« 8-Foot Mekong Giant Catfish Caught in Cambodia | Main | November 24th - History of Art - Palace of Minos »

November 23rd - The History of Art - Lascaux Cave Paintings

By Melissa Markham on November 23, 2007 7:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I love blogging. I love writing. I love learning and sharing things that I learn. Blogs are a great place to do that. That is why I share interesting animal news. I am fascinated by the diverse life on this planet.

Something else that I am really interested in is art. I am art ignorant. I took an Art History class my freshman year in college and was quickly overwhelmed and ended up taking it pass/fail. The only course in my college career that I did that with. Our professor showed us slides twice a week for 1 1/2 hours...rapidly and I was soon completely and irrevocably lost. My professor was trying to teach us about all the art of the world in just about 36 hours total! This class left a bad taste in my mouth and I was certain that art was beyond my reach.

Age brings wisdom though (sometimes). I realized that I could learn a bit about art and that what was important was that there is different art for everyone. I mean, I don't care for Picasso (and that's okay), but there are plenty of other artists that I am learning to appreciate.

Since I like learning and sharing and I thought I would start a daily column where I take you through the history of art (and I can learn at the same time). Sounds like a win-win situation to me:)

Each day I will post about some art and give you a picture or two to look at and some links to follow. You can dig in as deeply as you want. Maybe you just want a piece of artwork to look at each day or maybe you want to do an art study too. Whichever is the case, I hope you will find the daily posts enjoyable and informative.

A few months ago, I purchased a History of Art book. This book follows the history of Western Art. So I thought I would start with it and see how that goes. It can be the springboard for my daily posts. As we go through the history of western art, I would love to hear from you!

Lascaux Cave Paintings

Horse: Drawn 10,000-15,000 B.C.

The Cave of Lascaux is a wonderful place to begin our art history journey.

What is one of the first things a child does once they get to the moving around stage? They enjoy coloring. First scribbles and later circles and eventually various forms of symbolic art. Art is one of our most basic abilities. And as we go back in time, it is one ability that our ancestors had. Even before they had the ability to write, they decorated. They painted their faces, they decorated their clothing, they decorated their cavern homes with pictures of the animals that lived in their environment. They drew pictures of hunts. They left behind drawings of stories that they told around their nighly campfires.

By using charcoal, yellow ochre, and a red pigment made from hematite. they were able to not only draw images that others could understand, but brighten them up with color. In the Lascaux Cave in France, you will find representations of animals and people, but not of plants or landscapes. I wonder why? The Lascaux Cave Paintings were first discovered in 1940 by four teenagers. The cave was closed in 1963 due to damage to the paintings that was being created by the carbon dioxide that visitors were breathing out.

For more information, be sure to visit the Lascaux Cave website. There you can learn more about the cave, take a virtual tour of the rooms, and be amazed by the creativity of our ancestors (and the fact that it is still around for us to see today.) It is amazing to take the virtual tour and see that cow that is shown in the act of falling and the ibex that are confronting one another.

Lascaux animal cave painting: Drawn 10,000-15,000 B.C.

For more fun, make your own cave drawings at home. You can be authentic and try to make your paints our of natural substances in your neck of the woods and paint them on flat rock. Or you can get some construction paper and paint and you and your children can make your cave paintings on that. For even more fun, check out this free lesson plan! Have fun!