Reply To: Prehistoric Abstraction

[mbsimington]

There are quite a few definitions of abstract, and one that I particularly find suitable is that abstract art is meant to represent ideas and concepts as opposed to representing actual, tangible things. A good comparison would be between the different sculptures of people from the Paleolithic and Neolithic times and cave paintings. The different cave paintings provided in the prehistoric art wing here all show a representation of tangible concepts:animals. They depict a group of horses, bison, and many more animals that actually exist and the images produced resemble the animals closely enough for them to be easily identified. This is different to the sculptures of people, as they moreso provide an idea as opposed to a representation of a specific person. The women in particular, with exaggerated hips and breasts, could be a symbol for fertility, women in general, or motherhood, and in my opinion only the people from that time, maybe only the person that created them, really knows for sure. To say that all prehistoric art is abstract would be an understatement. Like art today, there is some that is abstract and some that isn’t, and in a lot of cases, whether or not a piece is abstract relies on the viewer and their subjective observations and experiences relating to the piece.