MODERN ART AND PREHISTORY - IMPRESSIONS AND EMOTIONS

MODERN ART AND PREHISTORY
IMPRESSIONS AND EMOTIONS

a survey by Sophie Cattoire

An exhibition organised in 2018 at the Gare d’Austerlitz in Paris by the French National Museum of Natural History. « À la découverte de la paléontologie, du plus petit des microfossiles au plus grand des dinosaures » (Discovering palaeontology. From the tiniest microfossils to the largest dinosaurs). Photo copyright: Sophie Cattoire

When Prehistory burst onto the scene in the middle of the 19ᵗʰ century there was a huge collective shock. No, the world had not been created in seven days; it was obviously too short a time. From that day on, Prehistory began to have a profound and confusing impact on modern man. Modern art has sometimes “translated” this shock, since artists express things they are obsessed by instead of bottling up their emotions. That is the road of research that Rémi Labrousse, modern art historian, embarked on. Last autumn he invited us to share the fruits of his research during a lecture he gave at the Pôle d'Interprétation de la Préhistoire in Les Eyzies: a follow-up to the group exhibition entitled “Préhistoire, une Énigme Moderne” held last summer at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. According to him, modern art, deeply affected by prehistoric art, reveals a sensitivity to this rich past, unlike History, reversing any linear vision of progress and imposing the idea of a loop, and therefore infinity. You can’t put a date to art. It just IS.

Rémi Labrusse, modern art historian, during his lecture entitled « Pourquoi et comment l'art moderne a-t-il inventé la Préhistoire » (Why and how has modern art invented Prehistory), given at the Pôle d’Interprétation de la Préhistoire in Les Eyzies as part of its Art and Science theme. Photo copyright: Vincent Lesbros

How can an art historian help us to realise to what extent the discovery of Prehistory in the 19ᵗʰ century provoked such a huge shock? By hunting down the expression of this profound change in the works of a certain number of major artists. Here is the result of the research carried out by Rémi Labrusse, modern art historian. In Paris last summer his investigations were the subject of a group exhibition at the Centre Pompidou: “Préhistoire, une Énigme Moderne” (Prehistory, a Modern-Day Enigma). The key message behind it: modernity has invented Prehistory as much as the other way round. For lack of written testimony, our vision of the world we live in is modelled by lost and forgotten civilisations, and at the same time “we wouldn’t be what we are today if Prehistory hadn’t transformed us.”

Exhibition presented in 2008: “Un T. rex à Paris” (A T rex in Paris) - Jardin des Plantes, Galerie de Minéralogie et de Géologie - National Museum of Natural History. Photo copyright: Sophie Cattoire

“Actually, the word Prehistory hasn’t been around on Earth for long. This word made its appearance in all the European languages in the middle of the 19th century, firstly thanks to the invention of palaeontology – extraordinary, outstanding, deeply moving from a scientific point of view.” Little by little, the skeletons of extinct creatures rose to the surface, such as the famous and highly popular Tyrannosaurus rex, more than 12 metres long, displayed at the French National Museum of Natural History in 2018.

The écorché sculpted in 1758 by Jean-Pancrace Chastel, originally intended for the students at the École des Beaux-Arts in Aix-en-Provence, came as a late addition in the entrance hall of the Gallery of Comparative Anatomy at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. Photo copyright: Sophie Cattoire

As he discovered all these extirpated species, Man rapidly found himself wondering if he might one day disappear himself. “Right from the start, the enthusiasm enkindled by ‘digging’ for information about our past went hand in hand with a certain form of anxiety, a certain form of melancholy” – in the words of the scholar. “It must, incidentally, be stressed that Georges Cuvier, when he invented palaeontology, at first refused to take Mankind into account. He was uneasy about connecting Mankind to other sorts of species which, as he had discovered, once existed and were no longer.”

Primates, amongst which ourselves, on display in a cabinet in the Gallery of Comparative Anatomy at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. This priceless collection retraces the history of natural science and reconsiders all the debates on living things. Photo copyright: Sophie Cattoire.

And although Man was at first ignored in the comparative and gradual reconstitutions reserved for animal species only, the numerous human fossils which were slowly being dug up forced him to assume his place amongst the extinct members of his lineage, as in this glass case showing the evolution of primates, presented in the Gallery of Comparative Anatomy at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.

Copy of the Great Hall of the Bulls wall painting in Lascaux Cave on the balcony on the second level of the Gallery of Palaeontology in the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. Photo copyright: Sophie Cattoire

Focussing all their efforts on the history of mankind, the prehistorians, who appeared at the same time as their discipline, Prehistory, in the middle of the 19ᵗʰ century, set to work to place the broken skeletons of hominids and the stone tools that went with them in the right chronological order. That was until art came and complicated everything. Prehistoric art changed dramatically their vision of a primitive past, uncivilised, heading straight towards our astonishing industrial progress.

“Material for the History of Mankind”. Portable art objects discovered in the Périgord, in the Vézère Valley, between 1863 and 1864. Plate out of “Reliquiae Aquitanicae”, published in English by Édouard Lartet, Henry Christy and Thomas Ruppert in London, between 1819 and 1911.

“On discovering these mimetic portrayals that convey the presence of something through an image – either an animal or a human figure – we sense that time has stood still. Worse still, that it is back to where it started from, so to speak… as if it were in the form of a loop rather than a line.” And in some of the works of major modern artists this turnaround is perceptible. For them, there is clearly a “before” and an “after”. Rémi Labrusse backs up this theory with a few concrete examples.

Paul Cézanne (sketches) and Antoine-Fortuné Marion (inscriptions) double-page spread from a notebook - with characters, caricatured faces, stratifications and geological terms, towards 1866-1867, pencil on paper, Paris, Musée d’Orsay.

In the 1860s, Paul Cézanne, who had stopped painting historical compositions, explored the countryside around Aix-en-Provence and discovered the Montagne Sainte-Victoire, flanked by the Bibémus quarries. His young friend Antoine-Fortuné Marion, the future prehistorian, acted as his guide. He taught him about geology, palaeontology and anthropology using terms that had only just been invented.

In a notebook, he drew and described the different petrified geological strata they saw before them. In the very same notebook, opposite, Paul Cézanne excitedly drew on the spot his first sketches of the Montagne Sainte-Victoire. It was to remain his favourite subject all his life. This vibration from the idea of Prehistory was to utterly transform his oeuvre.

Paul Cézanne. THE MONTAGNE SAINTE-VICTOIRE, as seen from the Bibémus quarries, 1898-1900, oil on canvas, Baltimore Museum of Art. Photography by Mitro Hood.

Paul Cézanne. La Montagne Sainte-Victoire as seen from the Bibémus quarries, 1898-1900, oil on canvas, Baltimore Museum of Art. Photography by Mitro Hood.

“From that moment on, he never ceased to glorify the Montagne Sainte-Victoire, the great geological fossil. In actual fact, he was only seeking to share with others this temporal vibration that he felt profoundly when he looked at it. It’s just as simple as that!”

Paul Cézanne, IN THE BIBEMUS QUARRY, circa 1895, oil on canvas, 79 x 63,5 cm, private collection.

Paul Cézanne, Dans la carrière de Bibémus, circa 1895, oil on canvas, 79 x 63,5 cm, private collection.

“Minerals and plants were represented in the same mix of colours. He used greens for the soil, red and ochre in the trees and even in the sky. These vibrations were to meld, so to speak, to blend and interact. In short, for him, the Earth came into being in this idea of Prehistory.”

“Apparitions”, gouache on paper by Juan Miro, dated August 29, 1935. (Private collection).

The impact the discovery of Prehistory had on the imagination of major modern artists was evident a little later, in 1935, in this painting entitled “Apparitions”, done by the famous Catalan Joan Miro. The brushstrokes are deliberate, akin to those discovered in cave art – finally acknowledged and several thousand years old. This hand stretched out towards the Palaeolithic artists, this mirror effect, instantly brings us closer to them. Rémi Labrusse points out that: “Emotion is what matters when contemplating a work of art; the time of its creation is no longer of consequence.”

Joseph Beuys’ “How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare”. Performance in Dresden, November 26, 1965. Honey, gold leaf, dead hare. 3 hour performance.

The post-war performance artist Joseph Beuys vowed to rid the Germans of the trauma of World War ll. Using honey, gold leaf and a hare, he delivered a 3 hour performance, entitled “How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare”, in the Schemla Gallery in Dresden on 26 November 1965.

Leo Frobenius “MKOTO SHELTER” Southern Rhodesia, fragments “of men and animals sitting in a strange way” in “L’art africain” Cahiers d’art, Paris 1930. On the right, “CIRCUS ARTISTS” (acrobatics) by Joseoh Beuys, circa 1954, pencil and gold paint. (coll. Helga and Walter Laub).

He invented a shamanic ritual, closely related to the culture of Prehistory which he identified with in the 1950s, especially in his drawings which were directly inspired by tracings done by Leo Frobenius, an adventurer and prehistorian at the beginning of the 20ᵗʰ century.

Alexandre Stolypine, alias Psychoze Nolimit, painting inspired by Lascaux, 2016. Paris, catacombs.

In 2016, Alexandre Stolypine, alias Psychoze Nolimit, did a large street art painting in the Catacombs of Paris, inspired by the wall paintings at Lascaux in Montignac (Dordogne, France). According to Rémi Labrusse: “When you do a painting in the catacombs, you are also performing a sort of ritual using shapes and forms that are potentially of a sacred character, in this case, paying tribute to Lascaux Cave.”

Jérôme Mesnager adds his famous white man to a replica of The Hall of the Bulls wall painting at Lascaux.

Rémi Labrusse ends by saying: «An enigma is something that makes you meditate. It is not a religious activity; it is of a more pragmatic nature. The future is as unknowable as the past, and so everything in it is possible. Prehistory has the power to open windows onto possible futures; that is something that clearly characterises the relationship artists have with the idea of Prehistory and explains our eagerness to remain attached to this prehistoric world. I think that our taste, our passion for the prehistoric world lies less in the wish to elucidate, to solve the enigma, than in the desire to explore all the exciting possibilities that it has hidden away.”

MODERN ART AND PREHISTORY IMPRESSIONS AND EMOTIONS

MODERN ART AND PREHISTORY
IMPRESSIONS AND EMOTIONS