Dreaming With Open Eyes: The Shamanic Spirit in Twentieth Century Art and Culture

Between fifteen and twenty thousand years ago the cave painters of the Upper Paleolithic period created some of the greatest art the world has ever seen. The representational skills with which these artists depicted the power of the animal realm have never been surpassed: neither has the mystery of the more free-ranging marks which flank the naturalistic images of bison and bull reindeer and rhinoceros horse and cow. While such marks may represent the hunting traps or magic formulae of prehistoric cultures to a twentieth-century mind they can seem like the origins of abstract art. The art of the prehistoric caves was first brought to the worlds attention towards the end of the nineteenth century; the paintings in the Altamira caves of Spain for example were discovered in 1879. Such discoveries continued well into our century. In 1940 four boys from Montignac in southern France followed a dog down a large hole which had perhaps been left by an uprooted tree: the artistic treasures of the cave of Lascaux lay in wait for them. The richness of this completely unexpected find was such that Lascaux has come to be known as the Sistine Chapel of prehistoric art. Deep in a well somewhat aside from the main galleries of Lascaux there is one of the most extraordinary images in all art. A stick-like figure with a bird-like face outstretched arms and what appears to be an erect penis is shown either falling or leaping in front of a large wounded bison. To the side of the figure near its right hand stands a rod or staff with a schematic birds head affixed to its top. The meaning of this image has been debated for many years. Scholars now agree that it can be seen as a stylistically distinct cousin so to speak