Art of the era of primitive society. Its oldest monuments known to science have been found in Western Europe (mainly in France and Spain).

They date from the same Late Paleolithic period as the appearance of modern humans (around 33 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 of the community, reflecting a person’s gradual knowledge of reality, the addition of his first ideas about the world around him.

The image was an indispensable means of fixing, modeling and transferring from generation to generation a syncretic indivisible complex of spiritual culture, which included 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 associated with primitive mythological views, it was based on animism (endowing natural phenomena with human qualities) and totemism, closely related to it (the cult of the animal - the progenitor of the genus).

A characteristic feature of Paleolithic art, which embodied its ideas in living, personified images, is bright, elemental realism.

The striking vitality of many Paleolithic images is due to the peculiarities of the labor practice and worldview of the Paleolithic man, because the life of a primitive hunter directly depended on the knowledge of animals and their habits.

The first works of primitive visual art appeared in the mature stage of the Aurignacian era (approximately 33-18th millennium BC). Since that time, in large spaces from Siberia to Western Europe, female figurines made of stone and bone with hypertrophied body shapes and schematized heads - the so-called Venus, apparently associated with the cult of the mother ancestress - have become widespread. Similar "Venuses" were found in Löspug (France), Savignano (Italy), Willendorf (Austria), Dolni-Vestonice (Czech Republic), p. Kostenki near Voronezh.

At the same time, generalized expressive images of animals appear (statues made of stone, bone and clay: engraved figures or heads on bone, stone, horn), recreating the characteristic features of a mammoth, elephant, horse, deer, etc.

The first wall cave images (relief, engraved and pictorial) belong to the Aurignacian era, most often reproducing the head or front part of the body of the beast with roughly generalized lines.

Rock paintings, including cave paintings of the Paleolithic era, flourish in the Solutrean and Magdalenian times (20-11th millennium BC) - mainly in the south of France (paintings in the caves of Montignac, Niot, Lasko, "Three Brothers "etc.) and the North-West of Spain (the paintings of the Altamira cave near Santander, etc.), but are also found in Italy (in the district of Rome, in the Otranto region and in Palermo), as well as in the Urals (the so-called Kapova cave on the river Belaya in Bashkiria).

The main motifs of the images, often covering vast planes, are individual figures of large animals full of life and movement that were the objects of hunting (bisons, mammoths, horses, deer, predatory animals).

Less common are schematic representations of people and creatures that combine the signs of a person and an animal, conventional signs, partially deciphered as reproductions of dwellings or hunting traps.

The technique of cave painting has improved over time. Precise, light contours of the line begin to play a subordinate role, boldly and accurately 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 imposition of one paint on another sometimes create the impression of volume, a feeling of the texture of the skin of an animal.

For all its vital expressiveness and realistic generalization, Paleolithic art remains intuitive and spontaneous. It consists of separate concrete images, there is no background in it, there is no composition in the modern sense of the word.

Architecture develops in the Late Paleolithic.

Paleolithic dwellings, apparently, were low, dome-shaped structures sunk into the ground by about a third (rounded or rectangular in plan), sometimes with long tunnel-like entrances.

The bones of large animals were sometimes used as building material.

Numerous Paleolithic sites have been found in many parts of Europe and Asia, including in the territory of the former USSR (in the Ukraine and Belarus, in the Caucasus and the Don, in Siberia, etc.).

The culture of the Mesolithic (the transitional period from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic; from about 10 - 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 camps in the open, 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 activity.

Mesolithic rock carvings (discovered in Eastern Spain) differ sharply from Paleolithic ones.

An important place in them is occupied by the image of a person in action, multi-figure compositions: scenes of battles, hunting, etc.

There are several stylistic groups of images. 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 readable scenes. Then the images are stylized, becoming more and more conditional, and the figures of animals - to a lesser extent than human ones.

In the future, the tendency to generalization intensifies. The Mesolithic artist frees the human figure from details that interfere with the transfer of movement, action, complex angles, crowd scenes.

By the end of the Mesolithic period, conditional figurative images gradually give way to various signs and symbols.

In rock art (in Granada, in the Sierra Morena region in Spain), various conditional forms are found, similar in character to the signs found on pebbles.

Geometrization, schematism, which first appeared in the southern regions of Western Europe, spread to the north, up 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 the 8th-5th millennium BC) and the Bronze Age (about the 3rd-2nd millennium - the beginning of the 1st millennium BC), images appeared that conveyed more complex and abstract concepts, there has been a desire to create pictures of real life.

Many types of decorative and applied arts were formed (ceramics, metal processing, 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 vivid realistic immediacy of Paleolithic art and have acquired conditional, stylized forms.

In the Neolithic era, the uneven social and cultural development of various regions of Asia, Africa, and Europe intensified.

The most mature forms of culture associated with the intensive development of agriculture and cattle breeding have developed in Asia Minor and Western Asia, as well as in northeast Africa.

Subsequently, the first class societies and slave-owning states arose here. Here already in the 3rd millennium BC. e. formed the main types of art - architecture, sculpture, painting.

The first monuments of art associated with agricultural cults appeared, apparently, in the 6-5th 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 forms with elegant, laconic paintings made in red-brown colors.

The paintings include both geometric motifs, which probably have a symbolic meaning (stripes, wavy lines, triangles, rhombuses, 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 nature, and then with more schematic, generalized and elongated forms, as well as with a weighted lower body, were sometimes covered with geometric painting in the form of spirals, dots and strokes, probably imitating clothes.

The influence of the ancient artistic culture of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia in the 5th-3rd millennium BC. e. widely spread and originally refracted in the art of the surrounding areas, which also has local features (in North Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean, Southeast 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) up to the 1st millennium BC. e. modified ancient forms of art have been preserved.

A large number of vitally convincing sculptural images have been found here (mainly the heads of elks, bears, waterfowl), most often forming part of cult wooden utensils and stone weapons (finds from the Oleneostrovsky burial ground in Karelia, 4th-3rd millennium BC, peat bogs Shigir and Gorbunovo in the Urals, 3-2 thousand BC; single finds in Finland, Sweden, etc.).

Small zoomorphic sculpture made of wood, flint, slate, and horn is also widespread. Here, picturesque, engraved or embossed with dot technique rock carvings 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. BC, and on the eastern slopes of the Urals, etc.).

Usually associated with tribal sanctuaries, on the territory of the former USSR they most often represent a whole gallery of simplified and schematic, naive and expressive images - images of animals, people, mythical creatures, solar and other undeciphered symbols, scenes of fishing and hunting. Rich complexes of rock carvings dating back to the Late Neolithic, Mesolithic and Bronze Ages have also been found in the Caucasus (in the Kobustan region), in Central Asia (in the Zaraut-Sai region in Uzbekistan), and also in West Africa (paintings of Tassilia Ajer in the Algerian Sahara). ). They make up sometimes complex, sometimes polychrome, vitally expressive multi-figured compositions, including figures of animals and people, scenes of everyday life, labor and hunting.

In medieval Europe, the transition to settled life and agriculture was accompanied by the rapid development of ceramics production, which underwent a complex evolution during the Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age and gave rise to many both local and pan-European cultural centers.

Simple, mostly rounded or straight-walled vessels were made by hand. In the south-east of Europe (the territory of Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova) and in Central Asia, multi-colored painted ceramics with a spiral pattern, an ornament of triangles or ribbons filled with dot inlay prevailed. The richness and variety of red-brown and black patterns in the form of spirals and curls, completely covering the vessels with white-yellow coating, distinguishes the Trypillia-Cucuteni culture, common in Romania, Western Ukraine and Moldova.

In the more northern regions (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 ornaments, folding from crosses, squares, stripes and other geometric motifs.

Found in the southeast and in the center of Europe, clay sculpture of this time (mainly schematically generalized female figurines, sometimes covered with a geometric painted or dotted through pattern) bears echoes of Mediterranean influences.

The architecture of the Neolithic and Early Bronze Ages is represented by communal settlements (multi-room houses of pillar construction or with a frame base of wicker rods coated with clay in Central and Eastern Europe; mud houses in Central Asia, etc.).

Numerous megalithic buildings made of large monolithic stone blocks testify to the progress of construction technology. They are found almost everywhere.

There are 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.

In the Bronze Age, labor productivity increased, property differentiation and decomposition of the primitive community began. During this period, the 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, Saks, Sarmatians, Scythians, ancient Slavs, ancient Turks, ancient Finno-Ugric peoples, Thracians, Etruscans).

For this time in medieval Europe, modest dishes with a simple stamped geometric pattern, associated with the traditions of the Neolithic, bronze brooches, pendants, swords with geometrically ornamented hilts are typical.

The art of metal processing reached a high level here at the turn of the Bronze and Iron Ages.

Everywhere, the original cult and magical meaning of the images was supplanted by the decorative and ornamental principle.

From the middle of the 1st millennium BC. e. the art of the "barbarian" peoples of Europe and Central Asia perceived the growing influence of ancient civilization and later, with the process of the formation of feudalism, was included in the pan-European stream of development of medieval artistic culture.

However, rich and varied art, organically linked with the traditions of primitive art, continued to exist until the 19th-20th centuries. among peoples who have largely preserved primitive communal relations (among the natives of Australia, Oceania and South America, the Eskimos of Canada and North-Eastern Siberia, the peoples of Africa).

1879 - the discovery of the painting of the Spanish cave of Altamira by Marcelino Sautuollo.

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.

Eneolithic (Copper Stone Age) -4-3 thousand BC

II. The era of Copper and Bronze - 2 thousand BC.

III. Age of iron - 1 thousand BC

On the edge Middle and Upper Paleolithic Homo Sapuens appeared, a variety of stone tools (points, sewn clothes), the exclusion of close relatives from family relations, the emergence of regular marriage, the formation of a family, tribal relations.

Upper Paleolithic- the emergence of speech, religion, art. Main occupations: hunting, gathering, hoe farming. Tools of labor: spears, darts, needles. The emergence of artificial housing. Sedentary lifestyle. Forms of primitive religion: totemism- belief in the supernatural family ties of people with any kind of animals, fish, insects; animism(spirit, soul) - belief in the existence of supernatural forces in the form of spirits; fetishism- the worship of inanimate objects, which were prescribed supernatural power. Magic- actions based on a person's belief in their ability to influence supernatural forces.

Neolithic upheaval: the emergence of agriculture and animal husbandry (cattle breeding), permanent settlements, the emergence of unions of tribes and nationalities.

General characteristics of the art of the primitive era:

- Syncretism(fusion, indivisibility), i.e. art was closely intertwined with all existing forms of culture and art: religion, mythology, etc. Thus, art exists in an indissoluble unity, forming the so-called. primitive syncretic cultural complex.

- conservatism- all artistic images are variations of a traditional theme that has been established for centuries.

- The role of the animal- the zoomorphic character of fine art, even in the anthropomorphic sculpture of Venus. The predominance of the image of the animal, because. it provided a person with food, clothing, all the interests of a person were connected with it.

In primitive art, the utilitarian preceded the aesthetic: to kill an animal, it was necessary to know its most vulnerable places, behavior, etc. In the beginning, a person learned to grasp and imprint the outlines and plastic forms of objects, and then to distinguish and reproduce colors.

The evolution of painting:

- human handprints

- linear pattern(macaroni) - wavy lines made by stroking along the contour or splashing paint that fills open areas.

A contour drawing in which the figures of animals, animal heads were guessed. The images are often not finished, the proportions are not respected, only the most important features of the body, head, and external signs of the subject were transmitted. The image was applied to the stone by carving or drawn on wet clay.

The most famous paintings of the Late Paleolithic were found at the end of the 19th century. in caves: France - Font de Gome, 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. In contour planar painting, a transition to detail-hatching was gradually outlined.

- hatching- oblique strokes depicting animal hair.

In the future, the figures were completely painted over with paint, 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 1.5 m in size using ledges and uneven walls of the cave. The 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 beast's readiness to jump, the eyes looking askance - this is no longer an elementary drawing, but the attitude towards the beast not only as prey - a source of food, but also admiration for him, respect as the patron of the family. However, primitive realism remains intuitively spontaneous, because consists of separate concrete images. It has 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 appearance of agriculture and cattle breeding, the invention of arrows and bows, earthenware, metal objects appear, changes occur in the art, in which

- image schematization and their narrative: attempts to convey the action, event (scenes of hunting, military operations). Iso is already one-color (black or white). Rock paintings in Spain, South Africa, Karelia (Russia) depict a person in action (battle scenes, multi-figured compositions). Then the images become more conventional, especially human figures.

By the end of the Mesolithic, by the Neolithic, conditional figurative images gradually give way to various signs and symbols, random interweaving of lines, dots, schematic signs - such images were called petroglyphs, those. stone inscriptions (on the rocks of Karelia, Uzbekistan, the shores of the White Sea, Lake Onega). Hunting scenes, etc. are narrated in a conditional form.

primitive sculpture:

Animal figurines are totems found in hunter settlements and carved from bone, horn or stone. Sculptures of women (5-10 cm) are the so-called. Venus, associated with the cult of the mother-grandmother, having magical significance, 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 humans as if they were animals.

Dwellings: grottoes, caves, then campsites, consisting of several dwellings: a recess 1/3 into the ground, without windows, doors, made of branches, skins, reeds, with a hole at the top. Dishes made of birch bark, coconut, pumpkin, clay, leather. Products were stored in wicker baskets coated with clay. So in the Mesolithic era, an ornament appears (lat. "decoration") as traces of weaving, smeared with clay. Subsequently, the ornament was artificially applied in order to give objects magical effects (these are parallel stripes, double spirals, schematized images of people and animals).

Architecture:

By the end of the existence of the primitive period, types of architectural structures appear, called cyclopean, in which the walls of the fortresses were made up of huge roughly 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 boulders:

- menhirs- vertically standing stones-pillars (idols). The oldest of them belongs to the Bronze Age (2 thousand BC), more than 20.5 m high.

- dolmens- the oldest burials - tombs, to which long corridors led. They were covered with earth (hill).

- cromlechs- the oldest 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 zone of Europe in the 2nd half. 1 thousand BC settlements were located - "fortifications", fortified with ramparts and log fences.

"The Origin of Primitive Art: Religious Beliefs and Their Causes"

"General characteristics of primitive art"

The oldest surviving works of art were created in the primitive era, about sixty thousand years ago. Primitive (or, otherwise, primitive) art geographically covers all continents except Antarctica, and in time - the entire era of human existence, preserved by some peoples living in remote corners of the planet to this day. The conversion of primitive people to a new type of activity for them - art - is one of the greatest events in the history of mankind. Primitive art reflected the first ideas of man about the surrounding world, thanks to it knowledge and skills were preserved and transferred, people communicated with each other. In the spiritual culture of the primitive world, art began to play the same universal role that a pointed stone played in labor activity.

Until recently, scholars held two opposing views on the history of primitive art. Some experts considered cave naturalistic painting and sculpture to be the oldest, while others considered schematic signs and geometric figures. Now most researchers are of the opinion that both forms appeared at about the same time. For example, among the most ancient images on the walls of caves of the Paleolithic era are imprints of a human hand, and random interweaving of wavy lines, pressed into wet clay with the fingers of the same hand.

Paleolithic Art

The Stone Age is the oldest period in the history of mankind (began over 2 million years ago, lasted until the 6th millennium BC), when tools and weapons were made of stone (hence the name of the era - the Stone Age); divided into Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic.

The first works of primitive art were created about 30 thousand years ago, at the end of the Paleolithic era, or the ancient Stone Age.

The most ancient sculptural images today are the so-called "Paleolithic Venuses" - primitive female figures. They are still very far from a real resemblance to the human body. All of them have some common features: enlarged hips, abdomen and chest, lack of feet. Primitive sculptors were not even interested in facial features. Their task was not to reproduce a specific nature, but to create a certain generalized image of a woman-mother, a symbol of fertility and the keeper of the hearth. Male images in the Paleolithic era are very rare. In addition to women, animals were depicted: horses, goats, reindeer, etc. At that time, people did not yet know metal, and almost all Paleolithic sculpture was made of stone or bone.

In the history of cave painting of the Paleolithic era, experts distinguish several periods. In ancient times (from about the 30th millennium BC), primitive artists filled the surface inside the outline of the drawing with black or red paint.

Stone Age people gave an artistic appearance to everyday items - stone tools and clay vessels, although there was no practical need for this. Why did they do this? One can only speculate about this. One of the reasons for the emergence of art is considered to be the human need for beauty and the joy of creativity, the other is the beliefs of that time. Beautiful monuments of the Stone Age are associated with beliefs - painted with paints, as well as images engraved on stone, which covered the walls and ceilings of underground caves - cave paintings. People of that time believed in magic: they believed that with the help of paintings and other images, one could influence nature. It was believed, for example, that it was necessary to hit a drawn animal with an arrow or spear in order to ensure the success of a real hunt.

Later (from about the 18th to the 15th millennium BC), primitive masters began to pay more attention to detail: 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. The contour line also changed: it became either brighter or darker, marking the light and shadow parts of the figure, skin folds and thick hair (for example, horse manes, massive buffalo manes), thus conveying volume. In some cases, the contours or the most expressive details were emphasized by ancient artists with a carved line.

In the XII millennium BC. e. cave art reached its peak. The painting of that time conveyed volume, perspective, bloom proportions of figures, movement. At the same time, huge picturesque "canvases" were created that covered the vaults of deep caves.

The exact time of the creation of cave paintings has not yet been established. The most beautiful of them were created, according to scientists, about 20 - 10 thousand years ago. At that time, a thick layer of ice covered most of Europe; only the southern part of the mainland remained habitable. The glacier slowly receded, and behind it the primitive hunters moved north. It can be assumed that in the most difficult conditions of that time, all human strength went to the fight against hunger, cold and predatory animals. Nevertheless, he created magnificent paintings. Dozens of large animals are depicted on the walls of the caves, which they already knew how to hunt; among them there were also those that would be tamed by man - bulls, horses, reindeer and others. Cave paintings have preserved the appearance of such animals that later completely died out: mammoths and cave bears. Primitive artists knew very well the animals on which the very existence of people depended. With a light and flexible line, they conveyed the poses and movements of the beast. Colorful chords - black, red, white, yellow - make a charming impression. Mineral dyes mixed with water, animal fat and plant sap made the color of the cave paintings especially bright. To create such great and perfect works then, as now, one had to learn. It is possible that the pebbles with images of animals scratched on them found in the caves were student works of the "art schools" of the Stone Age.

In 1868, in Spain, in the province of Santander, the Altamira Cave was discovered, the entrance to which had previously been covered with a landslide. Almost ten years later, the Spanish archaeologist Marcelino Sautuola, who was excavating in this cave, discovered primitive images on its walls and ceiling. Altamira was the first of many dozens of similar caves found later in France and Spain: La Moute, La Madeleine, Trois Frere, Font de Gome, and others. Now, thanks to targeted searches, about a hundred caves with images of primitive time are known in France alone.

An outstanding discovery was made quite by accident in September 1940. It so happened that it was the children, and quite by accident, who found the most interesting cave paintings in Europe. The Lascaux cave in France, which has become even more famous than Altamira, was discovered by four boys who, while playing, climbed into a hole that opened under the roots of a tree that had fallen after a storm. The painting of the Lasko Cave - images of bulls, wild horses, reindeer, bison, rams, bears and other animals - is the most perfect work of art of those that were created by man in the Paleolithic era. The most spectacular are the images of horses, for example, small dark undersized steppe horses resembling ponies. Also of interest is the clear three-dimensional figure of a cow located above them, preparing to jump over a fence or a pit-trap. This cave has now been turned into a well-equipped museum.

In the cave of Montespan in France, archaeologists have found a statue of a clay bear with traces of spear blows. Probably, primitive people associated animals with their images: they believed that by “killing” them, they would ensure success in the upcoming hunt. In such finds, there is a connection between the most ancient religious beliefs and artistic activity.

Similar monuments are also known outside of Europe - in Asia, in North Africa.

The huge number of these murals and their high artistry are striking. At first, many experts doubted the authenticity of cave paintings: it seemed that primitive people could not be so skillful in painting, and the amazing preservation of the paintings suggested a fake.

In the future, cave images lost their liveliness, volume; stylization (generalization and schematization of objects) intensified. In the last period, realistic images are completely absent. Paleolithic painting returned to where it started: on the walls of the caves appeared chaotic weaves of lines, rows of dots, vague schematic signs.

Along with cave paintings and drawings, various sculptures were made from bone and stone at that time. They were made with primitive tools, and this work required exceptional patience. The creation of statues, no doubt, was also associated with primitive beliefs.

Mesolithic Art

In the era of the Mesolithic, or the Middle Stone Age (XII-VIII millennium BC), the climatic conditions on the planet changed. Some of the hunted animals have disappeared; they were replaced by others. Fisheries began to develop. People created new types of tools, weapons (bows and arrows), tamed the dog. All these changes, of course, had an impact on the consciousness of primitive man, which was reflected in art. This is evidenced, for example, by rock paintings in the coastal mountainous regions of Eastern Spain, between the cities of Barcelona and Valencia. Previously, the focus of the ancient artist was the animals he hunted, now - the figures of people depicted in rapid movement. If the cave Paleolithic drawings represented separate, unrelated figures, then in Mesolithic rock art, multi-figured compositions and scenes begin to prevail, which vividly reproduce various periods in the life of hunters of that time. In addition to various shades of red paint, black and occasionally white were used, and egg white, blood, and possibly honey served as a stable binder.

Central to the rock art were hunting scenes, in which hunters and animals are linked in a vigorously unfolding action. Hunters follow the trail or chase the prey, sending a hail of arrows at it on the run, inflicting the last fatal blow, or fleeing from an angry wounded animal. At the same time, images of dramatic episodes of military clashes between tribes appeared. In some cases, apparently, we are even talking about execution: in the foreground is the figure of a lying man pierced by arrows, in the second is a close row of archers who raised their bows. Images of women are rare: they are usually static and lifeless. Large paintings were replaced by small ones. But the detail of the compositions and the number of characters are striking: sometimes there are hundreds of images of humans and animals. Human figures are very conditional, they are rather symbols that serve to depict mass scenes. The primitive artist freed the figures from everything, from his point of view, of secondary importance, which would interfere with the transfer and perception of complex poses, action, the very essence of what is happening. Man for him is, first of all, an embodied movement.

Neolithic art

The melting of glaciers in the Neolithic, or New Stone Age (5000-3000 BC), set in motion peoples who began to populate new spaces. Intensified intertribal struggle for the possession of the most favorable hunting grounds, for the seizure of new lands. In the Neolithic era, man was threatened by the worst of dangers - another person. New settlements arose on islands in the bends of rivers, on small hills, that is, in places protected from a surprise attack.

Rock art in the Neolithic era becomes more and more schematic and conditional: images only slightly resemble a person or animal. This phenomenon is typical for different regions of the globe. These are, for example, rock paintings of deer, bears, whales and seals found in Norway, reaching eight meters in length. In addition to schematism, they are distinguished by careless execution. Along with stylized drawings of people and animals, there are various geometric shapes (circles, rectangles, rhombuses and spirals, etc.), images of weapons (axes and daggers) and vehicles (boats and ships). Reproduction of wildlife fades into the background.

Rock art has existed in all parts of the world, but nowhere has it been as widespread as in Africa. Carved, embossed and painted images have been found in vast areas - from Mauritania to Ethiopia and from Gibraltar to the Cape of Good Hope. Unlike European art, African rock art is not exclusively prehistoric. Its development can be traced approximately from the VIII-VI millennium BC. e. up to our days. The first rock carvings were discovered in 1847-1850. in North Africa and the Sahara Desert (Tassilin-Ajer, Tibesti, Fezzana, etc.)

The Stone Age was followed by the Bronze Age (it got its name from the then widespread alloy of metals - bronze). The Bronze Age began in Western Europe relatively late, about four thousand years ago. Bronze was much easier to work than stone and could be molded and polished. Therefore, in the Bronze Age, all kinds of household items were made, richly decorated with ornaments and of high artistic value. Ornamental decorations consisted mostly of circles, spirals, wavy lines and similar motifs. Particular attention was paid to jewelry - they were large in size and immediately caught the eye.

In III-II millennia BC. e. original, huge structures made of stone blocks appeared, owing their appearance also to primitive beliefs - megaliths (from the Greek "megas" - "big" and "lithos" - "stone"). Megalithic structures include menhirs - vertically standing stones more than two meters high. On the Brittany Peninsula in France, the so-called fields stretched for miles. menhirs. In the language of the Celts, the later inhabitants of the peninsula, the name of these stone pillars several meters high means "long stone". Other structures have also been preserved - dolmens - several stones dug into the ground, covered with a stone slab, which originally served for burials. The megaliths also include cromlechs - complex structures in the form of circular fences with a diameter of up to one hundred meters from huge boulders. Megaliths were widespread: they were found in Western Europe, North Africa, the Caucasus and other regions of the globe. In France alone, about four thousand have been found.

Numerous menhirs and dolmens were located in places that were considered sacred. Especially famous are the ruins of such a sanctuary - a cromlech in England near the city of Salisbury - the so-called. Stonehenge (II millennium BC). Stonehenge is built from one hundred and twenty boulders weighing up to seven tons each, and thirty meters in diameter. It is curious that the Preselli Mountains in South Wales, from where the building material for this structure was supposed to be delivered, are located two hundred and eighty kilometers from Stonehenge. However, modern geologists believe that the boulders came to the vicinity of Stonehenge with glaciers from different places. It is assumed that they worshiped the sun.

Primitive art played an important role in the history and culture of ancient mankind. Having learned to create images (sculptural, graphic, pictorial), a person has acquired some power over time. The imagination of a person was embodied in a new form of being - artistic, the development of which can be traced in the history of art.

Stone Age (from 4 million ~ 4 thousand years BC):
Paleolithic (Old Stone Age)
Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) 10-6 thousand years (8-4 thousand years) BC e.
Neolithic (New Stone Age) 7-4 thousand BC. e.
Eneolithic 4-3 thousand BC
Early Stone Age (protolith):
Abbeville (1.5 million - 300 thousand years ago).
Acheul (1.6 million - 150 thousand years ago).
Mousterian 200-35 thousand years ago
Late Stone Age (Neolithic):
Aurignac-30-24 thousand years BC e.
Solutra-24-19 thousand years BC e.
Madeleine-20-7 thousand years BC e.
Primitive art - the art of the era of primitive society. In the Paleolithic - the ancient Stone Age, it was represented by primitive music, dances, songs and rituals, as well as geoglyphs, dendrographs. Chronology. The appearance of the beginnings of art is attributed to the Mousterian era (150-120 thousand - 35-30 thousand years ago). By the Late Paleolithic ( 30-35 thousand years ago - 10 thousand years ago) include the creation of Paleolithic Venuses, the flourishing of rock paintings, the development of the art of bone carving. In the rock carvings of the Mesolithic ( from about 10-8th millennium BC. uh.) an important place is occupied by multi-figure compositions depicting a person in action. During the Neolithic period ( from about the 8th-5th millennium BC. e.), Eneolithic and Bronze Age ( approximately 3rd-2nd millennium - the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. e.) megaliths and piled buildings appeared. Paleolithic Venus is a generalizing concept for many prehistoric figurines of women with common features dating back to the Upper Paleolithic. Most of the Western European finds belong to the Gravettian culture, but there are also earlier ones related to the Aurignacian culture, including the "Venus of Hole Fels" (dated at least 35 thousand years ago); and later, already belonging to the Madeleine culture. These figurines are carved from bones, tusks and soft rocks. There are also figurines sculpted from clay and subjected to firing, which is one of the oldest examples of ceramics known to science. Most figurines have common artistic characteristics. The most common are diamond-shaped figures, narrowed at the top and bottom and wide in the middle. Some of them noticeably emphasize certain anatomical features of the human body. Other parts of the body, on the other hand, are often neglected or absent, especially the arms and legs. The heads are also usually relatively small and lack detail. Rock paintings were made in Paleolithic, in the caves. As a rule, cave paintings and charcoal drawings were made taking into account the volume, perspective, color of the rocky surface and the proportions of the figures, taking into account the transmission of the movements of the depicted animals. The rock paintings also depicted scenes of duels between animals and humans. Archaeologists have not found landscape paintings in the ancient Stone Age. Why? Perhaps this once again proves the primacy of the religious and secondary aesthetic functions of culture. Animals were feared and worshiped, trees and plants were only admired.
Both zoological and anthropomorphic images suggested their ritual use. In other words, they performed a cult function. Thus, religion (the veneration of those depicted by primitive people) and art (the aesthetic form of what was depicted) arose almost simultaneously. Although, for some reasons, it can be assumed that the first form of reflection of reality originated earlier than the second.
Since the images of animals had a magical purpose, the process of their creation was a kind of ritual, therefore, such drawings are mostly hidden deep in the depths of the cave, in underground passages several hundred meters long, and the height of the vault often does not exceed half a meter. In such places, the Cro-Magnon artist had to work lying on his back in the light of bowls with burning animal fat. However, more often rock paintings are located in accessible places, at a height of 1.5-2 meters. They are found both on the ceilings of caves and on vertical walls.
The first finds were made in the 19th century in the caves of the Pyrenees. There are more than 7 thousand karst caves in this area. Hundreds of them contain rock carvings created with paint or carved with stone. Some caves are unique underground galleries (the Altamira Cave in Spain is called the "Sistine Chapel" of primitive art), the artistic merit of which attracts many scientists and tourists today. Rock paintings of the ancient Stone Age are called wall paintings or cave paintings.

The Art Gallery of Altamira stretches over 280 meters in length and consists of many spacious rooms. The stone tools and antlers found there, as well as figurative images on bone fragments, were created in the period from 13,000 to 10,000 years. BC e. According to archaeologists, the arch of the cave collapsed at the beginning of the new stone age. In the most unique part of the cave - the "Hall of Animals" - images of bison, bulls, deer, wild horses and wild boars were found. Some reach a height of 2.2 meters, to see them in more detail, you have to lie down on the floor. Most of the figures are drawn in brown. Artists skillfully used natural relief ledges on the rocky surface, which enhanced the plastic effect of the images. Along with the figures of animals drawn and engraved in the rock, there are also drawings here that vaguely resemble the human body in shape.
In 1895, drawings of a primitive man were found in the cave of La Moute in France. In 1901, here, in the Le Combatelle cave in the Weser Valley, about 300 images of a mammoth, bison, deer, horse, and bear were discovered. Not far from Le Combatelle, in the Font de Gome cave, archaeologists discovered a whole "art gallery" - 40 wild horses, 23 mammoths, 17 deer.
When creating rock art, primitive man used natural dyes and metal oxides, which he either used in pure form or mixed with water or animal fat. He applied these paints to the stone with his hand or with brushes made of tubular bones with tufts of hairs of wild animals at the end, and sometimes he blown colored powder through the tubular bone onto the damp wall of the cave. Paint not only outlined the contour, but painted over the entire image. To make rock carvings using the deep cut method, the artist had to use coarse cutting tools. Massive stone chisels were found at the site of Le Roque de Ser. The drawings of the Middle and Late Paleolithic are characterized by a more subtle elaboration of the contour, which is conveyed by several shallow lines. Painted drawings, engravings on bones, tusks, horns or stone tiles were made using the same technique.
In the Camonica Valley in the Alps, covering 81 kilometers, a collection of prehistoric rock art has been preserved, the most representative and most important of all that have so far been discovered in Europe. The first "engravings" appeared here, according to experts, 8000 years ago. Artists carved them with sharp and hard stones.
Thus, primitive art is presented in the following main forms: graphics (drawings and silhouettes); painting (images in color, made with mineral paints); sculptures (figures carved from stone or molded from clay); decorative arts (stone and bone carving); reliefs and bas-reliefs.

2. Art of the Paleolithic. General characteristics. Geography. Chronology. main monuments.
Paleolithic:
Lower Paleolithic (about 2.6 million years ago - 100 thousand years ago)
Middle Paleolithic (300 - 30 thousand years ago)
Upper Paleolithic (35-10 thousand years BC)
The Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) is the earliest and longest period in human history. Moreover, art originated only in the late (upper) Paleolithic, that is, about 40 thousand years BC, when, according to archaeologists, all types of fine arts appeared.
At its core, Paleolithic art is naively realistic. He is characterized by a powerful elemental sense of life, masculinity and simplicity. At the same time, while showing vigilance in relation to individual objects, primitive man could not yet grasp the whole picture of the world, generalize and connect phenomena between himself and nature. He did not master the composition, did not give a detailed plot, did not feel the space.
Monuments of the Paleolithic era have been found in large numbers in Europe, South Asia and North Africa. An outstanding place in this series is occupied by paintings on the walls and ceilings of caves, in the depths of underground galleries and grottoes. Early drawings are primitive: contour images of animal heads on limestone slabs (La Ferracy caves, Peche-Merle in France); random weaves of wavy lines, pressed into the damp clay with fingers - the so-called "pasta" or "meanders"; prints of human hands outlined in paint - the so-called "positive" or "negative" handprints. Monumental images were applied with a flint chisel on stone or paint on a layer of wet clay on the walls of caves. Earth colors, yellow and brown ocher, red-yellow iron ore, black manganese, coal and white lime were used in painting.
The art of the Paleolithic era reached its peak in the Madeleine period (25-12 thousand BC). In rock paintings, the image of the beast acquires specific features, animals are depicted in motion. In painting, a transition is made from the simplest contour drawing, evenly filled with paint, to multi-color painting, volumetric forms are modeled by changing the strength of tones. The most characteristic examples of the Madeleine period are associated with cave paintings - single images almost life-size, but not connected by action into a single composition: Altamira (Spain), Lascaux, Nyo (Nio), Font-de-Gaume (France), Kapova Cave (Russia) ) and etc.
At the end of the XIX century. cave painting was still unknown. In 1877 in Spain, in the province of Santander, the archaeologist Marcelino de Savtuola discovered images on the walls and ceiling of the Altamira cave. The discovery was published, but the material turned out to be so unexpected and sensational that the archaeological community considered it a fake. Only in 1897 did the French archaeologist Emile Riviere manage to prove the authenticity of the images he discovered on the walls of the cave of La Moute (France).
In September 1940 one of the most famous primitive caves, Lascaux (Lascaux) in France, was discovered quite by accident. Modern researchers call it the "prehistoric Sistine Chapel". Lascaux painting is one of the most perfect works of art of the Paleolithic era. Its oldest images date back to approximately 18 thousand BC. The cave complex consists of several "halls". The most perfect part in terms of the quality of painting and excellent preservation is considered to be the “Great Hall” or “Hall of the Bulls”.
The Shulgan-Tash cave, better known as Kapova, is located in the Southern Urals in the Belaya River valley on the territory of the reserve (Republic of Bashkortostan). Images of animals on the walls of the Kapova Cave were discovered in 1959. They were contour and silhouette drawings made with red ocher based on animal glue. At present, speleologists have discovered 14 drawings of animals. Among them are mammoths, horses, rhino and bison. Most of the images are concentrated in the "Hall of Drawings", in addition, images were later found on the south wall in the "Hall of Chaos". In addition to the identified images of animals, geometric signs, anthropomorphic images and fuzzy contours shaded with ocher are marked on the walls of the cave.
In the era of the Upper Paleolithic, carving on stone, bone, wood, as well as round plastic art, developed. The oldest figurines of animals - bears, lions, horses, mammoths, snakes, birds - are distinguished by the exact reproduction of the main volumes, the texture of wool, etc. Perhaps these figurines were created as a receptacle for souls, which is in good agreement with the data of ethnography, they served as amulets-amulets that protected people from evil spirits.
The image of a woman - one of the main subjects in the art of the Late Paleolithic - was brought to life by the specifics of primitive thinking, the need to reflect in a "tangible" concrete-figurative form the idea of ​​the unity and kinship of primitive communities. At the same time, a special magical power was attributed to these images, the ability to influence the successful outcome of the hunt. The figurines of dressed and naked women of that period - "Paleolithic Venuses" - in terms of the perfection of forms and thoroughness of processing, testify to the high level of development of bone-carving skills among the hunters of the Ice Age. Made in the style of naive realism during the period of matriarchy, the figurines with the utmost expressiveness convey the main idea of ​​this generalized image - a woman-mother, ancestor, homemaker.
If images of obese women with hypertrophied female forms are characteristic of Eastern Europe, then female images of Siberia of the Upper Paleolithic do not have such exaggerated modeled forms. Carved from mammoth tusk, they represent two types of women: "thin" with a narrow and long torso and "massive" with a short torso and deliberately exaggerated hips.

primitive art

primitive art- this is a modern, long-rooted name for various types of fine art that appeared in the Stone Age and lasted about 500 thousand years. In the Paleolithic - the ancient Stone Age, it was represented by primitive music, dances, songs and rituals, as well as geoglyphs - images on the surface of the earth, dendrographs - images on the bark of trees and images on animal skins, various body decorations using colored pigments and all kinds of natural items, such as beads, are popular at the present time. But all of the above is not able to withstand the onslaught of destructive time. Therefore, only abstract signs were preserved and gradually discovered, artificially carved on superhard rock surfaces in Central India, northern Australia and Peru, as well as animalistic cave painting, zoomorphic and anthropomorphic sculpture of small forms made of bone and stone, engravings and bas-reliefs on bones, stone tiles and horn, the Upper Paleolithic time (35.000 - 30.000 thousand years) and numerous accumulations of rock carvings on the surfaces of rocks in the open, the Neolithic era, or the new Stone Age, (11.000 thousand years), known to all inhabited continents. The Neolithic also includes the ruins of various megalithic structures in Europe, South America and Asia (for example: Stonehenge in Salisbury, with vertically mounted stones in a circle - cromlechs, weighing up to 50 tons, Great Britain, ordered rows of large uncut obelisk stones, on an endless Karnak field, called menhirs, and grave complexes from unprocessed large stones, for example, the Korkonnsky dolmen, Morbigan, France).

The first of the works of primitive art discovered during excavations were magnificent, realistic, engraved images of animals on the surfaces of bones, long-extinct animals of the Pleistocene era (2.2 million years - 11,000 thousand years) and hundreds of tiny beads made from natural materials (petrified calcite sponges) , found by Boucher de Perth, for the first time, in the 30s of the XIX century in France. But then, these findings 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, amazing, unusual finds did not inspire confidence both among professional scientists of the French Academy of Sciences and among the general public. The revolution in the views on primitive art was made by the discovery of Paleolithic cave painting. In 1879, Maria, the eight-year-old daughter of the Spanish amateur archaeologist M. de Sautuol, discovered on the vaults of the Altamira cave, in northern Spain, a cluster of large, from one to two meters, images of bison, painted with red ocher in various, complex poses. These were the first, officially published in 1880, Paleolithic paintings discovered in the 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 the dynamics and characteristic features of animals through visual means. The first message about this, in Russian, appeared only in 1912, in a translation from French of the sixth edition of the course of public lectures by Solomon Reinac, read by him at the Louvre School in Paris in 1902-1903. At present, researchers from two international organizations ICOMOS (ICOMOS) - uniting professional researchers and IFRAO (IFRAO), an association of amateur researchers, which already includes 50 national organizations from all over the world, are studying primitive fine art.

primitive sculpture

rock painting

A bison attacks a man.

Rock paintings were made in the Paleolithic, in caves. The material for creating images was [paint] from organic dyes (plants, blood) and charcoal (the scene of the battle of rhinos in the Chauvet cave - 32,000 thousand years). As a rule, cave paintings and charcoal drawings were carried out taking into account [[volume, perspective, color of the rocky surface and the proportion of figures, taking into account the transmission of the movements of the depicted animals. The rock paintings also depicted scenes of fights between animals and humans. All primitive painting, as part of primitive fine art, is a syncretic phenomenon and was presumably created in accordance with cults. Later, images of primitive fine art acquired the features of stylization. Many examples of cave paintings are UNESCO World Heritage Sites (UNESCO World Heritage Site).

Megalithic architecture

Types of megalithic structures

• menhir - a single vertically standing stone
• cromlech - a group of menhirs forming a circle or semicircle
• dolmen - a structure made of a huge stone, placed on several other stones
• taula - a stone structure in the shape of the letter "T"
• trilith - a structure made of a block of stone, installed on two vertically standing stones
• seid - including a building made of stone
• cairn - a stone mound with one or more rooms
• covered gallery
• boat-shaped grave

Purpose

The purpose of megaliths cannot always be established. For the most part, according to some scholars, they served for burials or were associated with a funeral cult. There are other opinions as well. Apparently, megaliths are communal structures with a socializing function. Their erection represented the most difficult task for primitive technology and required the unification of large masses of people. Some megalithic structures, such as the complex of over 3,000 stones at Carnac (Brittany) France, were important ceremonial centers associated with the cult of the dead. Other megalithic complexes have been used to determine the timing of astronomical events such as the solstice and equinox. In the area of ​​Nabta Playa in the Nubian desert, a megalithic structure was found that served for astronomical purposes. This building is 1000 years older than Stonehenge, which is also considered a kind of prehistoric observatory.

Houseware

Literature

• Formozov A.A. 1966. Monuments of primitive art on the territory of the USSR. M. 126 p.
• Frolov B.A. 1992 Primitive graphics of Europe. M., Science.
• Semyonov V.A. 2008. Primitive art. Stone Age. Bronze Age. New history of art. ABC-Classic. S-Pb.
• Mirimanov V.B. 1997. Art and myth. The central image of the picture of the world. M., Consent.

Links

• Kravchenko A.I. Culturology: Textbook for universities.

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See what "Primitive Art" is in other dictionaries:

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Books

• Primitive art. Artistic processing of hard and soft stone, Mikhail Prokopyevich Ermakov, The textbook, which is the first of its kind in the CIS countries and abroad, outlines the basics of primitive art and artistic stone carving. The evolution of stone processing technologies… Category: Jewelery Publisher: