Category: Prehistoric Art

Clayton Eshleman’s British Museum Notebook

Sometime last week I forwarded a review of a current British Museum exhibition on prehistoric art to Clayton Eshleman. He responded two days ago, saying: “I remembered my little moleskin notebook I had with me in London 2007 when at that Museum. I decided to copy out my notes on the ancient pieces I scribbed standing before their windows one morning…” And with his permission, here they are, for me clearly more than fragmentary notes, poems … Read more Clayton Eshleman’s British Museum Notebook

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Lost Caul: Clayton Eshleman on Lascaux

In a previous post (here) I alerted readers to the disaster at Lascaux, and suggested everyone sign the petition for speedy action to save one of the core sites of earliest human art. If you haven’t done so yet, do it now (here) before or after you read Clayton Eshleman’s essay below. LASCAUX, LOST CAUL The cave of Lascaux, with its 600 paintings and 1500 engravings, is the most … Read more Lost Caul: Clayton Eshleman on Lascaux

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Lascaux Keeps going Down the Drain

This is not new news & yet, unhappily, it is news that stays news in that nothing is being done about it — as Clayton Eshleman reminded me just a few days ago. Back in 2006, Time ran a cover story (see pix above — & you can read the story on the site given below) on the fungus threatening the prehistoric cave paintings of Lascaux, one of the … Read more Lascaux Keeps going Down the Drain

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Oldest Example of Figurative Art

The press is abuzz today about the aurignacian statuette (6 cm in height) discovered by archeologist Nicholas J. Conard in the “Hohle Fels” dig in the Swabian Alps and dated to between 30 & 40.000 years ago. Most comments refer to her bashfully  as the oldest “fertility symbol,” thus sanitizing the statue’s strong sexual and erotic implications, though Conard is quoted in the New York Times as saying the … Read more Oldest Example of Figurative Art

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