- The Great Hall of the Bulls
- Lascaux, France
- Paleolithic Europe
- 15,000-13,000 BCE
- Pigment on rock
Vocab:
- naturalistic
- stylized
- contour
- composite pose
- parietal art - paintings inside caves
- mobiliary art - paintings that were portable
Great Hall of the Bulls
- located in the back of a dark cave
- modern humans first start to create art
- achievements in parietal and mobiliary art
- in France and Spain
- abstraction and representation is great intellectual development
- outlined with charcoal and painted
- may have been painted by hand or using powder tubes
Theories
- prehistoric planetarium
- stars line up with animal features
- summer triangle is the brightest three stars
- sky is full of animals and spirit guides
- rituals to ensure successful hunt
- may represent a ritual in drawing animals
- based on ethnographic studies
- narrative
- the birdman and the bison with entrails
- interaction could be a birdman shaman or an ancient diety
- painted on smooth limestone ceiling
- as opposed to rough surface below
- curving wall suggests space
- composite view
- characterized features are emphasized
- singly in rows
- painted on top of each other
- engraved images with natural materials
- colors
- ochre and haematite is red, yellow, brown
- manganese is black, dark brown, violet
- ground to powder and applied to damp surface