Leo Braudy at the LARB:
Among the earliest forms of visual imagery are, of course, the cave paintings of Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa, which often feature images of animals, hunting scenes, dancing people, and handprints that may signify the presence of a specific creator. Although we can’t be absolutely sure what the images were meant to convey, cave painting is a familiar enough case of the impulse of ancient artists to create significant images that seem aimed at replicating and perhaps even controlling an otherwise fleeting reality. Capturing the image of an animal, for example, perhaps meant freezing it in time and thereby magically ensuring good hunting.
And the more that image resembled real perception, the more effective it might be: a ritualized version of observed life. Here also, therefore, in some of these early human efforts to create visual art, is the urge to transform a static image into a moving one. In Chauvet Cave in France, for example, the depiction of animals goes beyond the two-dimensional medium of charcoal or paint on a wall by including some with six legs, implying movement—and bearing a prescient resemblance to Eadweard Muybridge’s experiments with stop-motion photography in the late 19th century. Sequestered in dark interior spaces lit only by torches, flickering images similarly imply motion, while paintings on stalactites and stalagmites add a feeling of dimensionality. The closer to actual visual experience, the more powerful the charm.
more here.
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