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64 of 75 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
All that glitters is not gold., May 1, 2006
This review is from: The Nature of Paleolithic Art (Hardcover)
The book description says:"With more than 3,000 images, The Nature of Paleolithic Art offers the most comprehensive representation of Paleolithic art ever published and a radical (and controversial) new way of interpreting it... This wonderfully written work of natural history, of observation and evidence, tells the great story of our deepest past."
This sounded very promising. Nevertheless, as I went through the book, it appeared that it was not as "wonderful" as promised.
The book contains a lot of small, monochrome line drawings made by the author. So every item of the Palaeolithic art is depicted by the author of the book. Unfortunately, at least some of the depictions are unacceptably different from the originals. A good example is a finding from the Rytirska Cave, the Czech Republic. It is not obvious what the actual artefact represents. Most archaeologists believe that it is probably a representation of a woman (although very atypical of the Magdalenian, where it belongs). The author redrew the item in such a way that he emphasized the woman's features and, as a result, it looks strinkingly different from the original(page 340). The Venus of Dolni Vestonice is depicted frontally four times in the book (pp. 332, 340, 351 and 366) and, at the same time, only the figurines depicted on pp. 322 and 351 are quite similar. The figurines presented on pp. 340 and 366 differ from each other and from the depictions on pp. 322 and 351 as well. The back views of this piece of art are on pp. 322 and 351 and these two drawings do not depict the identical figurine, either. The question arises: To which extent can I trust the author's illustrations?
There are mistakes in captions, for example instead of Gagarino, Russia, there is Gargano, Italy (e.g. pp. 332), instead of Dolni Vestonice there is mistakenly Pekarna (pp. 353), etc. I believe these mistakes should also be avoided, especially when it is possible to verify such information using the Internet within several minutes in most cases.
To sum up, the representation of the Palaeolithic art in the book is disappointing.
Another thing is the interpretation of the Palaeolithic art. To be honest, my personal interpretations are pretty different from the author's, so I was very interested in his pieces of evidence and argumentation. On page 204 the author states: "Absolon concluded...that the early peoples had only two things on their minds: sex and hunger". I ordered the cited paper (Artibus Asiae, 12, 1949, 201-220) and found that there is no such statement or conclusion (explicit or implicit) in the article cited.
Besides this example of the author's way of thinking, the book contains many other statements and assumptions which I consider unfounded.
In short, the interpretation of the Palaeolithic art in this book can be expressed by the above statement, which the author attributed to Karel Absolon. It seems that the author was well aware of the fact that there is whole animal in the human being, but he forgot the second part of the idea of Konrad Lorenz, namely that there is not the whole human being in the animal.
In conclusion, I think that The Nature of Paleolithic Art by R. Dale Guthrie is a book that does not meet the standard criteria of seriousness and reliability.
Instead, I recommend the "Journey through the Ice Age" by Paul G.Bahn and Jean Vertut, which contains photographs (instead of drawings distorting the originals) and a valuable text. "The Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Evolution of Man" by Jan Jelinek is also a very good source of information (although published in 1975).
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Marking time, June 4, 2007
This review is from: The Nature of Paleolithic Art (Hardcover)
Since the first finds of ancient cave art in Spain at the end of the 19th Century, researchers have sought to understand what prompted them. Various theories, from "hunting magic" to links to spirits have been put forward. Dale Guthrie, with many years experience in the field to draw upon, argues a new idea. Searching for "hidden meaning", he contends, is a false trail. Instead, he wants the art viewed as a window into the life of the times. What's important, he argues, is that the artworks represent what was significant to people living in ancient times. He considers those fabulous images as representations of rather mundane depictions of daily encounters. In this exhaustive study, Guthrie re-draws the art of the caves and inscribed on bone and horns, the tools, and some of the methods used.
He reminds us that most of the portrayed animal life wasn't a major part of the Paleolithic diet. Lions, bears and horses weren't consumed by those early peoples. Reindeer, easier to hunt and comprising much of the meal debris found, are far less common on the cave rocks. Cave art, he says, exhibits an unexpected unity of subject and presentation. As "unrealistic" portrayals, cave images show frequent exaggerations, which are common across many sites. This point, coupled with the hidden locations of so many rock art sites, instead of giving the art "hidden" purpose as well, suggests to Guthrie that the artists were just as likely people staying out sight. From this, he surmises that young people not occupied in hunting or other specialised tasks, may have been "dabbling" in making the images. He cites the number of small hand prints found on the walls as an indication of this claim. As he, and others have recognised, people went into the caves to make images, not to live in them. Caves are fine places to shelter, particularly during extended cold seasons. Passing the time by engaging in making graffiti may be our species' oldest form of alleviating boredom.
The author's surmise about young men being a significant portion of the cave artists leads him into further speculations about Paleolithic society in general. From the premise that those ancient people were physiologically much like ourselves, he assumes their mental capacity and social relations were much like modern humans, if a bit more primitive in technological abilities. Family relations were probably monogamous, he assumes - which departs from the numerous polygamous cultures that still exist today. The harsh environment forced people into small, intimate bands: "tribes" remained an innovation of the future. Conservation or almost any form of game animal management was impossible. Habitat relocation would be forced by the paucity of vegetable foods due to cold or varying conditions.
Guthrie's background is zoology, not graphics. That foundation gives him the basis for his fresh outlook on the subject. Yet, instead of offering a "coffee-table" volume of photographs, he has created his own images, all in sepia, to explain his ideas. Nearly every page contains these miniatures with explanatory text accompanying them. We must trust his abilities in conveying the images, and in some cases, what they actually represent. The minimal size of these graphics limits the available detail, and are indicators of his points, not evidence. It's a daunting task to keep track of his themes and how the images support them in many instances. However, since the images are the basis for his thinking, fewer of them and larger renditions would grant his ideas more credibility. Although his chapters are short and direct in making their points, bringing all the information together isn't a task for a novice in the subject. It's not an introductory text. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A different look at Paleolithic Art, June 19, 2006
This review is from: The Nature of Paleolithic Art (Hardcover)
Suppose you were a student in an art appreciation class and your professor assigned a critique of Paleolithic art, that is, the art produced between about 40000 and 10000 years ago Where would you start? Perhaps by looking at some of the finest cave paintings, which, without a doubt, are the work of talented artists. This is the approach taken by many of the specialists on Paleolithic art. It is not R. Dale Guthrie's approach in his book "The Nature of Paleolithic Art".
Guthrie has looked at all of the art, the best and the worst, and comes to a startling new conclusion as to its origin. He is uniquely qualified for such a study.
First he has probably seen more Paleolithic art than any other specialist. And much of the art consists of images that would never appear in a coffee table book on Paleolithic art.
Guthrie is an artist himself. He shows that some of the Paleolithic artists lacked a sense of perspective or other talents that today separate a doodler from a true artist. Guthrie becomes almost wistful when he talks about the art that nobody has seen and will never see. What about clothing, women's art, story telling, tattooing, any art done at non-permanent sites using non-permanent materials? All gone. In other words, what remains is only a very small select sample, and as Guthrie concludes, most of it done by teenagers exploring caves and taking risks just as teenagers do today.
Guthrie is an avid hunter and as a hunter in Alaska he has studied in a very practical way the behavior of big game animals. He knows, for example, what it is like to return to a kill and find that a grizzly bear has claimed it - the same scenario illustrated in one of the Paleolithic drawings. Would anyone but a hunter have interpreted this image in this way? I suspect not.
As a student of mammalian behavior and vertebrate paleontology, Guthrie can speak with authority on the probable behavior of the extinct mammals that were subjects of much of the art. He shows that Paleolithic men (boys really) knew as much or more about the behavior of the large mammals they hunted as any modern expert.
Guthrie's conclusions are radical, yet at the same time refreshing because they paint a picture of human beings 30000 years ago that were in many ways like us, with similar urges, thoughts and behavioral characteristics that persist in us, despite our thick cultural patina, even to this day. Another reviewer (see review by Paul Matheus at Amazon.com) concludes that Guthrie's book is really "About Us". I could not agree more, but in some startling ways those people of 300 centuries ago were also different from us. For example, Guthrie finds no drawings that depict battles and war, scenes quite common in later art, down to the present. It's something to think about.
Read this book. It will become a classic. It is much more than a book about Paleolithic Art and yet it is a book that all artists should read. I recently heard of one artist who read the book and declared that it "was the most important book he had ever read."
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