Images on the surface of the earth, dendroglyphs - images on the bark of trees and images on animal skins, various decorations bodies with the help of colored pigments and all kinds of natural objects, such as beads, which are still popular today. But all of the above is not able to withstand the onslaught of destructive time. Therefore, only abstract signs were preserved and gradually discovered, carved artificially on super-hard rock surfaces in Central India, northern Australia and Peru, as well as pictograms of positive and negative hand stencils and animalistic cave images (Nerja, Southern coast of Spain, Chauvet , Ardèche, South of France) zoomorphic and anthropomorphic sculpture of small forms (Venus from Hole Fels and Man-Lev - Swabian Alb, Germany) made of bone and stone, engravings and bas-reliefs on bone, stone slabs and horn, Upper Paleolithic time (35 - 40 thousand . years) and numerous clusters rock paintings on the surfaces of rocks under open air, Neolithic era, or New Stone Age, (11 thousand years), known on all inhabited continents. The Neolithic also includes the ruins of various megalithic buildings in Europe, South America and Asia (for example: Stonehenge in Salisbury, with vertically installed stones in a circle - cromlechs, weighing up to 50 tons, Great Britain, ordered rows of large unprocessed obelisk stones, on an endless Karnak field, called menhirs, and burial complexes made of unprocessed large stones, for example, Corconne dolmen, Morbigan, France).
The first works of primitive art discovered during excavations were magnificent, realistic, engraved images of animals on the surfaces of bones, now long extinct animals of the Pleistocene era (ended 11 thousand years ago) and hundreds of tiny beads from natural materials (fossilized calcite sponges ), found by Boucher de Perth for the first time in the 30s of the 19th century in France. But then, these finds turned out to be the subject of a fierce dispute between the first amateur researchers and dogmatic creationists represented by clergy, confident in the divine origin of the world. As a result, the amazing, unusual findings did not inspire confidence among both professional scientists of the French Academy of Sciences and the general public. A revolution in views on primitive art was made by the discovery of the Paleolithic cave painting. In 1879, Maria eight year old daughter Spanish amateur archaeologist M. de Sautuola, discovered on the vaults of the Altamira cave, in northern Spain, a cluster of large, one to two meters, images of bison, painted with red ocher in a variety of complex poses. These were the first, officially published in 1880, Paleolithic paintings discovered in a cave. Currently, about forty caves with Paleolithic paintings are known in Australia, South Africa, Russia, Spain and France. The skill of ancient artists was reflected in the ability to convey visual means dynamics and characteristics of animals. The first message about this, in Russian, appeared only in 1912, in translation from French, the sixth edition of the course of public lectures by Solomon Reinach, which he read at the Louvre School in Paris in 1902-1903. Currently, primitive visual creativity is being studied by researchers from two international organizations ICOMOS (ICOMOS) - uniting professional researchers and IFRAO (IFRAO), an association of amateur researchers, which includes more than 50 national organizations from all over the world. In June 2012, the journal Science published new uranium dating methods in 11 Spanish caves and the French Chauvet Cave. An international group of scientists finally managed to obtain a reliable series of datings of the most ancient cave paintings. The images of “black rhinoceroses” in the Chauvet cave were 35.3-38.8 thousand years old. The oldest known dates in the world turned out to be the dates of the ocher pigment images of the Spanish Nerja Cave - 43.5-42.3 thousand years. All of the above, on the one hand, and new finds of examples of portable art in Germany, on the other, made it possible to completely refute the point of view of academic science, presented by 100 years of systematic research, in particular, authoritative opinion Leroy-Gourana.
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Primitive art- art of the era of primitive society. The appearance of the beginnings of art is attributed to the Mousterian era (150-120 thousand - 35-30 thousand years ago). On individual subjects From this time, rhythmic pits and crosses are found - a hint of ornament. Individual finds may indicate the emergence of the rudiments of art - ornamentation from pits and notches, coloring of objects, and even the production of anthropomorphic figurines - even in previous eras. Thus, “Venus from Berekhat-Ram” dates back 230 thousand years, and “Venus from Tan-Tan” - more than 300 thousand years ago. The production of ornaments is associated with the so-called. "behavioral modernity" ( behavioral modernity) A series of finds of primitive jewelry may indicate the relative early beginning of modern culture and the time from which Homo sapiens sapiens showed the ability to abstract thinking. Three perforated mollusk shells, found by archaeologists in Israel and Algeria, and made approximately 90 thousand years ago, are considered elements of the first jewelry created by man. In 2007, isolated decorated and perforated shells that may have been made into beads were found in eastern Morocco; their age is 82 thousand years. More than 40 shells were found in Blombos Cave (South Africa) with traces of color and traces indicating use in beads 75 thousand years old.
Primitive sculpture
Rock painting
File:Naskl.jpg
A bison attacks a man.
Many rock carvings made by people of the Paleolithic era have survived to this day, primarily in caves. Most of these objects are found in Europe, but they are also found in other parts of the world. When creating images, paints from mineral dyes (ocher, metal oxides) were used. charcoal, and vegetable dyes mixed with animal fat or blood, or water. The oldest known rock painting is apparently a scene of a battle between rhinoceroses in the Chauvet cave, about 32 thousand years old. Rock paintings are often made taking into account the color and shape of the rock surface and conveying the movement of the animals depicted, but, as a rule, without observing the proportions of the figures, perspective and without conveying volume. On rock paintings images of animals, hunting scenes, human figures and scenes of ritual or everyday activities (dancing, etc.) predominate.
All primitive painting, as part of the primitive fine arts, a syncretic phenomenon and presumably created in accordance with cults. Later, images of primitive fine art acquired features of stylization. Many examples of cave paintings are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Megalithic architecture
Types of megalithic structures
- menhir - a single vertical stone
- cromlech - a group of menhirs forming a circle or semicircle
- dolmen - a structure made of a huge stone placed on several other stones
Hundreds of thousands of years separate us from the time of the emergence of art. What are the reasons for the emergence of art?
The birth of art and the first steps artistic development humanity go 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, and the emergence of matriarchy. According to his physical characteristics, man was no different from modern people. He mastered speech, made quite complex tools from stone, bone, horn, wood, and hunted animals. With the expansion of his social and labor activities, his horizons were enriched. Thousands of years of development
The tribes were brought up with faithfulness of the eye, flexibility of the hand, the ability to highlight the main and characteristic, the ability to see the inherent beauty and harmony of forms in nature. On this basis the aesthetic feeling arose. Art owes its emergence not to the biological basis of man, not to religion, magic and play, but to the development of social life and its basis - labor, which is “older than the arts” (G.V. Plekhanov).
Labor – creative process, it transforms the person himself, his brain, feelings, changes his nature. Work developed morality, aesthetic feelings, and the beginnings of scientific knowledge in a person. The formation of the five external senses is the work of all previous world history. Without training the hand to work in stone, a person would not be able to learn to draw. A musical ear, an eye capable of seeing the beauty of form and color, had to develop in order for a work of painting or a song to be born.
By influencing nature, man came to know it. He had images that found expression in words, music. sounds, in pictures. Work awakened in a person the ability to see the beauty and richness of the world around him. Working with tools made of stone and wood, people became acquainted with different types and properties of materials, they learned to clearly perceive the features of volume and surface. Hunting made it possible to observe animals and their habits. The labor process introduced a person to the laws of symmetry and harmony, gave rise to a sense of proportion and orderliness, 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 dismembered, but appeared together. Primitive man did not separate himself from nature and attributed to himself the ability to influence it with the help of witchcraft spells. Rock paintings and drawings depicting animals were associated with a magical ritual that ensured good luck in the hunt. This thinking poetically embodied man's desire to master the world. It contained elements of aesthetic perception from which art developed.
Visual arts, legends, myths, dance, and pantomime originated in primitive society.
Let the ancestor live a half-animal life,
But we value his legacy,
He didn't know how to make a pot out of clay,
He was afraid of the spirits he invented.
But still in his remote cave
A crowd of shadows, rapidly alive,
Furious animals fly along the walls,
His fierce opponents.
The mammoth's eye squints in fear,
A deer runs, inspired by the chase,
He fell and, dying, moves,
And the wounded bison swallows the blood.
The hunters silently followed the trail,
And they opened the battle with a loud cry,
And secured a difficult victory
Easy drawing.
V. Berestov.Re-odization of primitive art.
1. Stone Age. (40–4 thousand BC). There are 3 stages in it:
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 people were hands, nails and teeth,
Stones, as well as forest tree debris and branches...
The powers of iron and copper were discovered.
But the use of copper was sooner discovered than iron.
Lucretius 1st century 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 in the La Ferrassie cave, France. Later, in drawings and paintings, the whole world of animals: deer with branchy antlers, 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 paints, yellow and brown ochre, red-yellow iron ore, black manganese and coal, and white lime were used in painting. Sometimes relief.
Animals were depicted in a variety of movements. Expressive images with specific features, precision of form, and the ability to highlight the main thing from a variety of observations. Caves of Font de Gaume France, Altamira North. Spain, Lascaux and Limeille France, Dolne Vestonice Czech Republic, Brno Slovakia, Tassili Plateau in the Sahara, Siberia, Don, Italy, Germany, Algeria, Austria..
During the Paleolithic era, carvings on stone, bone, wood, and round plastics developed. Figurines of animals - bears, horses, lions. Paleolithic “Venuses” are massive and monumental.
At its core, Paleolithic art is naive and realistic. While correctly perceiving individual objects, primitive man could not grasp the whole picture of the world.
Reproductions: Wounded bison. (Altamira Cave), Paleolithic Venus, bison (Lascaux Cave), print human hand(Pech-Merle cave).
2. Mesolithic 10–6 thousand BC. e. (Middle Stone Age.)
The rise of productive forces, people grouped into small groups developed a larger territory than before. They formed open-air camps, hunted small animals, improved the processing of stone tools, used bows and arrows, and tamed the dog and some other animals. A person’s life experience has expanded, thinking has become more developed, and a belief in afterlife. Multicolor disappears in fine art. Rock paintings from this time they were executed in silhouette, in red or black paint, without sculpting the volume. The narrative begins to develop, the composition becomes more perfect. The central theme is hunting; an image of a man and his activities appears. Dynamic, often dramatic action. These features characterize the paintings in Eastern Spain and Northern. Africa. Rushing figures of angry warriors, collecting fruits, honey, driving livestock, dancing.
Reproductions: Murals in the East. Spain, North Africa - racing warriors, dancing, collecting honey, fruits, driving livestock.
3. Neolithic. 6–2 thousand BC e. (New Stone Age.)
Humanity is moving from passive appropriation of products to productive economic activity. New forms of production appeared - cattle breeding and agriculture, stone tool processing techniques, pottery, construction, weaving and leather processing were improved, new spaces were populated, and inter-tribal hostility for lands and hunting territory intensified. The transition from matriarchy to patriarchy has complicated relationships 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 moose, 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, Mediterranean) of “stone women”, which were stone pillars with rounded heads and arms folded at the waist. In France they were considered patron 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 ornament spread, which laid the foundation decorative arts. The basis of the ornament is a conventionally schematic representation of nature, the desire to abstract from real images. Examples of ornamental ceramic products Trypillian vessels 4-3 thousand BC. e. (European part of Russia and the Balkan countries) of various shapes with patterns painted in red and white paint. Characteristic motifs: parallel stripes, double spirals, zigzags, concentric circles, having different semantic meanings. From the repetition of the same signs arose complex pattern. The ornament included schematic images of people, animals, and folklore images.
4. Bronze Age 2 thousand BC e.
During the Bronze Age, with the introduction of new forms of management and metal tools (copper, bronze), a new division of labor occurred, creating inequality. Among the tribes, the shepherd ones stood out. A loom appeared. On this basis, the second division of labor took place - crafts were separated from agriculture. 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 predominated.
Grandiose, simple stone structures were an expression of the power of the clan and its unity. Megalithic buildings (“meg” – large, “lit” – stone): menhirs, dolmens, cromlechs were found in various parts Europe. Menhirs in Brittany, France, Russia, Armenia, Siberia, Crimea, Caucasus, Africa. This is a burial structure made of 2 or 4 vertically placed stones, the number of which reaches up to 1000.
More complex megalithic structures are cromlechs. The most grandiose of them was erected at Stonehenge 2 thousand BC. e. (Southern England) from rough-hewn stones of blue color.
In plan, it is a round platform with a diameter of 30 m, closed by 4 rings of vertically placed stones. The outer ring 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 is built from seven-meter blue blocks, placed in pairs and covered with slabs. The architectural design of the cromlech is simple, but executed symbolic meaning. At Stonehenge, a centric, ordered composition appeared for the first time, and the basic relationships between the load-bearing and supported parts were revealed. The rhythm outlines the motif of the colonnade and arcade.
In the Iron Age (beginning of the 1st millennium BC) appeared new type architecture - fortresses, defensive structures made of huge stone blocks on the territory of modern France, the Balkans. Burial structures are large chambers in the burial mounds of leaders.
In primitive society there was only nameless, naive, spontaneous creativity, which belonged to the entire society, the unity of which was based on blood-tribal relations.
Reproductions: Images of menhirs – Brittany France, “Stone Army” Armenia,
Alleys of menhirs in Transcaucasia, Britain, Stonehenge England, image of a fish in Armenia, a beast in Siberia.
1. Tell us about the features of painting, graphics and sculpture of the primitive era. Is the scientists’ statement about the “realism” of fine art of this period correct?
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 origins of dance, music, theater.)
4. Tell us about the main periods of primitive art, characterize them.
5. Tell us about the architectural structures of the primitive era.
Art of the era primitive society. Its oldest monuments known to science were found in Western Europe (mainly in France and Spain).
They date back to the same Late Paleolithic period as the appearance of man. modern type(around 33rd 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 communities, reflecting a person’s gradual knowledge of reality, the formation of his first ideas about the world around him.
The image was an indispensable means of fixing, modeling and transmitting from generation to generation a syncretic indivisible complex of spiritual culture, which contained 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 connected with primitive mythological views, it was based on animism (giving natural phenomena human qualities) and closely related totemism (the cult of the animal - the progenitor of the clan).
A characteristic feature of Paleolithic art, which embodied its ideas in living, personified images, is bright, spontaneous realism.
The amazing vitality of many Paleolithic images is due to the peculiarities of the labor practice and worldview of Paleolithic man, because the life of a primitive hunter directly depended on knowledge of animals and their habits.
The first works of the primitive visual arts appeared in the mature stage of the Aurignacian era (approximately 33-18 thousand BC). Since that time, over large areas from Siberia to Western Europe Female figurines made of stone and bone with exaggerated body shapes and schematized heads became widespread - the so-called Venus, apparently associated with the cult of the ancestral mother. Similar “Venuses” were found in Lespug (France), Savignano (Italy), Willendorf (Austria), Dolni Vestonice (Czech Republic), p. Kostenki near Voronezh.
At the same time, generalized expressive images of animals appear (figurines made of stone, bone and clay: engraved figures or heads on bone, stone, horn), recreating character traits mammoth, elephant, horse, deer, etc.
The first wall cave images (relief, engraved and pictorial) date back to the Aurignacian era, most often reproducing the head or front part of the body of an animal with roughly generalized lines.
Rock, including cave, images of the Paleolithic era flourished in the Solutrean and Magdalenian times (20-11th millennium BC) - mainly in the south of France (paintings in the caves of Montignac, Nio, Lascaux, “Three Brothers” ", etc.) and North-West Spain (paintings of the Altamira cave near Santander, etc.), but are also found in Italy (in the area of Rome, in the Otranto region and in Palermo), as well as in the Urals (the so-called Capova cave on the river Belaya in Bashkiria).
The main motifs of the images, often covering vast areas, are individual figures of large animals full of life and movement that were objects of hunting (bison, mammoths, horses, deer, animals of prey).
Less common are schematic images of people and creatures that combine the characteristics of humans and animals, conventional signs that are partially deciphered as reproductions of dwellings or hunting traps.
The technique of cave painting improves over time. Precise, light contours of the line begin to play a subordinate role; boldly and precisely 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 overlay of one paint on another sometimes creates the impression of volume, a feeling of the texture of the skin of an animal.
For all its vital expressiveness and realistic generality, Paleolithic art remains intuitive and spontaneous. It consists of individual specific images, there is no background, there is no composition in the modern sense of the word.
In the Late Paleolithic, architecture developed.
Paleolithic dwellings apparently were low, dome-shaped buildings (round or rectangular in plan) buried about a third into the ground, sometimes with long tunnel-like entrances.
As building material sometimes the bones of large animals were used.
Numerous Paleolithic sites have been discovered in many areas of Europe and Asia, including in the territory former USSR(in Ukraine and Belarus, the Caucasus and the Don, Siberia, etc.).
The culture of the Mesolithic (the transitional period from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic; approximately from the 10th to the 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 open-air sites, 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 activities.
Mesolithic rock art (discovered in Eastern Spain) differs sharply from Paleolithic ones.
Important place they feature images of a person in action, multi-figure compositions: scenes of battles, hunting, etc.
Several stylistic groups of images are distinguished. 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 legible scenes. Then the images are stylized, becoming more and more conventional, with animal figures to a lesser extent than human ones.
Subsequently, the tendency towards generalization intensifies. The Mesolithic artist frees the human figure from details that interfere with the transmission of movement, action, complex angles, and crowd scenes.
By the end of the Mesolithic period, conventional figurative images gradually gave way to various signs and symbols.
In rock art (in Granada, in the Sierra Morena region of Spain) there are various conventional forms that are similar in nature to the signs found on pebbles.
Geometrization and schematism, which initially appeared in the southern regions of Western Europe, spread to the north, all the way 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 8-5 thousand BC) and the Bronze period (about 3-2 thousand - the beginning of the 1st millennium BC) images appeared that convey more complex and abstract concepts, there was 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 have largely lost the bright realistic spontaneity of Paleolithic art and acquired conventional, stylized forms.
During the Neolithic era, the unevenness of social and cultural development various regions of Asia, Africa, Europe.
The most mature forms of culture, associated with the intensive development of agriculture and cattle breeding, developed in Asia Minor and Western Asia, as well as in northeast Africa.
Subsequently, the first class societies and slave states arose here. Here already in the 3rd millennium BC. e. The main types of art emerged - architecture, sculpture, painting.
The first monuments of art associated with agricultural cults appeared, apparently, in the 6th-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 shapes with elegant, laconic paintings made with red-brown paints.
The paintings include both geometric motifs, probably having symbolic meaning(stripes, wavy lines, triangles, diamonds, 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 life, and then with more schematic, generalized and elongated forms, as well as with a weighted lower part of the body, were sometimes covered with geometric painting in the form of spirals, dots and strokes, probably imitating clothing.
The influence of the ancient artistic culture of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia in the 5th-3rd millennium BC. e. spread widely and was originally refracted in the art of surrounding areas, which also has local features (in North Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean, South-Eastern 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) until the 1st millennium BC. e. Modified ancient forms of art have been preserved.
Found here big number vitally convincing sculptural images (mainly heads of moose, bears, waterfowl), most often forming part of cult wooden utensils and stone weapons (finds from the Oleneostrovsky burial ground in Karelia, 4-3 millennia BC, Shigir and Gorbunovo peat bogs in the Urals, 3-2 thousand BC; isolated finds in Finland, Sweden, etc.).
Small zoomorphic plastics made of wood, flint, slate, and horn are also widespread. Here, picturesque, engraved or carved rock paintings 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, and on the eastern slopes of the Urals, etc.).
Usually associated with tribal sanctuaries, in the territory of the former USSR they most often present a whole gallery of simplified and schematic, naively expressive images - images of animals, people, mythical creatures, solar and other undeciphered symbols, scenes fishing and hunting. Rich complexes of rock art, dating back to the late Neolithic, Mesolithic and Bronze Ages, were also discovered in the Caucasus (in the Kobustan region), in Central Asia (in the Zaraut-Saya region in Uzbekistan), as well as 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 sedentism and agriculture was accompanied by the rapid development of ceramic production, which went through a complex evolution during the Neolithic and Early Bronze Ages and gave rise to many local and pan-European cultural centers.
Simple, mostly round or straight-walled vessels were made by hand. In southeastern Europe (the territory of Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova) and Central Asia, multicolor painted ceramics with a spiral pattern, an ornament of triangles or ribbons filled with dotted inlays predominated. The richness and variety of red-brown and black patterns in the form of spirals and curls, completely covering vessels with white and yellow coating, distinguishes the Tripoli-Cucuteni culture, widespread in Romania, Western Ukraine and Moldova.
In more northern regions (the 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 patterns appeared, folded from crosses, squares, stripes and other geometric motifs.
The clay sculptures of this time found in the southeast and in the center of Europe (mostly schematically generalized female figurines, sometimes covered with geometric painted or dotted through patterns) bear echoes of Mediterranean influences.
The architecture of the Neolithic and Early Bronze Ages is represented by communal settlements (multi-room houses of a pillar structure or with a frame base of wicker rods coated with clay in Central and Eastern Europe; adobe houses in Central Asia, etc.).
The progress of construction technology is evidenced by numerous megalithic buildings made of large monolithic stone blocks. They are found almost everywhere.
Notable examples include 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.
During the Bronze Age, labor productivity increased, property differentiation and the decomposition of the primitive community began. During this period, 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, Sakas, Sarmatians, Scythians, ancient Slavs, ancient Turks, ancient Finno-Ugrians, Thracians, Etruscans).
This time in medieval Europe was characterized by modest dishes with a simple stamped geometric pattern, associated with Neolithic traditions, bronze brooches, pendants, swords with hilts ornamented in a geometric spirit.
The art of metalworking has reached here high level at the turn of the Bronze and Iron Ages.
Everywhere the original cult-magical meaning of images was supplanted by decorative and ornamental principles.
From the middle of the 1st millennium BC. e. the art of the “barbarian” peoples of Europe and Central Asia perceived the increasing influence of ancient civilization and later, with the process of the formation of feudalism, became involved in the pan-European flow of development of medieval artistic culture.
However, rich and varied art, organically connected with the traditions of primitive art, continued to exist until the 19th-20th centuries. among peoples who have largely preserved primitive communal relations (the aborigines of Australia, Oceania and South America, the Eskimos of Canada and North-Eastern Siberia, the peoples of Africa).
1879 - Marcelino Southwallo's discovery of the paintings in the Spanish cave of Altamira.
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.
Chalcolithic (Copper Stone Age) -4-3 thousand BC
II. The Age of Copper and Bronze - 2 thousand BC.
III. Iron Age – 1 thousand BC
On the edge Middle and Upper Paleolithic Homo Sapuens appeared, various stone tools (points, sewn clothes), an exception from family relations immediate relatives, the appearance of regular marriage, the formation of a family, and ancestral relationships.
Upper Paleolithic- the emergence of speech, religion, art. Main occupations: hunting, gathering, hoe farming. Tools: spears, darts, needles. The emergence of artificial housing. Sedentary lifestyle. Forms of primitive religion: totemism– belief in supernatural kinship between people and any species of animals, fish, insects; animism(spirit, soul) – belief in the existence of supernatural forces in the form of spirits; fetishism- worship of inanimate objects, which were assigned supernatural powers. Magic- actions based on a person’s belief in his ability to influence supernatural forces.
Neolithic revolution: the emergence of agriculture and animal husbandry (cattle breeding), permanent settlements, the emergence of unions of tribes and nationalities.
general characteristics art of the primitive era:
- Syncretism(unity, non-division), i.e. art was closely intertwined with all existing forms of culture and art: religion, mythology, etc. T.O., art exists in indissoluble unity, forming the so-called. primitive syncretic cultural complex.
- Conservative- All artistic images- these are variations traditional theme, established for centuries.
- The role of the animal– the zoomorphic nature of fine art, even in the anthropomorphic sculpture of Venuses. The predominance of animal images, because it provided a person with food, clothing, all human interests were connected with it.
In primitive art, the utilitarian preceded the aesthetic: in order to kill an animal, it was necessary to know its most vulnerable places, behavior, etc. At the beginning, a person learned to grasp and capture the outlines and plastic forms of objects, and then to distinguish and reproduce colors.
Evolution of painting:
- human handprints
- linear drawing(pasta) - wavy lines made by tracing along the contour or splashing paint to fill open areas.
A contour drawing in which the figures of animals and animal heads were guessed. The images are often unfinished, the proportions are not respected, only the most important features of the body, head, and external features of the object are conveyed. The image was carved onto the stone or drawn on raw clay.
The most famous Late Paleolithic paintings were found at the end of the 19th century. in caves: France - Font de Gaume, 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 view. In contour planar painting, a transition to detailing and shading was gradually outlined.
- hatching– oblique strokes depicting animal fur.
Subsequently, the figures were completely painted over, 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 measuring 1.5 m using protrusions and uneven walls of the cave. 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 animal being ready to jump, the eyes looking from under its brows - this is no longer an elementary drawing, but an attitude towards the animal not only as prey - a source of nutrition, but also admiration for it, respect as the patron of the clan. However, primitive realism remains intuitive and spontaneous, because consists of individual specific images. There is 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 emergence of agriculture and cattle breeding, the invention of arrows and bows, pottery and metal objects appear, changes also occur in art, in which the growth of
- schematization of images and their narrative: attempts to convey an action, an event (hunting scenes, military operations). The iso is already one-color (black or white). Rock paintings in Spain, South Africa, Karelia (Russia) depict a person in action (battle scenes, multi-figure compositions). Then the images become more conventional, especially the human figure.
Towards the end of the Mesolithic, towards the Neolithic, conventional figurative images gradually give way to various signs and symbols, random interweaving of lines, dots, schematic signs - such images were called petroglyphs, those. stone writings (on the rocks of Karelia, Uzbekistan, the shores of the White Sea, Lake Onega). Hunting scenes, etc., are narrated in a conventional form.
Primitive sculpture:
Animal figurines are totems found in hunters’ settlements and carved from bone, horn or stone. Sculptures of women (5-10 cm) are the so-called. Venuses associated with the cult of the mother-progenitor, having magical meaning, 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 a person primarily as an animal.
Dwellings: grottoes, caves, then settlement-sites, consisting of several dwellings: 1/3 deepening into the ground, without windows, doors, made of branches, skins, reeds, with a hole on top. Dishes made of birch bark, coconut, pumpkin, clay, leather. Food was stored in wicker baskets coated with clay. Thus, in the Mesolithic era, ornament (Latin for “decoration”) appears as traces of weaving coated with clay. Subsequently, the ornament was artificially applied in order to impart magical effects to objects (these are parallel stripes, double spirals, schematic images of people and animals).
Architecture:
Towards the end of existence primitive period types of architectural structures appear, called cyclopean, in which the walls of the fortresses were made of huge rough-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 stones-boulders:
- menhirs– vertically standing pillar stones (idols). The oldest of them dates back to the Bronze Age (2 thousand BC), more than 20.5 m high.
- dolmens – oldest burials- tombs, to which long corridors led. They were covered with earth (hill).
- cromlechs– the most ancient 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 belt of Europe in the 2nd half. 1 thousand BC there were settlements - “fortifications”, fortified with ramparts and log fences.
Primitive art reflected man’s first ideas about the world around him; thanks to it, knowledge and skills were preserved and passed on, and people communicated with each other. In ancient times, the role of art was even more important than it is now: in the absence of science, it contained almost the entire experience of understanding the world. People of the ancient Stone Age did not know ornament. In images of animals and people made of bone, rhythmically repeating strokes or zigzags are sometimes visible, as if similar to an ornament. But if you look closely, you see what it is symbol wool, bird feathers or hair. Ornament appeared when people discovered stable features in the structure of the things they created. Ornamental patterns emphasized the parts that make up things. In vessels they distinguished top and bottom, neck and bottom. The figures of people sculpted from clay approached geometric shapes in their outlines. Ornament is an art related to measurement and number. His motives and compositional structure show that among the ancient farmers who lived in Western and Central Asia, the most favorite numbers were “three” and “four”. Vertically, the world is divided into three zones: the top is the sky, where the luminaries live, the middle world is the earth with everything that inhabits it, the underworld is the place of life of the dead. Ritual actions also corresponded to it. People have learned to transmit information about the world in the form of conventional signs in order to magically cause the desired event. For example, by drawing a goat on a vessel near a plant and streams of rain pouring from above, they hoped to hasten the arrival of spring.
Paleolithic Art
The most ancient sculptural images today are the so-called “Paleolithic Venuses” - primitive female figurines. They are still very far from real resemblance to the human body.Later (from about the 18th to 15th millennia BC), primitive craftsmen began to pay more attention to details: they depicted wool with oblique parallel strokes, learned to use additional colors (various shades of yellow and red paint) to paint spots on the skins of bulls, horses and bison. In the XII millennium BC. cave art reached its peak. The painting of that time conveyed volume, perspective, color and proportions of figures, and movement. At the same time, huge picturesque “canvases” were created that covered the arches of deep caves.
Mesolithic art
Central to the rock art were hunting scenes, in which hunters and animals are linked by energetically unfolding action. Multi-figure compositions and scenes begin to predominate, vividly reproducing various episodes from the life of hunters of that time. Except various shades red paint was used in black and occasionally white, and egg white, blood and, possibly, honey served as a stable binder. To replace the big ones paintings the little ones came. But the detail of the compositions and the number of characters are amazing: sometimes there are hundreds of images of humans and animals.Neolithic art
Painting is becoming more and more schematic and conventional: the images only slightly resemble a person or an animal. In the III-II millennia BC. e. structures made of huge stone blocks appeared - megaliths. Megalithic structures include menhirs - vertically standing stones more than two meters high; dolmens - several stones dug into the ground, covered with a stone slab; Cromlechs are complex buildings in the form of circular fences with a diameter of up to one hundred meters made of huge stone blocks. The most famous of them is the cromlech of Stonehenge (2nd millennium BC).
