Christine Desdemaines-Hugon

I picked up this book because I became interested in cave art after reading the marvelous and inspiring The Cave Painters by Gregory Curtis a few years ago. The author, a scholar of so-called "portable" cave art and a long-time guide to many of the French caves, takes the reader on a tour of five major caves and several smaller sites, interspersing detailed descriptions of the art in the sites and background on the history and development of ice-age humans. While the details were too much for me to master, the word pictures Desdemaines-Hugon paints of the drawings and engravings are compelling and her respect and admiration for the skills of the artists shine through.

She describes how with a few lines the artists capture the essence of the animals they depict, reflecting close observation, how each animal appears to be an individual, how the artists used the rocks and the shapes of the cave walls not only as part of the art but also to direct the eye and create groupings of animals, and how the artists understood how to create a sense of perspective in a way that didn't reappear in the west until the Renaissance, and she notes that while we will never know what the art meant to the people who created it, especially since much of it may have been viewed by only a few people, we can certainly see that it was deeply meaningful to them and that it is deeply moving to us.

She writes: "Being so close to those simple lines, I could identify with the hand, the gesture, the expert at work. The intelligence behind it. The sense of beauty guiding the hand."… (plus d'informations)