Abstract
This paper begins to develop an interpretation of European cave art based on Martin Heidegger’s account of artistic production and ‘dwelling’ so as to indicate a potentially rich area for future research. The paper will also draw on Foucault’s account of heterotopic space and will engage with one of the key researchers on the archaeology of cave art, Randall White. The role of a work of art for Heidegger is to hold open a world. Art enables a decision to be made by a group regarding how things are going to matter for, and to, them as dwellers in their world. Works of art, on Heidegger’s account, put up for decision what will count as the highest values (the gods) for a group while determining what will prove essential for human dwelling in a world. With reference to Foucault, it will be suggested that caves are a good candidate for a heterotopic space. Caves are uncanny, numinous spaces and because of this, I suggest, they enable human beings to produce art as a world-opening event. I suggest that there is something significant about human experience in caves and I attempt to make a connection between heterotopic space, dwelling, and the art of the last Ice Age in Europe in order to point towards a novel field of research: dwelling and prehistoric art.
Highlights
In 1899, the French prehistorian Émile Rivière discovered a stone lamp in a cave at La Mouthe in the Dordogne Département of France
On Heidegger’s account, put up for decision what will count as the highest values for a group, while determining what will prove essential for dwelling in a world
This paper suggests that there is something significant about human experience in caves and attempts to make the connection between heterotopic space, dwelling and art, with reference to the art of the last Ice Age in Europe
Summary
He revealed a tunnel behind the accumulated debris that blocked up the shelter This proved too much of a temptation to four local boys who, after entering the tunnel, discovered an image of a bison. Twenty years had passed since Don Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola’s daughter Maria’s discovery of the parietal art in the cave of Altamira and forty years had passed since the publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species. Despite both of these facts, it was still possible to deny the antiquity of Upper Palaeolithic art. This paper suggests that there is something significant about human experience in caves and attempts to make the connection between heterotopic space, dwelling and art, with reference to (but not necessarily limited to) the art of the last Ice Age in Europe
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