Preview

Prehistoric Art~Cave Paintings

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
871 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Prehistoric Art~Cave Paintings
Cave paintings were the first forms of art. These paintings first appeared around 31,000 years ago. The oldest one known is in the El Castillo cave in Spain. This is not a very well-known cave, even though I think it should be. The Chauvet, Altamira, and Lascaux are the most common caves. Cave art is very interesting and has created multiple theories. The first theory of the purpose of this new outburst was just a way to be decorative. I don’t think that is the sole reason for the paintings, and neither do many scientists who have researched the true purposes of the paintings. Many have agreed that survival and ceremonial reasons contribute the most to the meaning behind the cave art. Some still believe they were being decorative, and some of them might have been, but we don’t really know. We wonder where the idea first started, this form of ‘art’. I think that someone wanted to express their feelings by showing it to others and they started drawing it out. They didn’t have any other reso urces, so they just used the walls of the cave. This grew into a common system throughout the people, and eventually it grew towards the art we have today. It may not seem like it, but it’s true. Everything has a base, and cave paintings were the base to the art we have today. That’s why I think they are so important and people should really learn more about them. It was a magnificent accomplishment, in my opinion. It provided a way to show feelings. This also contributes to the purpose of the cave art. Now that people could show their feelings, I think they gained more confidence in themselves. After a good hunt, they might have created a drawing on the wall so that everyone could see their success. That was a big factor with their confidence levels because they were able to actually show people their successes and be admired for them. What feelings were the people trying to portray? I think that survival was one of the main things the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    The artist of this must have saw the beauty of this in reality and then painted it for others to see.…

    • 304 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    REL 120 Chapter 2

    • 596 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Painting of animals have thought to been a ritual with a higher mean for a successful hunt. They may have served as a spiritual or religious belief before and after every hunt. The painting may have showed what was being hunted, how to hunt it and honor the kill for survival.…

    • 596 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Chapter 17 Roman Art

    • 446 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The first work of art I found was earliest art which was from 120,000 BCE-100 CE. IT had the most depicting animals including large and powerful creatures that suggested the artists desire to imitate the actual appearance of the animals represented. Giving the animals a sense of volume by using gradation of color. It also created sculptural objects small and carved figures of people mostly of women and animals. It reflected a more abstract and less naturalistic approach to representation.…

    • 446 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Hall Of Bulls Analysis

    • 145 Words
    • 1 Page

    In Chapter 5, the work of art that I found most compelling was the cave painting in Lascaux, Dordogne, France, called Hall of Bulls (Page 112). This cave painting was created somewhere between c. 15,000-10,000 BCE. and may have been part of an ancient ritual. I find the detail on this cave painting to be utterly astonishing. I can’t even draw a proper stick figure in Paint and yet these cavemen were painting detailed pictures of running animals. It is amazing to see such a historical piece of art still living to this day on the same wall that the people painted it on. I particularly like the way that the wall’s rough exterior gives life to animals, it is as if they are running in smoke or dust. This is truly an amazing piece of art and hopefully,…

    • 145 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Both sets of caves have several paintings that are very similar, as well as many that are vastly different. The styles of art in both are fairly similar, although more colors are used in Lascaux, as well as a wider variety of angles (Lascaux has a horse in frontal view). The red ochre is consistent throughout both caves. The hand prints, both positives and negatives, seem entirely absent from Lascaux, while there are many more “symbolic” signs, such as the XIII, leading me to believe that they may have perhaps been a primitive form of descriptors or signatures.…

    • 434 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout the history of humans, one thing has always stood out. As soon as man was created, art was created. Scientists have discovered cave paintings from cavemen more than ten thousand plus years ago. Ever since we figured we could create objects using mud, we have never stopped. Ten thousand years later and art is one of the most important things we have in the world today. Instead of using mud, we use paint, glass, markers and so on. Some artists work’s stand out more than others, but I will be talking about a few works of art from the local area. The idea of art started ten thousand years ago, and will most likely never end.…

    • 955 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Asha

    • 1200 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Best known cave paintings were in France & Spain; paint = mud, charcoal & animal blood…

    • 1200 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Olmec Cave Essay

    • 634 Words
    • 3 Pages

    These significant Olmec cave paintings unveil aspects regarding Olmec life and their cultures. It appears that the Olmec connected religious beliefs to caverns. It is assumed by the cave paintings and ceramics found in various locations were made and used for spiritual and ritual purposes. It only makes sense caves would be an ideal location to perform ritualistic practices because ancient Mesoamericans believed these were the entrances to the underworld.…

    • 634 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Cave is a famous analogy/allegory written by Plato which he uses to explain some parts of his theory of Forms. Within the analogy many of the key factors are symbolic of a situation that people can more easily understand and interpret themselves. The actual cave represents the world we perceive, the empirical world and the world of sensory perception. It acts as a barrier to the truth because our perceptions may be flawed. The prisoners chained so all they can do is looking in front represent us. We are trapped in the physical world of illusion with our handcuffs being our flawed senses and experiences. The shadows caused by the…

    • 871 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Chauvet Cave

    • 164 Words
    • 1 Page

    The Chauvet Cave revealed, among other things, that art may not have developed linearly as scholars previously assumed. The Chauvet Cave, though at least 10,000 years older than the other discoveries, contains surprisingly sophisticated art, by far the most realistic of all the other examples of cave art discovered so far. The use of modeling, or shading, to give the art the appearance of volume has yet to be found in any other caves. The fact that the art in the Chauvet Cave predates other, more simplistic discoveries seems to suggest that, rather than the level of sophistication paralleling the evolution of man, the use of naturalism, modeling, and illusionism was most likely determined by cultural factors or even varying amounts of skill…

    • 164 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Plato's Allegory of the Cave is meant to be a wake-up call for everyone to stop settling for an imperfect, unexplored life full of ignorance. Since Plato believed that human beings could eventually free themselves and head upwards to the real world by leading a life of philosophical…

    • 664 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Plato’s allegory of the cave is supposed to demonstrate not only the human situation in general but Socrates’ life in particular. Socrates glimpsed the true nature of reality and tried to convince the inhabitants of Athens that they didn’t know what they thought they knew. The objects that cast shadows on the wall represent what Plato considers to be the truly real objects: the forms.…

    • 339 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Anolgy of the cave

    • 385 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The analogy of the cave was created by Plato to explain his philosophy and it allowed people to understand other forms such as beauty and justice. It was a theoretical situation, were prisoners were tied up and could only see what was in front of them, which was due to a fire, which burnt behind them. This was meant to represent ordinary people who can’t see pass the illusion of their world and are, according to Plato ignorant.…

    • 385 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Hall Of the Bulls, Lascaux

    • 1347 Words
    • 4 Pages

    This magnificent painting dates back to Lascaux, France 15,000-13,000 B.C.E. It was found on cave walls and it is said to represent one of the earliest examples of artistic expression. We can see that this piece was created during the Paleolithic period because; they are images walls using paint on limestone. We can see that the primitive people used natural rock contours, which suggested the animal’s volumes and portrayed real representations of a major role in their lives, which were the animals. We can see horses, bulls, deer, cows and more animals on the walls of these caves. Furthermore, the images of the animals are…

    • 1347 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Paleolithic Era

    • 767 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Our ancestors began to express their creativity and individuality with the first forms of art. The two forms art were mural and portable art. “Mural art is paintings and engravings on the walls of caves” (Price 131). Mural art has been found mostly in France and Spain. The paint used for murals is a combination of minerals and cave water. The main colors are black, yellow, red and sometimes white. The mixture is long lasting as hundreds of murals exist today. Most of the murals that have survived are deep within the caves as oppose to the murals that may have been painted in the entrance of caves. There are several caves that have invaluable collections of mural art. One of them is the cave of Lascaux in France. The murals are mostly of animals, occasionally pregnant. There are few paintings of humans. “Portable art is cravings, figurines and other shaped or decorated pieces that can be moved from place to place (Price 131). Portable art has been found in Europe and most of the Old World. The amount of portable art many be a result of groups of people traveling during different seasons to more accommodating areas during the year. A remarkable example of portable art is from the site Dolni Vestonice. Two representations of the same woman have been found. One is a small ivory plaque and the other is a small carved ivory head of a woman with an asymmetrical face. At this site, “a skeleton of a woman with congenital nerve damage buried under two…

    • 767 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics