It is part of human nature to make sense of anything beyond our comprehension, when something is unexplainable we search for an explanation to gain understanding. Prehistoric art is an excellent example of humans trying to make sense. The art, which clearly meant something to our ancestors, has lost its meaning to us through the years. Yet modern scientists see it as a link to the past, a way to understand who the human race used to be and how it has gotten to where it is today.
Making sense when looking at the past can be misleading, there is so much information that archaeologists and anthropologists will never know, and there is never a way to be one hundred percent sure that what they think happened, actually ever happened. The cave paintings are the perfect example of this problem. No matter how much people study them, or how they interpret them, the problem is it is still just their interpretation, without actually speaking to the artists it is virtually impossible to be sure that the proper understanding of their work has been determined. It makes it even harder to determine what the true meanings behind the cave paintings when we take into account the fact that there is no actual social context to any of the images. It is like we discussed in class on Wednesday, different works of art makes sense to us because we know the context of what it means. An example of this would be the statues on wall street of the Bull and the Bear. We know that these animals are being used as a representation of the different markets on the stock exchange, but to someone from another country what would they see? Just a couple of statues depicting animals. It is the same with the cave paintings, without that social context to suggest the meaning behind the paintings, our interpretations of them, our attempts to "make sense" of them can never be truly valid.
when she showed the pictures of the bear and bull in class I had no idea what they were representations of. My mind thought they were possibly a commentary on civilization vs nature because bulls are animals that humans breed and work with often while as bears are wild, natural and dangerous, along with its location in a city.
ReplyDeleteThe context, context, context, there are so many possibilities. Now modern art, so many possible contexts things can come from, other then our local culture, looking al most art takes a blurb at the bottom to get where the artist was going with it!
"The art, which clearly meant something to our ancestors, has lost its meaning to us through the years."do you think its one of our fears, losing the meaning of things?
the potential that we are missing something vital. We don't ever want to be going backwards.