Prehistoric to Classical Painting [antikvár]

PREHISTORY Prehistory is rich In paintings. We are accustomed to the symmetry of our own geometrical houses, and consequently we look upon rocky caves, with their natural walls made up of hollows and strange protuberances, sometimes smooth, sometimes jagged, as impressive but quite impractical dwellings. It is difficult for us to realise that the idea of building, first huts, later houses, arises only when natural shelters fail to meet certain needs. An increase in population can bring great pressure to bear In this direction. The change seems unnatural to primitive man—as, indeed, it Is—and he adapts himself unwillingly to its artificiality. It is surely most unlikely that the cave dwellers of Altamira, Lascaux, Ariége and La Pena Candano—painters of genius—would have been unable to build had they felt the need. They display remarkable manual dexterity in working their stone arrows. The precision, regularity and symmetry of the shaping are exactly right for the purpose, and are aesthetically pleasing as well as functional. The cave, then, must be regarded as a dwelling entirely acceptable to the mentality of primitive man. It is decorated, usually with pictures of animals, but often there are human figures, too. The abundant evidence which has survived is obviously only a small fraction of what once existed, and we can be sure that not all the painted caves are known to us. Their discovery is often due to pure chance or a trivial accident. In 1940, two boys from the Dordogne, Ravidat and Marsal, with their friends Agnel and Coencas, were trying to rescue their dog, which had slipped down a hole, when they stumbled upon the Lascaux cave. But for this we might never have known of it. For the first time, processions of bulls, bovines and stags were seen on the walls in numbers such as to suggest the idea of a populated area of pasture-land, rich in thriving herds. Those scholars with some poetic sensibility, before plunging into erudite speculation, took delight in the imagination of a humanity which has vanished, yet is almost alive for us today as it is at Herculaneum and Pompeii. Primitive man's first voluntary contact with colour, his intelligent love of line, his understanding of the manner in which design and colour could give form to his ideas, desires, or mere fantasies are incomparably more attractive to us than the painter who is most ingenuous and least touched by education nowadays, and who finds his crayons and tubes of paint ready and waiting for him at the shop. The primitive painter carefully controls his inspiration and corrects unsatisfying lines, conscious of the gesture he is making and the importance of his achievement. The significance of his work may lie in ritual mul-