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ABSTRACT
This article initially examines the foundations of our modern understanding of Paleolithic art. Taking the period 18601905 into account,
I show that the depiction of Paleolithic art elaborated by Western
archaeologists at that time was largely based on the projection of
categories used to characterize craft at the end of the nineteenth
century with prehistoric art. As I depict in the final section of the
article, the weakening of evolutionism and the recognition of the
complexity of primitive societies at the turn of the century provoked
a new definition of Paleolithic art, which included cave paintings.
KEY WORDS
craft fine arts Paleolithic art progress
upper-middle class
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In this extract from the introduction to the first French edition of Vicos
Scienza nouva, Jules Michelet anticipated two fashionable ideas from the
end of the twentieth century. First, Michelet suggested that primitive society
is a European representation or, in Adam Kupers words, a Western invention (Kuper, 1988). In recent years, several anthropological and prehistorical works have suggested that primitive society is not an inert fact of nature,
but rather is a historical representation constructed by archaeologists and
anthropologists (Clifford, 1986, 1988; Errington, 1998; Fardon, 1990; Hodder
et al., 1995; Kuper, 1988; Nederveen Pieterse, 1992; Stoczkowski, 1994;
Torgovnik, 1990). Second, Michelet proposed that ancient civilization had
been imagined with reference to modern civilization. Certainly, the idea of
primitive society was profoundly modified by the irruption of modernity. To
define human antiquity, North Americans and Europeans conceived their
origins as an inverted image in the mirror of modern societies: To counterpose to an enlightened Europe we produced an African heart of darkness;
to our rational, controlled west corresponded an irrational and sensuous
Orient; . . . our maturity might be contrasted with the childhood of a darker
humanity, but our youth and vigour distinguished us from the aged civilizations of the east whose splendour was past (Fardon, 1990: 6). This modern
primitive society, which emerged between 1850 and 1900, was constructed
by the confluence of several processes: a faith in science which reigned in
Western societies, the consolidation of progress as a meta-narrative and the
development of archaeology and anthropology.
In light of these considerations, this article suggests several critical
propositions regarding the representation of primitive art. Taking the
period 18601905 into account, I examine the foundations of the Western
definitions of Paleolithic art. I suggest this process was related to two
central questions: first, the emergence of progress as a meta-narrative of
Western societies during the nineteenth century. The belief in progress as
a rational advancement through increments of perpetual improvement has
its origins in the Enlightenment thought of the eighteenth century.
However, it was only in the first half of the nineteenth century that the idea
of progress provided a general model in most Western disciplines of
knowledge (history, anthropology, archaeology, etc.). In this context, the
discovery of Paleolithic art in 1860 produced an important dilemma in the
rigid framework of evolutionism: How was it possible that such an
advanced activity as art existed in such primitive times? This paradox is
related to the second process which I seek to analyze. In order to overcome
the seeming contradiction between art and primitive, Western societies
promoted a definition of Paleolithic art largely based on the projection of
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the concepts which structure our modern system of art (Shiner, 2001: 3)
to the past. As Larry Shiner summarizes, in the eighteenth century . . . the
concept of art was split apart generating the new category fine arts . . . as
opposed to crafts and popular arts (p. 5). Between 1860 and 1900, Western
archaeologists took this dichotomy as a given and defined Paleolithic art
based upon categories generally used to characterize crafts. The first artistic
objects associated with prehistoric human implements were depicted as
products of societies preserved in time, reflecting primitive impulses of
leisure common to all people. These works of art reflected the lowest stage
in the development of civilized art. The final section of the article considers
how the weakening of evolutionism and the recognition of the complexity
of modern primitive societies at the beginning of the twentieth century
provoked a new definition of Paleolithic art, which included some prehistoric artistic phenomena, such as cave paintings, similar to present-day
conceptions of fine art.
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146 million to 288 million (De Vries, 1984: 36). As a result of this demographic increment, the European landscape was profoundly modified. Circa
1800, most Europeans lived in rural towns and the majority worked the land
as peasants. There were fewer than ten capitals with more than one hundred
thousand people. Yet, by the end of the century, the population of Europe
had doubled and more than half lived in cities. The main consequence of
this urbanization was the burgeoning of a new industrial middle class (les
bourgeois) and a new working class.
These industrial and demographic revolutions coincided with the rise of
modern science and the development of the scientific community. During
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Western societies largely assumed
that human reason was capable of discovering the natural laws that
governed the universe. Newtons work, for instance, demonstrated that
nature was governed by basic rules that could be identified using the scientific method. The period also saw a spectacular development in all branches
of scientific knowledge. In physics, it was a golden age for electricity and
magnetism: Alessandro Volta invented the voltaic pile in 1799; Christian
rsted discovered electromagnetism in 1820; Michael Faraday conceived
the first generator of electricity in 1831; Samuel F.B. Morse developed his
telegraph in 1837; Alexander Graham Bell made his first successful telephone experiment in 1876; Guglielmo Marconi sent the first tentative
wireless transmissions in 1895; in chemistry, John Dalton developed the
modern atomic theory (1803), and the Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleyev
drew up his periodic table of the elements (1869). Similarity, in the life
sciences, Louis Pasteurs vaccine against rabies revolutionized medicine in
the 1880s; Gregor Mendel laid the foundations of genetics, and the publication of On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin in 1859 marked a
milestone for biological thought.
This unprecedented scientific growth can be associated with an equally
unprecedented economic development, which in turn induced a mood of
euphoric superiority of the modern world in the upper and middle classes:
Our mail, our road, our printing have made almost all European citizens of
the same country. A new idea, an interesting discovery . . . was it born in
London or Paris? A few weeks later it reaches a peasant on the Danube, an
inhabitant of Rome, a subject in St. Petersburg, a slave in Constantinople . . .
Nowadays, a trip to Russia, to Germany, to Italy, to France, to England, or
even, should I say, around the world, is something that can be done in a few
weeks, a few months, a few years calculated to the nearest minute . . . It
would be impossible to calculate the heights which society can obtain, at
present let nothing be lost, let there be no way it is lost: this sends us out into
the infinite. (Chateaubriand, 1797: 256)
Even if the nineteenth century was not a happy time marked by a faith
in improvement (there was suspicion of material and technological
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development; Briggs, 1959: 1; Wiener, 1981: 57), the period between 1800
and 1870 can be defined as the age of progress (Bowler, 1989; Briggs, 1959;
Collins, 1964). Despite a minority of skeptics on progress such as Charles
Dickens, Matthew Arnold or Thomas Carlyle, the increase in material
wealth, the challenge to the aristocratic monopoly, and the rise of Western
power in the world provoked a widespread optimism among the European
upper-middle classes. For most of the upper-middle classes, it was enough
to open their eyes and to see the improvement all around . . . cities increasing, cultivation extending, marts too small for the crowd of buyers and
sellers, harbours insufficient to contain the shipping, artificial rivers joining
the chief inland seats of industry to the chief seaports, streets better lighted,
houses better furnished, richer wares exposed to sale in statelier shops,
swifter carriages rolling along smoother roads (Macaulay, 184855 V: 2284).
Most important French and English historians of the time portray similar
hymns of progress (Buckle, 1885: 309; Cousin, 1828: 279; Guizot, 1828: 77;
Macaulay, 1830: 222; Michelet, 1829: 90).
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change, moving from the stone to bronze artifacts and ultimately to iron.
The museum opened to the public in 1819, and Thomsens Three-Age
System became quite influential in European archaeology in the nineteenth
century. In Britain, for instance, Daniel Wilson used this system to arrange
the Societies of Antiquaries of Scotland collections in Edinburgh. Wilson
also recommended that the British Museum reorganize their collections on
the basis of Thomsens Three-Age System. Similarly, John Lubbock
produced the most influential hymn of praise of progress (Bowler, 1989:
81) at the end of the nineteenth century. His Prehistoric Times (Lubbock,
1865) suggested that humankind had developed from primitive savagery to
modern civilization through a steady linear progression. In France, the
chronology of De Mortillet (1872) defined a strictly unilinear evolutionism.
Perhaps the sole author who suggested a dual system based on the evolution of two parallel lines was the Belgian douard Dupont (1874: 145) a
theory which was predictably not well received by the scientific community.
In order to understand how Paleolithic art was defined at the end of the
nineteenth century, it is important to stress that art was generally
considered as a primary characteristic of the most developed societies (i.e.
Western societies). In this definitional context, the discovery of many
artistic objects associated with prehistoric human implements by Lartet and
Christy produced a contradiction which marked the period: With the
knowledge that Paleolithic men were responsible for works of art, it became
essential to explain, somehow, how such an apparently advanced activity
could possibly have existed among such obviously primitive people
(Ucko and Rosenfeld, 1967: 117). In short, the authentication of Paleolithic
art posed difficulties in the 1860s, for prehistoric humans had been defined
as primitive. In 1864, for instance, Hugh Falconer wrote that if primeval
man really had made such progress in the conception of art, without having
yet attained the knowledge of metals, it will be as curious an anthropological phenomenon as are the art objects themselves, which express that
degree of luxury which ease, leisure, and comfort beget (Falconer, 1864:
630). In 1867, John Evans pointed out that in looking at the state of civilization of these peoples of the reindeer period of the south of France, we are
struck with their skill, at all events in one of the fine arts. We find that they
were capable of producing carvings and drawings such as are rarely to be
found, even known, among savage tribes (Evans, 1867: 22). Some years
later, douard Dupont, a Belgian prehistorian, commented on the contradiction that exists between the works of art of primitive people and their
lack of metal implements (Dupont, 1872: 94). In 1880, Quiroga and Torres,
two Spanish scientists, discussed the same problematic in their report about
Altamira (Quiroga and Torres, 1880: 266). The examples are innumerable
(Cartailhac, 1889: 78; Girod and Massnat, 1900: 87; Lubbock, 1865: 303;
Nilsson, 1868: ix; Piette, 1894: 237).
To seek to make compatible the supposedly incompatible (i.e. the art
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One of the best examples characterizing the distinction between fine art
and craft during the second half of the nineteenth century was the creation
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arts and crafts (or decorative arts) was the basis for the construction of the
new category of Paleolithic art:
Art is susceptible of several divisions. The commonest division is into fine,
decorative and industrial . . . Fine art deals with painting, drawing, engraving,
sculpture, architecture, music, poetry and the drama . . . Prehistoric
decorative art explains itself. (Wilson, 1898: 350)
In other words, between 1860 and 1900, Paleolithic art was defined through
a set of values and ideas generally used to depict craft or popular arts.
Throughout the last third of the nineteenth century, archaeologists and
anthropologists approached Paleolithic art with several a priori conceptions, informed by the theory of evolutionism. In order to adapt their
conception of Paleolithic art to this theory, these prehistorians introduced
speculative sequences, which introduced the theory of a unilinear and
progressive evolution of art. The most popular of these schemes was Piettes
chronology, which established a progression from works of art that imitated
nature to works of art born from complex mental processes (Piette, 1875:
279). Art was imagined as having progressed from simpler forms to more
complex ones throughout the history of humankind, and could thus supposedly be judged according to its degree of proficiency. As a result, Paleolithic
art was conceived of as craft in contradistinction to modern art. By the end
of the nineteenth century, craft was seen as an inferior art, reflected by the
fact that objects crafted . . . within artistic traditions [were] not represented
in world art museums until after World War I (Price, 1989: 2). For the middle
classes of the nineteenth century, the beaux-arts of their own times functioned as a point of reference, in comparison to which other artistic manifestations were evaluated. As is well-known, the later half of the nineteenth
century was the era of the intellectual arts, of easel painting, of the glory of
the great museums. It was the time of la modernit, which Baudelaire
described as the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art
whose other half is the eternal and the immutable (Baudelaire, 1863: 497).
Paleolithic art, then, was defined as the inverted image reflected by the
distorting mirror (Kuper, 1988: 5) of modernity. It was thus depicted as
ornamental art (De Mortillet, 1897: 241; Evans, 1872: 448; Wilson, 1898:
3512), as a non-reflexive art that fulfilled a mainly decorative function
(Dreyfus, 1888: 225; Dupont, 1872: 155; Lartet and Christy, 1864: 280), as a
bodily art that displayed a taste for necklaces, amulets and tattoos (De
Quatrefages, 1884: 274; Lubbock, 1870: 58), as a nave art (De Mortillet,
1883: 293; Dreyfus, 1888: 224), as a simple pastime (Cartailhac, 1889: 78; De
Mortillet, 1883: 287; Lartet and Christy, 1864: 282). This opposition between
civilization (supposedly best incorporated in the beaux-arts and especially
in painting) and savagery (which produced decorative objects) occupied a
fundamental conceptual space within the European imagery. This binary
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Figure 1
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distant beings who had barely been admitted into the human family
(Conkey, 1997: 175).
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Acknowledgements
I dedicate this article to Professor Bruce Trigger, who has taught me much about
the history of archaeology. I am grateful to Alain Schnapp (Universit de Paris I),
Margaret W. Conkey (University of California, Berkeley), Nathan Schlanger
(Universit de Paris I), Randall White (University of New York), Iain Davidson
(University of New England), Denis Vialou (Musum National dHistoire
Naturelle), Andrew Gardner (Institute of Archaeology, London), Vctor M.
Fernndez (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) and, especially, Larry Shiner
(University of Illinois at Springfield) for reading and criticizing the manuscript.
I owe a debt of gratitude to Wiktor Stozckowski and Franois Hartog who welcomed me at the cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris). I want to
acknowledge the help given by Elisabeth Gschl (Universitt Wien), Kerstin Oloff
(University of Warwick) and, especially, Jennifer Selby (McMaster University) in
proof-reading the text. Finally, very special thanks must go to Manuel R. Gonzlez
Morales (Universidad de Cantabria) for his constant help and encouragement with
this article.
Notes
1 Paleolithic art was generally identified with the commonly accepted term of
primitive art. The latter (that eventually won out over such phrases as lart de
temps premiers, archaic art, or lart des non-civilizs) was used by
anthropologists, sociologists, historians and aesthetes to describe the art from
primitive societies both of ancient and modern times. Indeed, in the mentality
of Western societies of the nineteenth century, both prehistoric men and
modern savages were linked by the notion of primitive. In this context,
Paleolithic art was often defined by analogy with art from modern primitives
(Du Cleuziou, 1887: 263; Dupont, 1872: 155; Lubbock, 1865: 305).
2 The discovery of open air petroglyph sites in the Ca Valley of northern
Portugal (Bednarik, 1995) has shown the existence of cave art without caves
(Bahn, 1995: 231). As a result, archaeologists now use the term rock art (or
lart des parois in French literature) to describe the distinctive practice of
painting or carving natural surfaces in the landscape (Bradley, 1997: 5).
3 According to Denis Vialou, for instance, the division between parietal art and
mobiliary art is taken for granted by most archaeologists, even if there is not a
logical reason to justify this split in the interpretation of Paleolithic art (Vialou,
1998: 269). Randall White has criticized the trivialization of bodily adornments
as decorative art or trinkets (White, 1992: 539). For him, despite dozens of
demonstrations in modern social anthropology that personal adornment is one
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of the most powerful and pervasive forms in which humans construct and
represent beliefs, values, and social identity, the thousands of body ornaments
known from the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic have been ignored in the
fetishization of art as depiction (White, 1992: 539).
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