. There is nothing particularly strange about any association between Nietzsche and Picasso, but it being published on my birthday, and on the same day  receiving a Google alert about Synchronicity as a Divine Experience where its author speaks about his first encounter with synchronicity being the date of his birth (and also including many other people I have featured in this series), then it becomes worthy of noting.

So who, and under what circumstances, would be best qualified to enter the mind of the Palaeolithic artist who created the painting of the boar?

It would be a female Spanish painter of modern art who lives not too far from the Altamira cave. She would have to enter the cave alone, and without any "protective gear". She would also have to carry the seashell lamp I describe in Friday's post as her only source of light. This is a tall order, perhaps an impossible one, but the closest one can get to it, the more efficiently would the task be accomplished. My reasons are as follows:
  1.  The choice of the boar painting as the focus for this study is because, as a Celtic symbol, its correlate is the collective unconscious. The boar is fascinated by what lies beneath: its dark colour represents the night; its tusks, the crescent moon (Campbell, Primitive Mythology).As a symbol on Celtic coinage, it represents the hero's death in warfare and his subsequent rebirth at an elevated status. This is also true for the Gundestrup cauldron iconography  This syncretism took place in northern Italy either early, in the Golasecca culture, or later during the time of Dionysios I of Syracuse when Celtic bases were set up to provide troops to him and others. Dionysios, as his name implies made great use of the Goddess Arethusa, as the Sicel equivalent of Persephone who spent her winter months with Hades, representing thus the first born Dionysos who was the God of the primeval psyche. In reading some of the above links be aware that, once or twice, consulting Robert Graves (unabridged) The Greek Myths will give a more focused view.
  2. A female artist will be more likely to have a stronger intuitive sense than a male artist. In the language of the yijing, female is yin and represented by a broken line. In binary language this is is yes/open as opposed to the male Yang which is no/closed. The yijing is Chinese holistic science, although most people think of it as a fortune telling method. As the latter, it would be no more effective than tossing a coin, or using "the magic eight ball". It does, however, yield  far better results when consulted to ask what the subject should be thinking about any given situation. Critics assign "magical thinking" to it because a hexagram can look like the object named, for example, "The Well" (Hexagram 48) does look like a well-head and its changing lines refers to things like "the rope is not long enough to reach the water", or "the rope is broken", etc. The knowledge of these being only convenient metaphors was known to the classical Chinese and the creative use of metaphor is basic to Chinese language, poetry and even science.
  3. A local artist will bring a certain degree of cultural pride to the task which is expressed in a numinous manner, somewhat akin to that of the original observers of  the cave art. Remember, the idea that even a modern tribal society has "gods" is due to a modern misunderstanding. Things, people and events can be imbued with a sense of the sacred, meaningfulness, or magic. Like the Polynesian Mana. Gods are part of a religious system, usually unvaried and "official": far more "citified".
  4. That she not be encumbered with protective clothing is for two reasons: it would lessen the actual physical contact with the environment, and it would be more experiential and a better duplication of the original scenario.
  5. Bringing a duplicate of the original lamp is not just for verisimilitude, its main function is to be able to perceive how certain parts of the paintings were given optical effects by being placed over details of the rock, itself. This would aid in interpretation and might even yield an accurate translation of the visual language of the artists.
The degree to which these steps are followed is the degree to which an understanding of the Palaeolithic artists can be obtained. Stringing up modern lights and entering the caves as groups of people carrying equipment etc.  would result in no understanding, whatsoever.

Tomorrow, how proof can be obtained that cannot be refuted, only denied, and without cause.

John's Coydog Community page

8 comments:

  1. John,

    Before we can consider the psyche of the Paleolithic artist, we need to first consider whether this cave painting is Paleolithic.

    Or you don't think it matters for the purpose of these posts? Likely it doesn't!

    Kostas

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    1. Hi Kostas,

      Of that, there is no doubt:

      http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/prehistoric/altamira-cave-paintings.htm#dating

      (Uranium/Thorium (U/Th) method). But there is even more evidence to come...

      Best,

      John

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    2. John,

      The link states U/Th methods dated the cave art to the Paleolithic. But does not state what are the underlying assumptions made. Not helpful! Though the science may be sound, the application may be flawed.

      The same general objections I have raised before regarding archaeological dates apply here too.

      Have any other links to offer? Or thoughts?

      Cheers,

      Kostas

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    3. How do you imagine that the application of U/Th could possibly be flawed. That makes no sense at all. It sounds like you have a belief problem.

      Delete
  2. The only "belief problem" I hsve are the assumptions others make beliving they are true.

    For example, assuming the age of the charcoal used in a drawing as being the same as when the drawing was made. I need to know more about how the U/Th was used to date the art.

    Unless we can prove the cave was sealed since the Paleolithic, we cannot assume everything in it is fdom the Paleolithic.

    None of this changes what you say about the Paleolithic artist, however.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Charcoal is not a pigment and C14 is notoriously corruptible. U/Th gives an absolute "latest date" and the dates yielded are consistent with the styles exhibited. But it goes way beyond that: this is just one detail in this blog series, but if I were to do a proper study of the pigments/paints alone, I would track down the testers and get some specific information while informing them of things they probably do not know about pigments, vehicles etc. from an artist's point of view. They have only been looking at each element in the pigments. Basically, the pigments are all iron oxides with "impurities" of other elements such as manganese (in the case of the reds/browns). Complicating this is the type of clay these deposits were found within, as the clay, too, affects the colour. Then, it seems likely that the colours were further processed by burning them. For example, in the range of colours we see umbers and sienna's. Both of these can be raw or burnt (giving almost opposite effects in each). When being mixed with other colours, these both can have variable effects and successes depending on the exact deposits where they were mined. Given the date range of these paintings, trial and error would have certainly created an entire paint technology among these people. (today, such technologies only take a few decades, but at Altamira we are looking at 20,000 years!)

      The article I linked to reveals that someone did not know much about painting technology: these pigments were mixed with a drying oil (I suggested that poppy-seed oil was the most likely)

      It might require that further, and better focused testing be done: Umber and Sienna are named after sites in Italy where they exist as richly coloured veins in ochre. Useful sites of such pigment are quite rare, most sites yield useless colours. One sample I took gave a sort of burnt umber colour but with an unpleasant violet sheen on the top when dry. useless for any painting.

      They have been looking only at the tip of an iceberg. The ultimate goal is the reconstruction of the artists' thoughts and that is more than possible considering the richness of the evidence. Modern art has never been able to approach the skills of primitive art and the reasons for that are explained by Wolfgang Pauli. I have one or two examples in my own collection: My Celtic plastic style sword pommel uses oblique anamorphosis at a level of sophistication that is impossible for any modern person to accomplish.

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    2. John,

      I am not arguing all the assumptions underlying the application of various dating methods are wrong. Only that we need to consider these carefully and honestly. And not assume experts that dated the sites are always right on the dates. Especially since the overriding bias by archaeologists is to push the dates further back. Where "new discoveries" and scholarly papers can still be made anew.

      Archaeologists often follow a "ruling hypothesis" selectively to whatever methods and evidence "proves" their narrative. Without ever questioning the assumptions they make. A good example of this is what Prof. Mike Parker Pearson has done with Crag Rhosyfelin. Like "magic" he turned a natural rock face into a Neolithic bluestone "quarry". By ignoring all other possible explanations for the evidence on the ground.

      From what little I know of the U/Th dates for the Altamira Cave art, the calcium carbonate coating overlaying the paintings were sampled for traces of Uranium vs. Thorium isotopes. The assumption made, I think, is the date of the overlaying coat postdates the date of the painting. This, imho, may be a wrong assumption.

      As for the other methods of dating (using color pigments etc.) any such done on Altamira?

      I agree with you regarding the psyche of the "Paleolithic artist". But the production of art involves more than psyche. It also involves technical skills, tools and material. And the need to "create".

      Cheers,

      Kostas

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    3. This is mostly irrelevant to the authenticity of the Altamira paintings, and what is not is being covered as I progress in this series. As to philosophy, I am far too busy to discuss that subject and I tell people that I would have to charge $200 an hour to do so.

      What is certain is that the Altamira paintings are of the minimum dates recorded, so let's just keep to that topic. If you want to ask the testers, themselves, for further details, fell free to do so. It does no good to ask me about it!

      Best,

      John

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