Wounded M Artwork Analysis

Two of the panels I will be discussing are the Panel of the Wounded Man and first panel in the cave, the Unicorn Panel. The Panel of the Wounded Man is found in the “Shaft Room”. The Panel of the Wounded Man contains a number of interesting artwork like “Man and Bird”, the “Rhinoceros”, and the “Bison”. This room and panel caught my attention for a number of reasons. First, in rooms like the Hall of the Bulls, there is a decent amount of color coming out of the artwork. Whether this is the paint they used or some type of erosion I’m not sure. But why I really was drawn to the Panel of the Wounded Man was the simplicity of the artwork and the simplicity of the color.
Next is the artwork on that panel, “Man and Bird”. According to the Lascaux
website, this is the only depiction of a human being in the entire cave. I am surprised by this fact.
I am curious as to what led the lack of human depictions, and also the reason why this was the only one. As far as spatial layout goes, the body is tiled at a 45-degree angle so it is facing another figure on the wall, “The Bison”.
Below the human is a bird, who researchers believed to be the “conductor of souls” of ancient societies. My theory to what this artwork represents is as follows. I believe the artist drew this panel as a tribute to a friend or loved one. I believe the human represented was killed by a stampeding bison or perhaps a bison that he was hunting. The bird represents his soul being collected or moving on from this world. This tells me a great deal about their intellect.
Their cognitive power has developed enough to the point where they care about one another more than just on a primal level. They developed friendships and when this artist’s friend was injured or killed, he or she used an artistic expression to represent his or her feelings. Lastly, the Rhinoceros depicted in my opinion was added after.
According to the Lascaux website, a different technique was used to draw the creature.
Truthfully, I have chills from this. In modern times we can make a post on Facebook about losing a loved one because we need an outlet. This species outlet was cave drawing The next panel I want to talk about is the Unicorn Panel. This one caught my attention because it is the first panel displayed in the incredible cave. On this panel,
a number of animals including stags, bulls, and a unicorn are depicted. The cave opens up into a rotunda. The first animal depicted is this oddly shaped creature believed to be
The Unicorn. As far as spatial layout, the animals are all pretty close together but the unicorn appears to be pushing all the other animals further into the cave. The unicorn itself was painted by spraying pigment for the body and the horns were drawn by brush.
I love this fact. Such care was gone into making this animal what it is A theory I have is that the unicorn could represent some sort of deity. This tells me that the intellect of these ancient humans could have developed some sort of organized religion and passed won stories from generation to generation. Another fact that I love about this beast is that there have been many interpretations about what this animal means and

what it represents but none of them have been satisfactory. Perhaps this is a piece of art that will never have a definitive definition.