Bibliograph

Dawn of art, the Chauvet Cave : the oldest known paintings in the world, Jean-Marie Chauvet, Éliette Brunel Deschamps, Christian Hillaire ; epilogue by Jean Clottes ; foreword by Paul G. Bahn ; [translated from the French by Paul G. Bahn]

Type

Label

Dawn of art, the Chauvet Cave : the oldest known paintings in the world, Jean-Marie Chauvet, Éliette Brunel Deschamps, Christian Hillaire ; epilogue by Jean Clottes ; foreword by Paul G. Bahn ; [translated from the French by Paul G. Bahn]

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references (pages 128-130) and index

Illustrations

mapsillustrations

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Dawn of art

Nature of contents

bibliography

Oclc number

33665663

Responsibility statement

Jean-Marie Chauvet, Éliette Brunel Deschamps, Christian Hillaire ; epilogue by Jean Clottes ; foreword by Paul G. Bahn ; [translated from the French by Paul G. Bahn]

Sub title

the Chauvet Cave : the oldest known paintings in the world

Summary

In December 1994, in the Ardeche Valley of southeast France, three explorers chanced upon the hidden entrance to an underground cavern. Digging away the rubble, they made their way through a narrow passage into a vast cave, and there made one of the most thrilling discoveries of modern times: The Chauvet cave, named for one of the discoverers, which had been untouched for thousands of years. It was filled with Stone Age cave bear skeletons and footprints, the blackened remains of fires, and, most importantly, walls covered with more than three hundred extraordinary paintings and engravings of animalsThese staggering images proved to be doubly remarkable, for not only have radiocarbon tests established them to be over 30,000 years old - the oldest known paintings in the world, nearly twice as old as those found at Lascaux - but they are powerful, sophisticated works of art rather than crude sketches. Dawn of Art is the first book in English on the images that have, as the French Ministry of Culture declared, "overturned the accepted notion about the first appearance of art and its development."The remarkable photographs in Dawn of Art show each wall in clear detail, revealing the incredible mastery of the prehistoric artists. Astonishingly, while most cave art is of creatures such as horses, aurochs, and bison, over half of these images depict such dangerous animals as cave bears, hyenas, lions, mammoths, and rhinoceroses. The paintings are particularly impressive in terms of the techniques used to present perspective and motion. Many figures interact with each other; some are staggered, to give perspective; others are drawn on bulges in the cave wall to further suggest depth

Table Of Contents

Foreword / Paul G. Bahn -- The Discovery of Chauvet Cave. The Gorges of the Ardeche. The Three Discoverers. Birth of a Team. Exploration. Our Discoveries in the Gorges of the Ardeche. The Decorated Caves. The Discovery of Chauvet Cave. A Path along the Cliff. First Steps in an Immense Gallery. Traces of Red Ochre. Depictions of a Kind Unknown in the Ardeche. The Panel of the Horses. The Lion Panel. The Cave's Morphology. Protection and Authentication -- Epilogue: Chauvet Cave Today / Jean Clottes. Authentication. The Floors. The Themes. The Pictorial Techniques. How Old are these Drawings? The Radiocarbon Dates of Chauvet Cave. The Originality of Chauvet Cave

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Chauvet Cave : the oldest known paintings in the world

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