1. PRE-HISTORIC ART

2. CONTEXT
• Extreme weather conditions
• 4 decade life expectancy
• Danger, ignorance, and fear
• Most popular: Lascaux (southern France) and
Altamira (northern Spain)
• Not necessarily the first works of prehistoric
artists

3. Bison, Altamira. C15,000-10,00 BC.

4. Bison, Altamira

5. Reproduced bison, Altamira

6. Deer, Altamira

7. cave paintings, Lascaux.c15,000-
10,000 B.C.

8. Lascaux, Horse

9. Cave painting from Lascaux, France. C 13,000 B.C.

10. CONTENT
• Vivid, lifelike/naturalistic pictures of animals
• Signs resembling spears/arrows/harpoons;
quadrangles may represent traps
• A single area may contain paintings which are as
much 20,000 years apart
• Repetitive themes/pairings
• Theories about the cave paintings:
- usage in hunting/magic/community rituals
- representation of the cosmos
- representation of different tribes

11. FORM
• Materials: stone mortars/pots; color producing
stones/minerals/clay; flints for scraping/carving;
hollow bone/reed for blowpainting; horse-hair
brushes
• Techniques: hand/brush/application; rolled-skin
stamps; spitting; and blowpainting
• Colors: Black (browns, metallic grays, jet black);
Red Ochre (produced orange to violet), Yellow
Ochre (produced pale yellow to bright brown);
absence of blue, green and white

12. Painting on top of earlier paintings