Reply To: What do the pictures mean?

[Celina Batchelder]

Representational imagery, I believe, was largely created to tell a story. We can speculate all day, every day on why these depictions were created, but in the simplest sense, it would be beneficial to view why we create these everyday representations of things from life today. This could be to tell a story, to create symbolism, or urge viewers to reflect on something from life. Language has never truly been universal, and while we can draw conclusions based on carved stone, manuscripts, etc., we will never truly know or understand the language they used in the stone, bronze and iron ages aside from the remaining objects left behind that we can then piece together to form our own narrative. Imagery, however, is arguably universal – for example, with the Woman of Willendorf, we have no issue today deciding that what is depicted is a woman. This argument can also be tied to the cave paintings, that they depict animals. I found it interesting that they found a child’s fingerprint on one of the other sculptures depicting a woman- it makes me wonder if this was created in the same fashion that dolls were created for today.