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The Cave Painters is a vivid introduction to the spectacular cave paintings of France and Spain--the individuals who rediscovered them, theories about their origins, their splendor and mystery. Gregory Curtis makes us see the astonishing sophistication and power of the paintings and tells us what is known about their creators, the Cro-Magnon people of some 40,000 years ago. He takes us through various theories--that the art was part of fertility or hunting rituals, or used for religious purposes, or was clan mythology--examining the ways interpretations have changed over time. Rich in detail, personalities, and history, The Cave Painters is above all permeated with awe for those distant humans who developed--perhaps for the first time--both the ability for abstract thought and a profound and beautiful way to express it.… (more)
User reviews
Yesterday (Saturday, Oct. 31) I finished a book by Gregory Curtis, that I enjoyed very much and highly recommend, The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World's First Artists.
Five stars, without a doubt, for the author's ability to
Like Non-fiction, Art, History, mild adventure and suspense? The plates of the art are good and deserve contemplation on thier own.Then consider reading this wonderful book.
Even in the least interesting of the caves, the walls are covered with paintings and etchings of horses, bison, lions, bears, mammoth - all the big animals found in Europe during the Ice Age. And nobody knows why they're there. The animals depicted aren't the ones that the people hunted, and there's relatively little depiction of violence or scenes that appear to be a hunt. Human figures are rare and rather crudely done - except that many caves include outlines of human hands. And how did they figure out how to make images on the rock walls that are artistically mature, even to the point of using perspective, that still speak to us today?
The Cave Painters doesn't have any answers. But it does give us a history of the ideas put forward by those spending their lives studying these works. Curtis really makes the caves and the researchers come alive, and doesn't dismiss any of the important people in the field, even when their ideas fall out of favor with later researchers. His sympathetic approach makes the book for me.
There are lots of topics that I think sound interesting, but the books I pick up
Max Raphael: [paraphrased] “The paintings are the evidence of the moment when people began to conceive of themselves as different from animals: The very moment when we became human.” Stated
The paintings were produced for so many thousands of years that the artistic skills had to have been taught, generation to generation.