Creative Project: Paleolithic Art

FRINQ 131K

Work Of Art

Final Creative Project

Accompanying Written Explanation

Ana Plugatar

The theory behind my art is shamanism. The art work displays the images of a bleeding shaman with a head of a phoenix, connected in a healing dance of light and shadows with an animal. They are surrounded by the dancing spirits. Lots of dots and lines are present as well. There are several reasons for each of those manifestations, all of them based on everything I learned in this class.

I shall begin with the materials and techniques I incorporated into my art work. I picked brown rough cut bagging paper as the background, which provided a perfect rock- looking surface. Since we talked a lot about how Paleolithic people used the features of the rock surfaces in their art, I thought it would be interesting to try and recreate that. And indeed, while examining all the edges and folds and lines, some images began to take shape in my mind. I thought about how natural it is for a human mind to associate things and attempt to mold them into something that they have seen, or experienced, something that makes sense or at least explains the things in front of them in some way. If Paleolithic people really were our ancestors, the reason we think the way we do today, perhaps that is all they were trying to do as well- make sense of things. Trying to find the meaning. Which is quite ironic since it sure looks like we are still at it.

I used assorted colors of soft pastels as my paint, mainly because the soft texture of this material immediately reminded me of the inner composition of the Lascoux Cave. When shredded into a small cup and mixed with a little water, it made a perfect substitute for red ochre. With my fingers in paint I traced the edges of the folds where I saw potential shapes, later on adding charcoal for the spirits and shadows.

As I was saying, the general theory behind my work of art is shamanism. Phoenix is a bird associated with the sun, which I though was only appropriate. If there’s was one thing to be singles out from all the things Paleolithic people were baffled by, I would say it is the force of nature. The mystical objects in the sky, the change of the day into night, the change of the weather, the life and death- these kind of binary oppositions. If Shamans were believed to “die” while going through the “vortex” of the cave, they were naturally brought back to life while re-entering their every- day life. Phoenix is also associated with rebirth. The healing dance, or the connection dance we observe in this scene might be interpreted as rebirth, the connection between different worlds, the pain of a bleeding phoenix and the encouraging light around the flames of his head, the different states of consciousness or perhaps a suggestion that there is no separation of the realities at all.

The theory of light/ dark and sound presently grown stronger. The shaman is connected to a deer in a trance dance, surrounded by the spirits. According to Lewis- Williams’s book, Mind in a Cave, people heard echoes of their voices while in the cave, believing that it was spirits calling upon them. Thus those are incorporated in my art.

In terms of whether or not my artwork represent a continuum of human cognitive development or a leap in human creative ability, I cannot be sure. And by that I mean it could be both. According to Piaget, the cognitive development theory is a progressive reorganization of mental process resulting from biological maturation and environmental experience. And I don’t believe the creative leap could’ve been possible without this maturation. And in my work specifically we can see that through the connection to a spirit world, attempts (perhaps even success) of understanding it- all aspects manageable by a clearly highly developed mind, capable of contemplation of dreams and independent thinking, as well as realization of “self” in their relationships and the environment. And with the evolutionary theory to back it up, this sort of leap must have evolved over time.