Motion in Art, Chapter 1

Motion in Art, chapter 1 Introduction In the deepest part of the Altamira caves, in the North of Spain, the walls and ceilings are covered with images. The most surprising are the polychrome paintings on the ceiling. They cover a surface of 18 meters by 9 and we see deer and wild boar as well as the massive shapes of bison. These images, which were made between 18 000 and 14 000 BC, are of a surprisingly high artistic quality. We are not sure why they were made. Some historians offer religious reasons. The place of the paintings, in the deepest, darkest, and most inaccessible part of the cave, as far from reality as possible, would indicate an area of ritual acts. Maybe they were made to summon an abundance of game, or bravery during the hunt? Other historians believe that, due to the remarkable artistic quality of the images, they are unique, individual creations. To support their claim, they draw our attention to the clever use the artist made of the unevenness of the walls and ceiling to give the animals relief and, in that way, emphasize to their weighty presence. Or they mention the variation in color and hue, or the exquisite treatment of shadow and light. Art historian Siegfried Giedion adds another aspect to the paintings. Motion. The photo-images we look at can be deceptive when we try to discover what purpose these paintings served. As Giedion explains, these images should be examined by the flickering light of a torch, or that of a wick floating in animal fat. 1) Such light would only partially illuminate the walls and ceiling of the cave. It would make the images stir and quiver in a highly suggestive way. By manipulating the light, a shaman could make the animals appear on the plain and have them cross it. It would seem he could foretell the future, something that might have inspired the hunters and given them courage. Prehistoric man was almost, or completely, unfamiliar with images and watching these highly convincing pictures could have worked like an incantation. However, these images were by no means the first way people dealt with motion. We started to use body movements to indicate things before we used our speech to do so. We still use our hands, arms and head when we want to tell something to a person whose language we don’t speak. Or to emphasize the words we speak. We can express an amazing amount of things that way. These movements acquired a certain quality in magical rituals. To influence their daily circumstances, primitive people created ceremonies in which repetitive movement played an important part. Movement became dance. These rituals served to affect certain situations such as a conflict with another tribe, the hunt, the departure of a diseased soul, or were meant as worship. As dance itself does not leave evidence, it is impossible to say when it became part of human expression. One of the earliest indications of the use of dance can be found in the Bhimbetka cave paintings in central India. These paintings are 30 000 years old and depict, among other things, people dancing. It is quite reasonable to assume that dance is the first form of art. In some cases we can study traditional dances that have been delivered unscratched through time, which gives us an idea of the use of dance in earlier times. A tradition peculiar to the Tamil country - in evidence to this day - is the ritual dance in connection with the worship of Shiva. 2) When people did not write and read, dance, together with the oral story, was a means to conserve important occurrences. Certain Maori dances still recall their migration from Polynesia to New Zealand. A number of traditional Native American dances are meant to influence the outcome of the hunt. Some dancers play the part of the bison, others that of the hunters. These 1 dances first show the animals in motion, then in arrest. The better the scene was acted, the better the result of the hunt would be. There is another dance in case the hunt was a success, this time to appease the spirit of the animal killed. The tribe’s shaman dresses himself with the skin of the dead animal and performs a ritual dance. In this way the animal is brought to life again and its spirit calmed, the balance maintained. Here we see the process of the hunt reversed; from arrest to movement. In more advanced civilizations dance kept its important place. Egyptian imagery shows women dancing in unison. The rhythmical motion of agricultural labor, such as the threshing of grain, could have inspired both dance and music. The same effect we undergo when we travel by train and easily transform the rhythm of the wheels on the rails into a melody. In Greece, dance was brought together with music and poetry to form the Greek Tragedy. Apart from this sublime expression, dance took also place in other occasions. Homer, Euripides and Plato describe war dances, funeral dances, or the dances of the followers of Dionysus, the so-called Bacchantes. The Greek sought a balance between body and soul. It seems logical that dance, which is corporal movement controlled by the mind through rhythm and repetition, acted as a go-between. Movement, or change, was detected by the first philosophers of our civilization, the pre-Socratics, as an important obstacle in defining physical reality. Wanting to base an explanation of the phenomena of the world on observation and reason, instead of falling back on magical thought, they were hindered by the constant transformation that was taking place in the world around them. Heraclitus defined this problem sharper than anyone else when he said that everything is in flux, everything is a process, there is no being, only becoming. And in a remarkable metaphor he states that we cannot step in the same river twice because its water is in constant flow. Nevertheless we identify it as the same river. The essence of the river is its eternal becoming. While motion is linked to reality, arrest seems to be connected with the image. The ability of the image to halt reality is an important aid in explaining it. We experience the inconstancy of reality as confusing and its detention by means of images, or language, as a way to help to explain it. Religion, art, philosophy or science are all based on the faculty of putting a halt to reality. Which in turn puts us in dilemma. A true picture of the world would be ever-changing. Halting its change distorts truth. Heraclitus is said to have responded to this dilemma with a deliberately obscure and poetic expression of his thoughts, leaving them open for more than one explanation. Plato, in agreement with Heraclitus that the world of the senses is in perpetual flux, realized that, when he wanted to establish definite descriptions, he had to create a condition in which enduring knowledge would be possible. He found this condition in the realm of Forms, or Ideas; eternal objects that exist out of the world of the senses and which we can only become aware of through reason. These Forms establish a definite character and are independent of the ongoing changes of our reality, which thus becomes unreal in Plato’s view. Aristotle, though a disciple of Plato for twenty years and sharing his notion that knowledge is possible, regards reality in quite the opposite way. He defines it as made up of observable phenomena. He sees the world composed of real, or natural, elements, grouped together by kind. These kinds mark real objective distinctions in the world. They are discovered, not created, and they endure despite change. Aristotle named them categories and said these kinds are perceived by the senses but understood by reason. Change, or motion, is a real and important factor in his view. Certain aspects of an element may change but seen through the notion of categories, the essence of the element remains unaltered. While philosophers were grappling with these issues, Greek art seemed to follow them intuitively. We see a corresponding development from standstill towards motion. 2 The statues from the Archaic period, the Kouroi, were rather stiff representations of young men in a frontal stance. They are free standing, stone figures, their arms hanging down. Some wear what is called the archaic smile, which is sometimes seen as a way to give them a more human appearance. Often one of their legs advances timidly as though they propose to take a first step into the world of the living. In the Classical period, sculpture starts to break away from the rigid, stylistically similar Kouroi. The Charioteer of Delphi is a more natural, realistic statement. His arms are lifted in his effort to manage his horses, although his position is still strangely erect. The Artemision Bronze, on the contrary, is a representation in full motion. We’re not sure if the statue represents Zeus or Poseidon. His legs are spread and arms raised in a gesture that hints he is on the point of throwing a thunderbolt, or in Poseidon’s case, a trident. The Dying Gaul, as the sculpture from the Hellenistic period is inaccurately called, celebrates the Greek victory over the Celtic Galatians. The warrior, although dying, is full of movement. He is still seated among his weaponry, resisting his fate, but at the very point of collapsing and minutes away from death. So step-by-step we see Greek sculpture breaking loose from its rigid shape and gradually taking on more complex postures.

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