Something to Think About:
The oldest works of art discovered so far are in caves, Spain and France and southeast Asia. These are dated some 40,000 years ago which is the Paleolithic era. The thing that is so interesting about these drawings is the complexity of them, the artistry of them and the subject matter.
Working a design out? For Creation?
Look at the complexity of this drawing and how it looks like a series of sketches where someone, or something is working something out. One of the most startling things when looking at these drawings, and there are lots of them, which every archeologist either never noticed or ignored is, that there are no babies anything. No baby animals, no baby human beings, when humans begin to appear in them, which is not in the earliest known drawings. Also the other thing that troubles me about them is where did they get the ladders to paint these on the cave ceilings and where did they get the pigment and brushes. All questions they seem to ignore. They have NOT found human remains or evidence of settlements here. Although recently the scientists are claiming that they have unearth a few tiny bones and some pigment. Okay think about these things. Research these and come up with your ideas on these.
Horse – look at the skill in this drawing and the control of the medium whatever it was.
Cave wall
Art and Religion.
Most of the art we see in museums, excluding modern and contemporary art, was commission work, either by the titled rich, monarchies or religions. Religious institutions dominated and determined what got painted. Tremendously talented artists surely painted these things, but if you had had the chance to talk to them, they would have told you, as they told their friends in letters, that it was work, a job, but what they painted for themselves was something totally different. It did not matter how famous you were, even the great Michelangelo had to subordinate himself to the Pope of the Roman Catholic church when the Pope order that he put a loin cloth on Adam as he was painting the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. Michelangelo, no one’s fool, was said to have incredulously questioned the Pope, did he think God made Adam out of dust with a loin cloth on? Needless to say the Pope exercised his total papal power and got the loin cloth.
Unfortunately we rarely get to see what artists might have really painted if left to their own devices and not subject to the dictates of the person who is paying for the work. One of the most stunning discoveries of work done by artist for his own pleasure, were the frescos that Giandomenico Tiepolo, the son of the Giambattista Tiepolo, the more famous of the two, painted in their country home, outside of Venice proper, in 1791, almost 20 years after his father died. It is only recently that what remains of the family, let the frescos be removed and place in the Ca’Rezzonico Museum in Venice, Italy. I was fortunate enough to see them, in 2008 when I was there. The reproduction below is not great but you can
New World, 1791-1792 by Giandomenico Tiepolo. Fresco done for the family country home.
find all of his work on-line. From all of the work we see of his in the museums, in a millions years you would never guess he was the artist who did this. Most of it was either commission by the Council that governed Venice for public buildings so it depicted myths or for the Catholic Church so it depicted religious ideals and ideas. He painted five of these frescos and they are all extraordinary. There is none of the Rococo style that his public works are painted in.
J. Leone 