No one really knows why humans began to paint images or carve likenesses. What role did they play in prehistoric people’s lives? What was their function? Speculate as to some of the reasons humans started to create representational imagery.
This is an interesting thing to ponder. I came from two very creative people, that still maybe don’t even realize how artistic they truly are. I can watch them turn every doing into art, without any awareness or reasoning behind it. I think they make beautiful things because it brings their being peace. For example, my father, who has spent his entire life working and providing, since teenhood, just made a toilet for an RV. This receptacle is beyond beautiful, hands down, my most favorite toilet i’ve ever seen and not out of necessity, a hole in the floor would suffice. Maybe creation with our own hands heals the pieces inside us that may be falling apart. Maybe its less about function and more about proving that we can create beauty when we feel less than beautiful. Maybe these prehistoric people just wanted to prove to themselves that they can possess beauty.
But how did it start? I imagine people have drawn in the dirt and sand since the beginning, as a form of communicating and telling stories and strategies. The things in which we place value differ greatly from person to person. where one person may have communicated how they slayed a fish, the next may have communicated the look on a persons face right before they cried. Maybe there was beauty in both and they found a way to establish more permanence for “retelling” purposes. Maybe those became fixtures in homes, for “function” but maybe they found enjoyment in being able to see them as well.
I suppose I have a difficult time disconnecting my own being from these people. I do believe they had emotion and heart, and maybe they just wanted beauty.