2025, animals, Art, Fantasy, History

Old Modern Art

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Eighty-five years ago last week, four teenagers accidentally changed not only the trajectories of their lives, but history as well.  While hiking near Montignac, France, the four boys stumbled upon caves with a collection of cave paintings unlike anything ever seen.  The paintings, known as the Lascaux cave paintings have been dated from 15,000 to 17,000 years back and turned the art world on its ear, proving that Stone Age peoples were artists and biographers.

The four boys ended up on different paths.  Two of the boys were Jewish and shortly after the discovery, one boy was sent to Buchenwald with his family and the second boy ended up being hidden by a Jewish Children’s aid organization.  The other two boys, who were from Montignac, guarded the cave over the first winter and eventually became tour guides of the famous caves and paintings.  In fact, it was the two of them that noticed the condensation in the caves causing algae and mold growth.  It was at this point that France closed the caves to the public to protect them from as much outside environment as possible.  The cave paintings have been meticulously copied and can be viewed in a replica of the caves – Lascaux IV – part of the Lascaux historical center.

The two Jewish boys survived WWII and Buchenwald; all four lived into old age and were re-united in 1986.  The last to pass was Simon Coencas, who died in 2020 at the age of 93. 

The paintings were obviously modern art at the time they were created, but at 15,000 years of age, I doubt they qualify any longer.  I have a few pieces of modern art but I also lean toward more classical representational art.  Impressionism is a favorite and I am fond of a lot of sculpture.  I particularly love this one that resides here in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts:

If you could go back in time and discover something, what would it be?

33 thoughts on “Old Modern Art”

  1. The Veiled Lady is one of Robin’s favorites too and, I think, a near universal favorite of patrons of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Apparently sculpting that sort of veiled figure was a popular way for sculptors to demonstrate their skill with marble. I’ve seen other examples.

    “Discovering” something from the past would require me to postulate something that is not presently known or else it would substitute me for some known discoverer, like Howard Carter. I could, for example, say I would like to be the one to discover the alien spacecraft hidden in the Great Pyramid.

    On a more prosaic note, I’d like to discover the author of an 1867 book entitled The Philosophers of Foufouville. The author as stated is the pseudonymous “Radical Freelance” and nobody has been able to convincingly identify him or her. One online forum dedicated to Herman Melville speculated, based on style and references made in the text that Melville might have penned it.

    Other than that, I guess I’d like to visit some of the great earthworks of Ohio, like Circleville and Fort Ancient and the Great Serpent Mound in their heyday, or even the Aztalan earthworks in Wisconsin. I read recently that, until about 15,000 years ago, the land under Lake Michigan was dry and that prehistoric structures have been detected there. That would be an interesting place to visit.

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  2. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I would like to discover what Jesus really thought about various issues that arise throughout the various eras, or how he lived. Did he like cats? How did he do the loaves and fishes, or did that happen at all? Was he celibate, or was that really fiction or projection of centuries to follow? We would have a long, long talk about these things. What truth survived the centuries and what is simply the human need for superhuman myth?

    Meanwhile, yesterday after Blevins I made my way to Longfellow Garden which is a hidden gem within Minnehaha park. What a wonderful invisible spot! Like everything in September, it was full of overgrown pollinator plants. And, as my Master Gardener friend told me, there were hummingbirds feeding there, mixed in with dozens of Monarch butterflies flitting from bloom to bloom. I saw two hummingbirds fighting and chirping at each other with tiny tail feathers spread. There was also a wedding about to commence.

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    2. You might find the book “Miracles and Wonders” by Elaine Pagels fascinating. She is a biblical historian from Princeton, and writes, not from a faith based perspective but a clearly historical one. The book examines what was actually happening in the Holy Land when Jesus was living there. It is a disturbing book. She examines, for example, the “Virgin Birth” and discusses that the Roman invasion forces frequently and repeatedly raped Israeli women, especially around where Mary grew up. It is worth a read.

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      1. The gardens are built over Hiawatha Avenue. I used to park there and walk through the garden when I took botanical illustration classes at Longfellow House.

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  3. As regards to Greek sculpture, I would like to know what they looked like painted, as they were when created. Or maybe find two marble arms. Or how much Picasso had to do with theft of Mona Lisa.

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  4. My thoughts were like Bill’s when I first read the question. And, I’ve had similar thoughts about what Jesus may have really been like.

    More than anything, though, I’d like to have seen the beauty of the earth before it was spoiled. I’d like to have seen Lake Superior before there were cities and homes built most of the way around its shores. I always imagine places without humans in them. We live with tiny remnants of what was once here. I always imagine what might have been without our dubious “progress.”

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  6. Who else faked Piltdown man. I have a strong candidate. What happened to peking man. I agree on what Jesus meant and did say and did do. Who made the Bayeux Tapestry. To prove that Shakespeare was Shakespeare.

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  7. Add me to the list of those who love the Veiled Lady—I always visit her when at the MIA.

    For many years when I was young, I wanted to be an archaeologist and I’m still fascinated with history. I’d love to visit the site of Pompeii. It would be fun to discover a link to the real person behind the legendary King Arthur.

    I’d love to time travel like Doctor Who and visit Shakespeare’s London to bring back proof that he indeed wrote the plays. I’d also love to have tea with Jane Austen and tell her that in the future, millions of people will read her books and she’ll be remembered as one of England’s greatest writers.

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    1. You might be interested in The Jane Austen Project, by Kathleen Flynn, about a pair of time travelers who go back to rescue the letters Cassandra destroyed after Jane’s death but also to meet Jane herself.

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  8. I’d like to discover Amelia Earhart’s plane off Nikamararu Island…,the only thing most folks will accept as final proof.

    And where Jimmy Hoffa is buried.

    Oh, and who created the Voynich Manuscript!!

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  9. When My daughter was about 14 years old, and we were residing in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, she expressed a desire to “go back in time to the Medieval days.’ (She was fascinated with some of the “princess clothes” she saw in books.) I asked if she meant, “… here in Kaohsiung?” No, that’s not what she meant. So, Baboons, when we go back in time, how will we get to the places we want to visit?”

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  15. We are fans of modern art. In our house, we only have non-representational, abstract pictures. It’s funny, in our family, we have a specialist for modern art, one for medieval art, and Kb loves Bauhaus and de Stijl. But we all like the pictures at Lascaux. They are beyond our understanding of styles.
    The Fab Four of Cley
    🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

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