Jean Clotte’s Cave Art, out this month from the inimitable Phaidon Press, is the sort of book that convinces you to care about something you never have before. In this case it’s the titular cave art, which, despite the best efforts of a documentary on the Discovery Channel years ago, I was pretty sure was just scribbling. But no! It’s called art for a reason, and, as Clotte’s book meticulously explains, it’s essential to an understanding of both artistic and human history.

Chronicling the evolution of cave art over time, Clottes structures his book around three central periods, each explored by a detailed account of a representative cave: the Chauvet Cave begins a discussion of the period of 35,000 to 22,000 years ago, the Lascaux cave for 22,000 to 17,000 years ago, and the Niaux Cave for 17,000 to 11,000 years ago. It’s a clever approach, and as a result the book’s structure is one of its real strengths. By associating these eras with strong examples that are considered in tremendous detail, Cave Art gives one a sense not only of the broad strokes of a period’s development, but the finer details that make each unique.

Phaidon’s books are always exceptionally beautiful, and this volume is particularly special. Its simple but ingenious die-cut cover uses stenciling to suggest the vast chasm of artistic development that lies between cavemen and, say, Christopher Wool. (The stencil, of course, is the perfect choice here—nothing says mechanized society quite like its quasi-military lettering.) If we take the caves themselves to be a complete works of art—though that’s just one way to think of them—the book offers a series of details, dividing the larger work into smaller elements. In effect, the photographs’ framings recontextualize the work, which, like all good recontextualizations, makes one understand the subject in a new way. In other words, even if you didn’t think that cave art was scribbles, you’ll still find new ways of seeing contained in these pages. I’ll let a few of the pictures speak for themselves:

Human and tobacco plant, painting on rock, yellow pigment, Frozen Leg Cave, Montana, USA.

One of the so-called ‘Chinese horses,’ Lascaux Cave, Montignac, Dordogne, France.

Scene with a man, an archer, bears, and reindeer, engraving on rock, the Alta site, Norway.

Tags: books, jean clotte, literature

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Posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 1:18 pm. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.