Hundreds of thousands of years separate us from the origin of art. What are the origins of art?
The origin of art and the first steps in the artistic development of mankind date back to the primitive communal system, when the foundations of the material and spiritual life of society were laid, to the Upper Paleolithic. This is the era of the maturity of the primitive communal system, the formation of the clan, the emergence of matriarchy. According to their physical data, a person was no different from a modern one. He mastered speech, made rather complex tools of labor from stone, bone, horn, wood, hunted animals. With the expansion of his social and labor activities, his horizons were enriched. Thousands of years of development
The tribes brought up the fidelity of the eye, the flexibility of the hand, the ability to highlight the main and characteristic, the ability to see the beauty inherent in nature and the harmony of forms. On this basis, an aesthetic feeling was born. Art owes its origin not to the biological basis of man, not to religion, magic and play, but to the development of social life and its basis - work, which is “older than the arts” (G.V. Plekhanov).
Labor is a creative process, it transforms the person himself, his brain, feelings, changes his nature. Labor developed morality, aesthetic feelings, the beginnings of scientific knowledge in a person. The formation of the five outer senses is the work of all previous world history. Without training the hand when working in stone, a person would not be able to learn how to draw. A musical ear, an eye capable of seeing the beauty of form and color, had to develop in order for a painting or a song to be born.
Influencing nature, man cognized it. He had images that found expression in the word, music. sounds, pictures. Labor awakened in man the ability to see the beauty and richness of the surrounding world. Working with tools made of stone and wood, people got acquainted with different types and properties of materials, learned to clearly perceive the features of volume and surface. Hunting made it possible to observe animals and their habits. The process of labor introduced a person to the laws of symmetry and harmony, gave rise to a sense of proportion and order, the presence of a plan, consciousness and purposefulness, which is important in art. Works of art in the Stone Age were generated by practical needs. Labor, art, mythology, magic were not divided, but acted together. Primitive man did not separate himself from nature, ascribed to himself the ability to influence it with the help of witchcraft spells. Rock paintings and drawings depicting animals were associated with a magical rite that ensures good luck in hunting. This thinking poetically embodied the desire of man to master the world. It contained elements of aesthetic perception from which art developed.
Fine arts, legends, myths, dance, and pantomime originated in primitive society.
Let the ancestor live a half-animal life,
But we value his legacy,
He did not know how to mold a clay pot,
He was afraid of the spirits invented by him.
But still in his deaf cave
A crowd of shadows is rapidly alive,
Furious beasts fly along the walls,
Fierce opponents of it.
The mammoth's eye squints in fear,
A deer is running, inspired by the chase,
Fell, and dying moves,
And the wounded buffalo swallows the blood.
The hunters silently followed the trail,
And with a loud cry they opened the battle,
And secured a difficult victory
Easy drawing.
V. Berestov.
Pereodization of primitive art.
1. Stone Age. (40-4 thousand BC). It distinguishes 3 stages:
Paleolithic. (40-12 thousand years BC)
Mesolithic. (12–8 thousand years BC)
Neolithic. (10–4 thousand years BC)
2. Bronze Age (3-1 thousand years BC)
The first weapons of man were hands, nails and teeth,
Stones, as well as forest tree debris and branches ...
The powers of iron and copper were then discovered.
But the use of copper rather than iron was recognized.
Lucretius 1st c. BC e.
1. Paleolithic. 35–10 thousand BC e. (Old Stone Age.)
Locations of monuments: Europe, South Asia, North. Africa.
Early Paleolithic drawings are primitive - these are contour images of animal heads on limestone slabs of the La Ferrasi cave France. Later, in drawings and paintings, the whole world of animals: deer with branched horns, herds of wild horses, frightened fallow deer, shaggy bison and bears, overweight bison, depicted almost life-size.
Monumental images of animals were applied with a flint chisel on stone or paint on wet clay on the walls of caves.
Earth colors, yellow and brown ocher, red-yellow iron ore, black manganese and coal, white lime were used in painting. Sometimes relief.
Animals were depicted in various movements. Expressive images with specific features, accuracy of forms, the ability to highlight the main thing from a multitude of observations. Caves of Font de Gomes France, Altamira North. Spain, Lasko and Limeil France, Dolnye Vestonice Czech Republic, Brno Slovakia, the Tassili plateau in the Sahara, in Siberia, on the Don, in Italy, Germany, Algeria, Austria ..
In the Paleolithic era, carving on stone, bone, wood, and round plastic art developed. Figurines of animals - bears, horses, lions. Paleolithic “Venuses” are massive and monumental.
At its core, Paleolithic art is naive and realistic. Correctly perceiving individual objects, primitive man could not capture the whole picture of the world.
Reproductions: Wounded bison. (Altamira Cave), Paleolithic Venus, aurochs (Lascaux Cave), impression of a human hand (Pech-Merle Cave).
2. Mesolithic 10-6 thousand BC. e. (Middle Stone Age.)
The rise of productive forces, people grouped in small groups mastered a larger territory than before. They formed open-air camps, hunted small animals, improved the processing of stone tools, used bows and arrows, tamed the dog and some other animals. The life experience of a person has expanded, thinking has become more developed, and belief in an afterlife has arisen. In the visual arts, multicolor disappears. The rock paintings of that time were painted in silhouette, in red or black paint, without sculpting volume. The narrative beginning develops, the composition becomes more perfect. The central theme is hunting, an image of a person and his activities appear. Dynamic often dramatic action. These features characterize the paintings in Eastern Spain and the North. Africa. Rushing figures of angry warriors, picking fruits, honey, cattle drive, dance.
Reproductions: Paintings in Vost. Spain, Sev. Africa - racing warriors, dancing, collecting honey, fruits, driving livestock.
3. Neolithic. 6-2 thousand BC e. (New stone age.)
Mankind is moving from passive appropriation of products to productive economic activity. New forms of production appeared - cattle breeding and agriculture, the technique of processing stone tools, pottery, construction, weaving and leather processing were improved, new spaces were settled, intertribal hostility for lands and hunting territory intensified. The transition from matriarchy to patriarchy has complicated relations between people.
In rock art, a schematic style of depicting a person continues to exist - “Skier” in Redey (Norway), “Bear” in Finnhag (Norway). Petroglyphs on the rocks depict elk, reindeer, bears, whales, seals, fish, reptiles. Rock carvings of animals similar to Scandinavian ones are found in the Crimea, the Caucasus, the Urals, Siberia, Central Asia and the Far East. Outstanding petroglyphs of the Kamenny Islands on the Angara. Anthropomorphic sculptures were created (Southern Europe, the Mediterranean) of “stone women”, which are stone pillars with rounded heads and arms folded at the waist. In France, they were considered goddesses of the dead. Giant-shaped Cycladic idols (Athens) 3-2 thousand BC, terracotta female figures from Tripoli, torso from Kara-Tepe (Karakum), “Seated Woman” (Malta) 2 thousand BC.
Small plastic arts, artistic crafts and ornaments spread, which laid the foundation for decorative art. At the heart of the ornament is a conventionally schematic transfer of nature, the desire to abstract from real images. Examples of ornamental-ceramic products Trypillia vessels 4-3 thousand BC. e. (European part of Russia and the Balkan countries) of various shapes with an ornament applied in red and white paint. Characteristic motifs: parallel stripes, double spirals, zigzags, concentric circles with different meanings. From the repetition of the same signs, a complex pattern arose. The ornament included sketchy images of people, animals, folklore images.
4. Bronze Age 2 thousand BC e.
In the Bronze Age, with the introduction of new forms of management and metal tools (copper, bronze), a new division of labor took place, which created inequality. Among the tribes, shepherds stood out. There was a loom. On this basis, the second division of labor took place - the craft was separated from agriculture. The patriarchy was finally established. All this played a big role in the development of civilization. This created favorable conditions for the development of human spiritual activity: art, folklore, epic, song, music. Monumental architecture prevailed.
Grandiose, simple in form, stone structures were an expression of the power of the clan, its unity. Megalithic buildings (“meg” – big, “lit” – stone): menhirs, dolmens, cromlechs were found in various parts of Europe. Menhirs in Brittany, France, Russia Armenia, Siberia, Crimea, Caucasus, Africa. This is a burial structure of 2 or 4 vertically placed stones, the number of which reaches 1000.
More complex megalithic structures are cromlechs. The most grandiose of them was erected in Stonehenge 2 thousand BC. e. (Southern England) from roughly hewn blue stones.
In plan, it is a round platform with a diameter of 30 m, closed by 4 rings of vertically placed stones. The ring of the outer circle of 30 stone pillars, connected by beams lying on them, forms a kind of giant round dance, the inner ring, in the center of which there was a giant stone slab - possibly an altar - is made up of low menhirs. The second ring was built from seven-meter blue blocks, placed in pairs and covered with slabs. The architectural design of the cromlech is simple, but full of symbolic meaning. For the first time, a centric ordered composition appeared in Stonehenge, and the main relationships between the bearing and carried parts were revealed. In rhythm, the motif of the colonnade and arcade is outlined.
In the Iron Age (beginning of the 1st millennium BC), a new type of architecture appeared - fortresses, defensive structures built of huge stone blocks on the territory of modern France, the Balkans. Burial structures are large chambers in the mounds of leaders.
In primitive society, there was only a nameless, naive, direct creativity that belonged to the whole society, the unity of which was based on blood and family relations.
Reproductions: Images of menhirs - Brittany France, "Stone Army" Armenia,
Alleys of menhirs in Transcaucasia, Britain, Stonehenge England, image of fish Armenia, beast Siberia.
1. Tell us about the features of painting, graphics and sculpture of the primitive era. Is the statement of scientists about the “realism” of the fine arts of this period justified?
2. What major centers of primitive art on the territory of our country and Europe can you name?
3. How did the syncretic nature of primitive art manifest itself? (Use materials about the origin of dance, music, theater.)
4. Tell us about the main periods of primitive art, describe them.
5. Tell us about the architectural structures of the primitive era.
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discipline: HISTORY OF CULTURE
on the topic: ORIGIN AND EARLY ART FORMS
Performed:
Durneva Irina Vladimirovna
Moscow, 2012
Introduction
4. Discovery of Altamira
5. Cave painting
6. Neolithic Revolution
7. Copper and Bronze Age
Conclusion
Introduction
Throughout history, man and art have been inextricably linked. A person's awareness of himself is reflected in stone figurines, in the features of architectural monuments. Human qualities and feelings are captured in paintings, sculptural groups. The problems of life, religion, attitude are reflected in works of art.
Help in understanding the world through its emotional perception, expanding horizons, awakening creative forces, shaping the spiritual image of a person - the functions of art. The moment when a person turns to artistic creativity is perhaps the greatest discovery, unparalleled in history in terms of the possibilities that it contains. Art does not exist outside of time and society; in terms of its content, it is socially and inextricably linked with the national tradition and era.
Soviet psychologist L.S. Vygotsky wrote: "Art is social in us - it is a social technique of feeling, an instrument of society, with the help of which it draws the most intimate and most personal aspects of our being into the circle of social life."
The artist, having rethought what he saw, having unraveled the secrets of life in his own way, with the help of a system of artistic images, tries to convey his worldview, involving us in a complex process of self-knowledge, forcing not only our eyes and brain to work, but also our imagination, mobilizing our spiritual forces to action.
The history of art in the history of mankind is a complex picture of the development of various national schools, trends, styles, mutual penetration of forms and traditions that do not know time and geographical boundaries, due to which geometric lines can be traced in the stepped forms of Orthodox churches, rich in decor not inferior to French baroque samples. Egyptian pyramids, and Russian icons look at us through the eyes of faces painted with the brush of a Byzantine artist.
In my work, I would like to show what are the earliest stages in the development of art and how a person, changing, created something new, something different from the previous one.
1. The origins of art and its features of early forms
The origins of art go back to ancient times. The problem of the origin of art has been worrying the best philosophical minds for many centuries, but not much is known about the artistic activity of mankind in the early stages of development. Numerous works of fine art (rock paintings, sculptures made of stone and bone) appeared much earlier than the conscious idea of a person about artistic creativity was formed.
The origin of art dates back to the primitive era, when a person first tried to reflect his ideas about the world around him in art, which contributed to the consolidation and transfer of knowledge and skills, the emergence of another form of communication between people. According to archaeologists, already in the Paleolithic era (Old Stone Age) about 35-10 thousand BC. e., the main types of fine arts appeared (sculpture, painting, graphics).
It should be noted that in primitive society, human artistic activity was inextricably linked with all existing forms of spiritual and material culture: mythology, religion, everyday life.
Artistic, spiritual culture exists in close unity with material culture, forming a primitive syncretic, i.e., a single, cultural complex, which only after centuries will break up into independent spheres of culture: religion, art (in all its diversity of forms), sports, science.
Images reproduced by the hand of a primitive person are a link in a single chain of artistic, religious, and theatrical magical action, reflecting the synthesis of the material and spiritual culture of a person of that distant era. Early drawings are primitive; this is a contour image of animal heads, impressions of a human hand, wavy lines squeezed out in wet clay with the fingers of a hand (the so-called "macaroni"). Later images of the Paleolithic era are drawings of animals of that time (deer, horses, bison, mammoths) made on the walls and ceilings of caves. The oldest figurines of animals are distinguished by their accurate depiction; life forced the hunter to study in detail the nature of the animal, its habits. This knowledge was of practical value. A person has not yet known himself, therefore the sculptural images of a person are very schematic, conditional. Such are the primitive "Venuses" (Venus of Willendorf), the simplest female figures with disproportionate limbs, hypertrophied maternal features and the absence of human facial features. Correctly perceiving individual objects, a person has not yet grasped the overall picture of the world and has not realized his place in it.
Picturesque images of the Mesolithic period (Middle Stone Age) 10-6 thousand BC. e., became more colorful. Multi-figured compositions appeared, reflecting dynamic scenes of hunting, battles between tribes, and everyday activities. A person makes the first attempts to reveal the interconnections of the universe, to master the general laws of life.
Neolithic (New Stone Age), 6-2 thousand BC. e., enriched the visual arts with the creation of works of monumental anthropomorphic (humanoid) sculpture, for example, the so-called "stone women" of the Northern Black Sea region.
A characteristic feature of the Neolithic culture is the spread of small plastic arts, artistic crafts, which laid the foundation for decorative art.
In the Bronze Age, about 2 thousand years BC. e., the architecture called megalithic (i.e., the architecture of large stones: from the Greek roots "meg" - large and "lit" - stone) takes precedence. Megalithic structures include: menhirs, dolmens, cromlechs. Their emergence is connected with the development of religious ideas. Stone pillars - menhirs - up to 20 m high (located in Brittany, France, Transcaucasia, Armenia) carry the features of architecture and sculpture.
2 Archaeologists Found Prehistoric Art For The First Time
Works of primitive art can be divided into two large groups:
1) rock and cave painting and engraving;
2) small works of art made of stone, bone, horn.
In the middle of the 19th century, a number of discoveries were made, made possible by the development of scientific archeology. In almost all parts of the world, archaeologists have discovered and uncovered centers of material culture: caveman sites, stone and bone tools and hunting - spears, axes, needles, scrapers. At many sites, objects have been found that can only be called works of art: silhouettes of animals, patterns and mysterious signs carved on pieces of deer antlers, on bone plates and stone slabs, strange human figures made of stone and bone, drawings, carvings and reliefs on rocks . In secret caves, where archaeologists penetrated with difficulty, groping, sometimes by swimming - through underground rivers, they happened to discover entire "museums" of primitive painting and sculpture.
3. The first works of art
The most ancient works of the Upper Paleolithic plastics date back to the 25th millennium BC. e.
In a vast area from Siberia to Western Europe, female figurines made mainly of ivory (mammoth tusks), the so-called Paleolithic Venuses, were common in this era. These images of women are still very far from a real resemblance to the human body. But large breasts and lush hips leave no doubt that these are women. Primitive sculptors were not interested in facial features. Their task was not to reproduce a specific nature, but to create a certain generalized image of a woman-mother, a symbol of fertility and the keeper of the hearth. Many of them are well polished, which indicates that they were often taken in hand. Most likely, these figurines were associated with the cult of fertility. Be that as it may, the desire to create an expressive form, attempts at artistic processing of the material make it possible to see the first works of art in these things.
4. Discovery of Altamira
People have always tried to recreate a reliable picture of the origin of the human race. At first, the history of the origin of man was based on myths and religious beliefs. The development of rational thinking in the 17th century required a different approach to this problem, based on the logic of the rapidly developing natural sciences. Traditional ideas ceased to satisfy the philosophers of the Enlightenment. Charles Darwin in his fundamental work "The Origin of Species" (1859) pointed out the possibility of the origin of man from apes, which caused a wave of religious protest. Nevertheless, under the influence of Darwin, interest in the study of the early stages in the development of mankind flared up.
Archaeological excavations have unearthed the most important monuments of prehistoric art, including examples of Paleolithic painting. We owe the discovery of the Altamira Cave in Northern Spain more to chance than to the diligence of archaeologists. In 1869, a hunter was looking for a lost dog and ended up in an unknown part of the cave. Six years later, local amateur archaeologist Marcelino Sautuola began his own research. Once, in 1879, he took his 12-year-old daughter with him, who drew her father's attention to the images on the ceiling, which were difficult to distinguish in the darkness of the cave. “Look, dad, bulls,” said the girl. Sautuola published the results of his discovery, but Sautuola was accused of deliberate falsification, in that these murals were made by one of his friends - an artist. Only almost 15 years after Sautuola's death, his opponents were forced to publicly admit they were wrong and agree that Altamira's painting belongs to the Paleolithic era.
5. Cave painting
The first examples of rock art are paintings in the cave of Altamira (Spain), dating back to about the 12th millennium BC. e., were discovered in 1875. Within 50 years, about 40 such "art galleries" were opened in Spain and France. Ironically, the paintings in the Altamira cave were taken for forgery. They seemed too perfect to be the creations of primitive man. In cave painting, images of animals are most often found - horses, bison, deer, cows, wild boars. In Africa, there are also images of rhinos and zebras. In earlier drawings, the animals looked motionless, but later primitive artists learned to convey movement. Rare images of a person are very schematic. The artists used black and red paints made from various inorganic materials. Stones and clays were ground into powder, then water or some kind of binder, such as resin, was added. The ancient masters learned how to convey the volume and shape of an object, using paint of various thicknesses and changing the saturation of the tone. Numerous finds have allowed scientists to trace the evolution of rock art, to study its technique, style, and plots. But neither the images themselves, nor the knowledge of the method of painting can tell what they were created for. There are many explanations. Some believe that this is just a reflection of the visible world. Primitive artists were well aware of the animals on which the very existence of people depended. Others believe that the very place of the find explains everything. It was once thought that primitive man lived in caves, but now it is proved that his dwelling was like a hut made of animal bones covered with skins. Picturesque images were usually located far from the entrance to the cave, which indicates their religious and magical nature, their connection with rituals that ensure success in hunting and procreation.
6. Neolithic Revolution
The end of the ice age (about 13 thousand years ago) led to a sharp change in climate. The ice has given way to vast forests. Many large mammals died out and were replaced by modern animal species. Man had to adapt to major changes.
Approximately 10 thousand years ago, gatherers and hunters discovered that grains of cereals thrown into the ground watered with water give a new crop next year. In addition, people have learned to keep wild animals in captivity and get offspring from them. The development of agriculture, which assumed a settled way of life, led to an increase in the size of the community and the emergence of fairly large permanent settlements, and later cities. About 9 thousand years ago, the first permanent settlements appeared in Western Asia, the inhabitants of which were engaged in agriculture. The transition from an appropriating economy to a producing one was called the Neolithic revolution.
The Neolithic is characterized primarily by a significant improvement in the technique of making stone tools. The most important feature of the new technique is the final finishing of stone tools by grinding or polishing, as well as sawing and drilling stone. Another important achievement of the Neolithic era is the invention of ceramics. A practical need brought into life the ability to make and fire clay vessels, which were decorated with abstract ornaments. This utensil was intended both for everyday use and for religious rituals. Richly decorated items were most likely used for cult purposes.
More developed social relations gave rise to more diverse forms of religious cults. Excavations in the south of Turkey in Chatal Huyuk, one of the oldest cities in the world, which appeared about 10 thousand years ago, showed the existence of a sacred bull cult. Sanctuaries were decorated with long horns of this animal. The need for light and heat for a good harvest led to the spread of solar cults.
7. Copper and Bronze Age
About 4 thousand years ago, another turning point occurred in the evolutionary development of man. People discovered metals and began to process them. Copper was the first metal that man used to make tools, perhaps because it was easier to mine than other metals. Later, a person began to extract and extract other metals from ore, among which were tin and lead. Fusing copper with tin, man created the first metal that did not exist in nature - bronze. The resulting alloy was much harder than copper and was perfectly machinable. High-temperature kilns were first used for making ceramics, but gradually they were adapted for casting bronze and other metals. Metal soon replaced ceramics from the most important areas - the production of cult objects and jewelry. The ability to smelt metals also penetrated into Northern Europe, and after that another innovation from Mesopotamia came there - bronze (c. 3000 BC). The Celtic cultures that dominated Europe before the Roman conquest made extensive use of bronze and other metals and developed their own decorative traditions. Many weapons, cult and household items, decorated with ornaments, were found in Celtic burials.
Conclusion
The emergence of art is associated with the development of society and the conditions of human life. But why did art arise, why did it acquire precisely such forms, there are no simple and precise answers to these questions.
Mankind seeks to find them in order to understand the origins, in the depths of which one of the main active forces in the creation of civilization arose. art artistic architecture
List of used literature
1. Miriamov V.B. - Primitive and traditional art. - M., 1973.
2. Alekseeva V.V. - What is art? - M., 1991.
3. Popular art encyclopedia. / Ed. V.M. Field. - M.: Publishing House of the Soviet Encyclopedia, 1986.
4. Kuzmina M.T., Maltseva N.L. - History of foreign art. - M., 1980.
5. Early Art Forms: A Collection. - M., 1972.
6. Formozov A.A. - Monuments of primitive art on the territory of the USSR: 2nd ed. - M., 1980.
7. Stolyar A.D. - The origin of fine arts. - M., 1985.
8. Vipper R.Yu. Ancient world history. - M.: Respublika, 1994.
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1879 - the discovery of the painting of the Spanish cave of Altamira by Marcelino Sautuollo.
Periodization:
1. Paleolithic(Old Stone Age)
lower middle upper
100-40 thousand BC - 10 thousand BC
Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) - 10-8 thousand BC
Neolithic (New Stone Age) - 8 - 5 thousand BC.
Eneolithic (Copper Stone Age) -4-3 thousand BC
II. The era of Copper and Bronze - 2 thousand BC.
III. Age of iron - 1 thousand BC
On the edge Middle and Upper Paleolithic Homo Sapuens appeared, a variety of stone tools (points, sewn clothes), the exclusion of close relatives from family relations, the emergence of regular marriage, the formation of a family, tribal relations.
Upper Paleolithic- the emergence of speech, religion, art. Main occupations: hunting, gathering, hoe farming. Tools of labor: spears, darts, needles. The emergence of artificial housing. Sedentary lifestyle. Forms of primitive religion: totemism- belief in the supernatural family ties of people with any kind of animals, fish, insects; animism(spirit, soul) - belief in the existence of supernatural forces in the form of spirits; fetishism- the worship of inanimate objects, which were prescribed supernatural power. Magic- actions based on a person's belief in their ability to influence supernatural forces.
Neolithic upheaval: the emergence of agriculture and animal husbandry (cattle breeding), permanent settlements, the emergence of unions of tribes and nationalities.
General characteristics of the art of the primitive era:
- Syncretism(fusion, indivisibility), i.e. art was closely intertwined with all existing forms of culture and art: religion, mythology, etc. Thus, art exists in an indissoluble unity, forming the so-called. primitive syncretic cultural complex.
- conservatism- all artistic images are variations of a traditional theme that has been established for centuries.
- The role of the animal- the zoomorphic character of fine art, even in the anthropomorphic sculpture of Venus. The predominance of the image of the animal, because. it provided a person with food, clothing, all the interests of a person were connected with it.
In primitive art, the utilitarian preceded the aesthetic: to kill an animal, it was necessary to know its most vulnerable places, behavior, etc. In the beginning, a person learned to grasp and imprint the outlines and plastic forms of objects, and then to distinguish and reproduce colors.
The evolution of painting:
- human handprints
- linear pattern(macaroni) - wavy lines made by stroking along the contour or splashing paint that fills open areas.
A contour drawing in which the figures of animals, animal heads were guessed. The images are often not finished, the proportions are not respected, only the most important features of the body, head, and external signs of the subject were transmitted. The image was applied to the stone by carving or drawn on wet clay.
The most famous paintings of the Late Paleolithic were found at the end of the 19th century. in caves: France - Font de Gome, Lascaux, Montignac, Montespan, Nio, 3 brothers, etc.; Spain - Altamira Cave. Total at the end of the 20th century. more than 300 caves of primitive art were discovered: France - 150, Spain - 125, Italy - 21, Portugal -3, Russia - 2.
The body of the animal was depicted in profile, and the hooves and horns were depicted in full face or ¾. In contour planar painting, a transition to detail-hatching was gradually outlined.
- hatching- oblique strokes depicting animal hair.
In the future, the figures were completely painted over with paint, and the contour line began to play a subordinate role. Comes to the fore
- color spot, applied with earthen (ocher) paint (brown, yellow or black), which created the impression of volume.
Image of bulls, bison, horses 1.5 m in size using ledges and uneven walls of the cave. The image of bison in the Altamira cave: a steep ridge, all the bulges of the body are visible: muscles, elasticity of the legs; the feeling of the beast's readiness to jump, the eyes looking askance - this is no longer an elementary drawing, but the attitude towards the beast not only as prey - a source of food, but also admiration for him, respect as the patron of the family. However, primitive realism remains intuitively spontaneous, because consists of separate concrete images. It has no background, no composition in the modern sense of the word.
With the transition of man to complex forms of labor, in addition to hunting and fishing, the appearance of agriculture and cattle breeding, the invention of arrows and bows, earthenware, metal objects appear, changes occur in the art, in which
- image schematization and their narrative: attempts to convey the action, event (scenes of hunting, military operations). Iso is already one-color (black or white). Rock paintings in Spain, South Africa, Karelia (Russia) depict a man in action (battle scenes, multi-figured compositions). Then the images become more conventional, especially human figures.
By the end of the Mesolithic, by the Neolithic, conditional figurative images gradually give way to various signs and symbols, random interweaving of lines, dots, schematic signs - such images were called petroglyphs, those. stone inscriptions (on the rocks of Karelia, Uzbekistan, the shores of the White Sea, Lake Onega). Hunting scenes, etc. are narrated in a conditional form.
primitive sculpture:
Animal figurines are totems found in hunter settlements and carved from bone, horn or stone. Sculptures of women (5-10 cm) are the so-called. Venus, associated with the cult of the mother-grandmother, having magical significance, as indicated by the absence of a face image. Finds in Willendorf (Austria), Menton and Lespug (France), Savignino (Italy), the village of Kostenki (Voronezh region). Paleolithic Venus from Willendorf - swollen belly, bulky breasts - vessels of fertility, i.e. treating humans as if they were animals.
Dwellings: grottoes, caves, then settlements, parking lots, consisting of several dwellings: a recess 1/3 into the ground, without windows, doors, made of branches, skins, reeds, with a hole at the top. Dishes made of birch bark, coconut, pumpkin, clay, leather. Products were stored in wicker baskets coated with clay. So in the Mesolithic era, an ornament appears (lat. "decoration") as traces of weaving, smeared with clay. Subsequently, the ornament was artificially applied in order to give objects magical effects (these are parallel stripes, double spirals, schematized images of people and animals).
Architecture:
By the end of the existence of the primitive period, types of architectural structures appear, called cyclopean, in which the walls of the fortresses were made up of huge roughly hewn blocks - stones (France, Sardinia, the Balkan Peninsula, Transcaucasia). In addition to the cyclopean fortresses - defensive structures, the so-called. Megalithic buildings, i.e. built from large boulders:
- menhirs- vertically standing stones-pillars (idols). The oldest of them belongs to the Bronze Age (2 thousand BC), more than 20.5 m high.
- dolmens- the oldest burials - tombs, to which long corridors led. They were covered with earth (hill).
- cromlechs- the oldest Sanctuaries of the sun (Avebury and Stonehenge Great Britain, 2 thousand BC) The height of the "blue blocks" is up to 7 m, weight - 50 tons.
In the forest zone of Europe in the 2nd half. 1 thousand BC settlements were located - "fortifications", fortified with ramparts and log fences.
The question of the origin and essence of art is extremely complex. He finds ambiguous interpretations in science:
Art is one of the forms of knowledge and reflection of the real world (Marxism);
The roots of art do not lie in the material sphere, but in the minds of people or are bestowed upon them "from above" ("art for the sake of art" - idealism);
Art is a game, an aimless activity in which an excess of physical and spiritual forces characteristic of a person is manifested (F. Schiller);
Art is a game caused by the desire for beauty that is biologically embedded in a person (G. Spencer);
The artist creates works of art instinctively, like a spider that spins a web without realizing the purpose (A. Schopenhauer);
Art comes from religion, primarily from magical beliefs (S. Reinak);
The creative process allows a person to escape from reality into a fantasy world and thus satisfy the sexual and aggressive drives inherited from ancient ancestors, which had to be hidden in a civilized society (F. Nietzsche). Culturology. Proc. settlement // Ed. N.N. Fomina, N.O. Svechnikova. - St. Petersburg: SPbGU ITMO, 2008. - P. 102-107.
Each of these versions has its own rational grain, however, none of them can be considered absolute. If we consider this problem in the context of the genesis of culture as a whole, then it is obvious that many ideas and theories can be extrapolated to the field of art. Thus, reflection, labor, racial and anthropological features, the process of signification, communication, extraterrestrial and supernatural sources can act as impulses for the emergence of art.
The origin of such a bright and complex phenomenon of human activity as art is the result of many objective and subjective reasons. It originated as part of a single life activity and arose in a team from the inherent human need for communication, the transfer of one's thoughts and feelings. Theories of the origin of art in Appendix 2.
The most ancient works of art known to us belong to the era of the late (upper) Paleolithic (20 - 30 thousand years BC). Of the various types of artistic creativity of primitive man, archaeological monuments directly preserved traces of only the fine arts. In the late Paleolithic era (Aurignac and Solutre), all its types immediately appear. This is a drawing, which is a very primitive contour image, carved or carved on stone, bone or horn. Painting is just as primitive, also limited to a contour image on a rock, in black or red paint, probably applied with a finger. The plot is mainly an animal (horse, lion, rhinoceros, deer). The style is strictly realistic.
The desire to understand one's place in the surrounding world is read in those images that brought us engraved and pictorial images on stone from Bourdelle, El Parnallo, Istyuritz, Paleolithic "Venuses", paintings and petroglyphs (images engraved, scratched or carved on stone) of caves Lasko, Altamira, Nio, rock art of North Africa and the Sahara. Round sculpture is represented almost exclusively by figures of a woman carved from soft stone, limestone, and less often from ivory. They are executed in a realistic manner, but the torso is sometimes elongated and the signs of sex are strongly emphasized. The hands are conditional, the face is missing. The usual height of the sculptures is 5-10 cm. These are the so-called "Paleolithic Venuses". The figurines had a magical meaning: they were associated with the cult of fertility, embodied the concern for procreation, the growth and prosperity of the primitive community.
Before the discovery in 1879 of the paintings in the Spanish cave of Altamira by the nobleman Marcelino de Southwall, there was an opinion among ethnographers and archaeologists that the primitive man was deprived of any spirituality and was engaged only in the search for food. However, at the beginning of the century, the English researcher of primitive art, Henri Breuil, spoke about the real “civilization of the Stone Age”, tracing the evolution of primitive art from the simplest spirals and handprints on clay through engraved images of animals on bones, stone and horn to polychrome (multi-color) paintings in caves in the vast expanses of Europe and Asia.
Speaking about primitive art, it must be borne in mind that the consciousness of primitive man was an inseparable syncretic (from the Greek synkretismos - connection) complex, and all further developed into independent forms of culture existed as a single whole, were interconnected. Art, fixing the measure of sociality that is characteristic of Homo Sapiens, became a means of communication between people and consolidated its inherent ability to give a generalized picture of the world in artistic images. The well-known researcher of the psychology of art, L.S. Vygotsky, came to the following conclusion: “... art is a social technique of feeling, an instrument of society, through which it draws the intimate and most personal aspects of our being into the circle of social life.”
Following the first, but already quite confident steps, the end of the Paleolithic gives a picture of a remarkable flowering of fine arts. Sculpture is rare, but the drawing reaches a truly remarkable perfection for its time. The plot here, in the vast majority of cases, is large animals - the main object of hunting of that time (buffalo, deer, horse, less often - mammoth, rhinoceros and even more rarely - predators). Animals are usually depicted alone, compositions are few. Very rare images of humans and plants. Painting is represented by contours carved on the rocks, painted with colors (red, black, white and yellow, with red predominating). Mineral paints mixed with fat and bone marrow. In the parking lots, prepared paints are often found, even a vial made of bone with preserved red ocher powder was found. The dimensions of the images are usually quite large and reach 2.5-4 and even 6 m. They are located mainly in the depths of the caves. The man did not live here. These were sanctuaries in which magical rites were performed related to hunting and the life of the primitive community.
Both drawing and painting of the late Paleolithic are distinguished by great realism, often revealing an excellent knowledge of nature. Unlike previous images, nature in these drawings is full of movement. The drawing is not without perspective. Painting conveys volume well, and plasticity is achieved by distributing light and dark tones.
In the Mesolithic era, a transition is planned from a realistic image to stylization and ornamentation. Fine art is fundamentally changing. Mesolithic paintings were most often performed in open places. Unlike the Paleolithic, man occupies a huge place in them. The paintings are multi-figured compositions.
The figures of people and animals are small (rarely reach 75 cm), are rendered in a solid silhouette, red and black paint. Images are stylized, schematized, sometimes reduced almost to a sign. The reason for this was that a person has acquired the ability to think in more general, more abstract categories, to display broader and more complex phenomena. The naive belief in the image of the "double" weakened and the need to designate, report, and tell about the event came to the fore.
The predominant direction in the visual arts of the Neolithic is decorative, giving extremely diverse forms and often reaching great artistic heights.
A person strives to decorate all the things that serve him, even the most ordinary and unpretentious items of everyday use, for example, earthenware. Such decoration gives an ornament (Latin ornamentum - decoration) - a pattern consisting of rhythmically ordered elements, which covers weapons, utensils, clothes.
Sculpture and relief acquire a decorative character.
The Bronze Age is characterized by high achievements in the decorative arts, as well as megalithic architecture. At that time, battle axes and axes, daggers and spearheads, ritual vessels and all kinds of jewelry were made from bronze: fasteners, belts, buckles, bracelets, earrings, rings, hoops, sewn-on plaques.
Quite quickly, all metal processing techniques were mastered: forging, casting, chasing and engraving. With the help of these techniques, all bronze items were covered with various patterns and images, small plastic items were created. Animals remain the main pictorial motif, each of which has a certain magical, symbolic meaning.
The most important phenomenon of the Bronze Age was megalithic architecture, closely associated with religious and cult ideas and ideas. There are three types of megaliths: menhirs, dolmens and cromlechs.
Menhirs are single, vertically placed stones of various heights (from 1 to 20 m). They were probably objects of worship as symbols of fertility, guardians of pastures and springs, or marking the site of ceremonies.
Dolmens are structures made of large stone slabs, standing vertically and covered from above by another slab. They were the burial place of members of the family.
Cromlechs are the most significant buildings of antiquity. They are stone slabs or pillars arranged in a circle, which were sometimes covered with slabs. Cromlechs are located around the mound or sacrificial stone. These are the first places of worship known to us. At the same time, they were also the oldest observatories.
The Iron Age is marked by a further flourishing of arts and crafts. Works of art not only served as decorations for a person, weapons, horse harness, utensils, but also performed a magical role, expressed the religious ideas of people. The so-called "animal style" appears.
In contrast to the previous time, preference is given here to images of predatory rather than hunting animals - lions, panthers, tigers, leopards, eagles. A large place was occupied by fantastic animals - griffins. Animal poses express a state of tension or moments of struggle.
All these features of the animal style expressed the desire to give, add to the owner of things the qualities inherent in the depicted animals, as well as protect him from adversity. In the works of the decorative style, realism was combined with decorativeness and stylization. However, high compositional skill and expressiveness were always preserved.
Concluding the conversation about primitive art, I would like to emphasize that “primitive” does not mean “simplified”, low in its level. On the contrary, primitive works evoke amazement and admiration. During this period, all the main types of art began to develop: painting, sculpture, graphics, arts and crafts, architecture. Two main approaches to the image were clearly revealed: realism (following nature) and conventionality (one or another transformation of nature in order to achieve certain goals). Primitive art, which became widely known only in the twentieth century, made a strong impression and had a great influence on the art of this and today's sophisticated centuries.
Art of the era of primitive society. Its oldest monuments known to science have been found in Western Europe (mainly in France and Spain).
They date from the same Late Paleolithic period as the appearance of modern humans (around 33 millennium BC).
Initially, not isolated into a special type of activity and associated with the labor process, hunting magic, etc., primitive art consolidated the collective life experience of the community, reflecting a person’s gradual knowledge of reality, the addition of his first ideas about the world around him.
The image was an indispensable means of fixing, modeling and transferring from generation to generation a syncretic inseparable complex of spiritual culture, which included many future independent forms and types of human activity.
The emergence of art meant a huge step forward in the development of mankind, contributed to the strengthening of social ties within the primitive community, the formation of the spiritual world of man, his initial aesthetic ideas. Closely associated with primitive mythological views, it was based on animism (endowing natural phenomena with human qualities) and totemism, closely related to it (the cult of the animal - the progenitor of the genus).
A characteristic feature of Paleolithic art, which embodied its ideas in living, personified images, is bright, elemental realism.
The striking vitality of many Paleolithic images is due to the peculiarities of the labor practice and worldview of the Paleolithic man, because the life of a primitive hunter directly depended on the knowledge of animals and their habits.
The first works of primitive visual art appeared in the mature stage of the Aurignacian era (approximately 33-18th millennium BC). Since that time, in large spaces from Siberia to Western Europe, female figurines made of stone and bone with hypertrophied body shapes and schematized heads - the so-called Venus, apparently associated with the cult of the mother ancestress - have become widespread. Similar "Venuses" were found in Löspug (France), Savignano (Italy), Willendorf (Austria), Dolni-Vestonice (Czech Republic), p. Kostenki near Voronezh.
Simultaneously with them, generalized expressive images of animals appear (figurines made of stone, bone and clay: engraved figures or heads on bone, stone, horn), recreating the characteristic features of a mammoth, elephant, horse, deer, etc.
The first wall cave images (relief, engraved and pictorial) belong to the Aurignacian era, most often reproducing the head or front part of the body of the beast with roughly generalized lines.
Rock paintings, including cave paintings of the Paleolithic era, flourish in the Solutrean and Magdalenian times (20-11th millennium BC) - mainly in the south of France (paintings in the caves of Montignac, Niot, Lasko, "Three Brothers "etc.) and the North-West of Spain (the paintings of the Altamira cave near Santander, etc.), but are also found in Italy (in the district of Rome, in the Otranto region and in Palermo), as well as in the Urals (the so-called Kapova cave on the river Belaya in Bashkiria).
The main motifs of the images, often covering vast planes, are individual figures of large animals full of life and movement that were the objects of hunting (bisons, mammoths, horses, deer, predatory animals).
Less common are schematic representations of people and creatures that combine the signs of a person and an animal, conventional signs, partially deciphered as reproductions of dwellings or hunting traps.
The technique of cave painting has improved over time. Precise, light contours of the line begin to play a subordinate role, boldly and accurately placed generalized color spots, applied with ocher, red, brown, black and yellow mineral paints, come to the fore. The subtle and soft gradation of tones, the imposition of one paint on another sometimes create the impression of volume, a feeling of the texture of the skin of an animal.
For all its vital expressiveness and realistic generalization, Paleolithic art remains intuitive and spontaneous. It consists of separate concrete images, there is no background in it, there is no composition in the modern sense of the word.
Architecture develops in the Late Paleolithic.
Paleolithic dwellings, apparently, were low, dome-shaped structures (rounded or rectangular in plan), deepened into the ground by about a third, sometimes with long tunnel-like entrances.
The bones of large animals were sometimes used as building material.
Numerous Paleolithic sites have been found in many parts of Europe and Asia, including in the territory of the former USSR (in the Ukraine and Belarus, in the Caucasus and the Don, in Siberia, etc.).
The culture of the Mesolithic (the transitional period from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic; from about 10-8th millennium BC) reflects significant environmental changes (the end of the ice age) that influenced many aspects of the life of primitive man: the spread of camps in the open, intensive the development of fishing and hunting, the creation of new tools, the invention of the bow, the beginning of the domestication of animals, the transition to more active productive activity.
Mesolithic rock carvings (discovered in Eastern Spain) differ sharply from Paleolithic ones.
An important place in them is occupied by the image of a person in action, multi-figure compositions: scenes of battles, hunting, etc.
There are several stylistic groups of images. The first, which, in particular, includes drawings from Addora (Sicily), is distinguished by relative realism.
Proportional and moderately detailed figures of people and animals are depicted in interaction. Groups of figures form clearly readable scenes. Then the images are stylized, becoming more and more conditional, and the figures of animals - to a lesser extent than human ones.
In the future, the tendency to generalization intensifies. The Mesolithic artist frees the human figure from details that interfere with the transfer of movement, action, complex angles, crowd scenes.
By the end of the Mesolithic period, conditional figurative images gradually give way to various signs and symbols.
In rock art (in Granada, in the Sierra Morena region in Spain), various conditional forms are found, similar in character to the signs found on pebbles.
Geometrization, schematism, which first appeared in the southern regions of Western Europe, spread to the north, up to Scandinavia.
The transition of primitive man from hunting to agriculture and cattle breeding (in those places where there were the most favorable conditions for this) caused significant changes in primitive art.
In the Neolithic era (from about the 8th-5th millennium BC) and the Bronze Age (about the 3rd-2nd millennium - the beginning of the 1st millennium BC), images appeared that conveyed more complex and abstract concepts, there has been a desire to create pictures of real life.
Many types of decorative and applied arts were formed (ceramics, metalworking, weaving; the art of ornament associated with them became widespread).
Initially, certain types of ornament had a magical, cult meaning, but as they developed, they also acquired purely artistic expressiveness.
At the same time, Neolithic images largely lost the vivid realistic immediacy of Paleolithic art and acquired conditional, stylized forms.
In the Neolithic era, the uneven social and cultural development of various regions of Asia, Africa, and Europe intensified.
The most mature forms of culture associated with the intensive development of agriculture and cattle breeding have developed in Asia Minor and Western Asia, as well as in northeast Africa.
Subsequently, the first class societies and slave-owning states arose here. Here already in the 3rd millennium BC. e. formed the main types of art - architecture, sculpture, painting.
The first monuments of art associated with agricultural cults appeared, apparently, in the 6-5th millennium BC. e. among the ancient tribes of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia.
The art of ceramics has reached a high level here - vessels made of light clay with strict forms with elegant, laconic paintings made in red-brown colors.
The paintings include both geometric motifs, which probably have a symbolic meaning (stripes, wavy lines, triangles, rhombuses, mesh patterns, etc.), as well as light stylized images of birds and animals (mainly goats and rams).
Appeared here in the 6th millennium BC. e. female figurines made of clay, initially close to nature, and then with more schematic, generalized and elongated forms, as well as with a weighted lower body, were sometimes covered with geometric painting in the form of spirals, dots and strokes, probably imitating clothes.
The influence of the ancient artistic culture of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia in the 5th-3rd millennium BC. e. widely spread and originally refracted in the art of the surrounding areas, which also has local features (in North Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean, Southeast Europe, Central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc.).
In more remote areas (for example, in the north of Europe and Asia, where the fishing and hunting primitive way of life was preserved for a long time) up to the 1st millennium BC. e. modified ancient forms of art have been preserved.
A large number of vitally convincing sculptural images have been found here (mainly the heads of elks, bears, waterfowl), most often forming part of cult wooden utensils and stone weapons (finds from the Oleneostrovsky burial ground in Karelia, 4th-3rd millennium BC, peat bogs Shigir and Gorbunovo in the Urals, 3-2 thousand BC; single finds in Finland, Sweden, etc.).
Small zoomorphic sculpture made of wood, flint, slate, and horn is also widespread. Here, picturesque, engraved or embossed with dot technique rock carvings were made (the so-called petroglyphs, or images carved on rocks, in Karelia, 3-2 thousand BC; petroglyphs and rock paintings in Sweden, the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. BC, and on the eastern slopes of the Urals, etc.).
Usually associated with tribal sanctuaries, on the territory of the former USSR they most often represent a whole gallery of simplified and schematic, naive and expressive images - images of animals, people, mythical creatures, solar and other undeciphered symbols, scenes of fishing and hunting. Rich complexes of rock carvings dating back to the Late Neolithic, Mesolithic and Bronze Ages have also been found in the Caucasus (in the Kobustan region), in Central Asia (in the Zaraut-Sai region in Uzbekistan), and also in West Africa (paintings of Tassilia Ajer in the Algerian Sahara). ). They make up sometimes complex, sometimes polychrome, vitally expressive multi-figure compositions, including figures of animals and people, scenes of everyday life, labor and hunting.
In medieval Europe, the transition to settled life and agriculture was accompanied by the rapid development of ceramics production, which underwent a complex evolution during the Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age and gave rise to many both local and pan-European cultural centers.
Simple, mostly rounded or straight-walled vessels were made by hand. In the south-east of Europe (the territory of Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova) and in Central Asia, multi-colored painted ceramics with a spiral pattern, an ornament of triangles or ribbons filled with dot inlay prevailed. The richness and variety of red-brown and black patterns in the form of spirals and curls, completely covering the vessels with white-yellow coating, distinguishes the Trypillia-Cucuteni culture, common in Romania, Western Ukraine and Moldova.
In the more northern regions (territories of modern Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, etc.), engraved, so-called linear-ribbon patterns in the form of curved stripes or spirals arranged in rows were common, and subsequently elegant vessels with embossed or stamped ornaments, folding from crosses, squares, stripes and other geometric motifs.
Found in the southeast and in the center of Europe, clay sculpture of this time (mainly schematically generalized female figurines, sometimes covered with a geometric painted or dotted through pattern) bears echoes of Mediterranean influences.
The architecture of the Neolithic and Early Bronze Ages is represented by communal settlements (multi-room houses of pillar construction or with a frame base of wicker rods coated with clay in Central and Eastern Europe; adobe houses in Central Asia, etc.).
Numerous megalithic buildings made of large monolithic stone blocks testify to the progress of construction technology. They are found almost everywhere.
There are a complex of temples on the island of Malta with stone slabs covered with a relief spiral pattern, and the Stonehenge sanctuary (Great Britain), consisting of two rows of concentric stones, dolmen tombs in the Balkans, Asia Minor, the Caucasus, etc.
The discovery of metal production had a significant impact on the social development of primitive society.
In the Bronze Age, labor productivity increased, property differentiation and decomposition of the primitive community began. During this period, the Aegean art reached its peak, developing under the influence of Eastern civilizations and having a great influence on the formation of the culture of the Mediterranean, and especially Ancient Greece.
In Europe and Asia in the 1st millennium BC. e. the process of decomposition of the primitive community of people continued, tribal and ethnic associations gradually formed (ancient Germans, Illyrians, Celts, Normans, Saks, Sarmatians, Scythians, ancient Slavs, ancient Turks, ancient Finno-Ugric peoples, Thracians, Etruscans).
For this time in medieval Europe, modest dishes with a simple stamped geometric pattern, associated with the traditions of the Neolithic, bronze brooches, pendants, swords with geometrically ornamented hilts are typical.
The art of metal processing reached a high level here at the turn of the Bronze and Iron Ages.
Everywhere, the original cult and magical meaning of the images was supplanted by the decorative and ornamental principle.
From the middle of the 1st millennium BC. e. the art of the "barbarian" peoples of Europe and Central Asia perceived the growing influence of ancient civilization and later, with the process of the formation of feudalism, was included in the pan-European stream of development of medieval artistic culture.
However, rich and varied art, organically linked with the traditions of primitive art, continued to exist until the 19th-20th centuries. among peoples who have largely preserved primitive communal relations (among the natives of Australia, Oceania and South America, the Eskimos of Canada and North-Eastern Siberia, the peoples of Africa).
