14 characteristics of Paleolithic ART

Naturalism, the representation of nature and animal life, the use of relief, the absence or scarcity of human representations and the manufacture of stone objects are some of the characteristics of Paleolithic art.

Paleolithic art is called a period of prehistory that took place between the years 2,000,000 a. C to 10,000 a. c. From an etymological point of view, the word Paleolithic means "stone age" and refers to the almost exclusive use of stone as a material for the manufacture of all kinds of objects. In this lesson from a TEACHER we review with you what were the main characteristics of Paleolithic art so you can know what art was like in prehistoric times.

Before talking about the characteristics of Paleolithic art, we are going to know the different stages of this period of history. He Paleolithicit's divided in three periods of different duration:

• lower paleolithic from 2,000,000 B.C. c. to 125,000 B.C. C.
• middle paleolithic from 125,000 B.C. c. to 40,000 B.C. c.
• Superior paleolithic from 40,000 B.C. c. to 10,000 B.C. c.

As regards the artistic manifestation most outstanding that are known today, these were carried out during the Superior paleolithic, that is, from 40,000 a. C and 10,000 a. c. A periodization that is only applicable to Europe and part of Asia and Africa. Other models and periods are observed for the rest of the world.

In unProfesor we discover the main characteristics of prehistoric art.

During the Upper Paleolithic, when the main artistic manifestations took place, primitive men were nomads, with no remains of buildings. As hunting, fishing and gathering were the main activities of these communities, the objects that were created were especially stone utensils and weapons. Although other materials such as ivory, bone, horn and wood were also used.

Here is a review of the main features Paleolithic art:

1. The technical and formal solutions used by the Paleolithic communities were schematization, simplification and abstraction. Some characteristics that caught the attention of the avant-garde at the beginning of the 20th century due to their primitive, rudimentary and naturalistic character.
2. Paleolithic painting is a fossil art that we can only interpret from the remains that have been found, lacking the context in which they were made and the deep significance they had for these communities.
3. Thus, we can think that primitive man tried to represent reality after observing it and portrayed it as faithfully as possible, although he also included abstract symbols in his representations. Specialists consider that Paleolithic paintings had a ritual component and a magical purpose. For these communities, painting an animal that they wanted to hunt already speared and pierced by arrows was a way to get hold of it by visualizing the act of hunting and capturing it before going out in search of animals.
4. As a consequence, Paleolithic painting focused mainly on depict animals such as horses, bison, deer, bulls, mammoths, bears, lions, panthers, owls, and rhinos, that is, the fauna that existed at that time in Europe, part of Asia and North Africa. Some synthetic and stylized representations, giving us both the appearance of the animals and their behavior, without moving away from naturalism and the desire to imitate reality.
5. There are hardly any representations of the landscape.
6. The human representations are scarce, being these more schematic than those of animals. The body is usually segmented, and the representation of the male and female sexual organs in isolation is common.
7. Furthermore, in the prock carvings are also observed abstract signs as geometric figures such as dots and lines. Some motifs that usually appear in sequence or juxtaposed
8. The cave paintings are located in cavesand rock shelters, concentrating the findings in the south of France and the north of Spain, more than 200. The most spectacular caves in terms of the quantity and quality of the paintings are those of Lascaux and Chauvet, in France, and the Altamira cave in Cantabria, in northern Spain.
9. The techniques used were blown made with the bones of birds or animals or with coarse brushes made of vegetable fibers.
10. The colors The colors used are limited, sticking to natural pigments such as ochres, manganese oxide, carbon, or animal or human blood. Thus, the tones used are reddish, earth, black, yellow and ocher.
11. The composition it is sometimes variegated, with some scenes superimposing on others, although there are also solo representations of animals.
12. They take advantage the textures of the rocks and their irregularities to represent the contours and volumes of the animals, thus providing more realism to the representations.
13. So respect the portable art As objects, Paleolithic art presents both stone tools such as pendants, bracelets and ornaments carved in bone and ivory, as well as animal statuettes and human figures.
14. Another of the characteristic objects of Paleolithic sculpture are the so-called “Steatopygic Venus”. These are round, curvilinear figures that were made in ivory or stone and in which stand out and enlarge breasts, hips and abdomen, assuming that they would be used as amulets of fertility. There are three types: Western, Eastern and Siberian.