The Beginnings of art
Contemporary artists such as Doug Hyde and Rolf Harris are artists as we recognise them today. But throughout history art has evolved. Just 100 years ago a print by Doug Hyde wouldn’t have been accpeted by the art world at the time as a valid piece of work.
However, art began a lot longer ago than 100 years.
We do not know how art began any more than we know how language started. If we take art to mean such activities as building temples and houses, making pictures and sculptures, or weaving patterns, there are no people in all the world without art. If, on the other hand, we mean by art some kind of beautiful luxury, something to enjoy in museums and exhibitions or something special to use as a precious decoration in the best parlour, we must realize that this use of the word is a very recent development and that many of the greatest builders, painters or sculptors of the past never dreamed of it.
We can best understand this difference if we think of architecture. We all know that there are beautiful buildings and that some of them are true works of art. But there is scarcely any building in the world which was not erected for a particular purpose.
Those who use these buildings as places of worship or entertainment, or as dwellings, judge them first and foremost by standards of utility. But apart from this, they may like or dislike the design or the proportion of the structure, and appreciate the efforts of the good architect to make it not only practical but ‘right’.
In the past the attitude to paintings and statues was often similar. They were not thought of as mere works of art but as objects which had a definite function. He would be a poor judge of houses who did not know the requirements for which they were built.
Similarly, we are not likely to understand the art of the past if we are quite ignorant of the aims it had to serve. The further we go back in history, the more definite but also the more strange are the aims which art was supposed to serve.
The same applies if we leave towns and cities and go to the peasants or, better still, if we leave our Western countries and travel to the peoples whose ways of life still resemble the conditions in which our remote ancestors lived. We call these people ‘tribal’ not because they are simpler than we are-their processes of thought are often more complicated than ours-but because they are closer to the state from which all mankind once emerged.
Among these indigenous people, there is no difference between building and image making as far as usefulness is concerned. Their huts are there to shelter them from rain, wind and sunshine and the spirits which produce them; images are made to protect them against other powers which are, to them, as real as the forces of nature. Pictures and statues, in other words, are used to work magic.
We cannot hope to understand these strange beginnings of art unless we try to enter into the mind of the primitive peoples and find out what kind of experience it is which makes them think of pictures, not as something nice to look at, but as something powerful to use. Unlike any doug hyde art limited edition prints.
I do not think it is really so difficult to recapture this feeling. All that is needed is the will to be absolutely honest with ourselves and see whether we, too, do not retain something of the ‘primitive’ in us.
Instead of beginning with the Ice Age, let us begin with ourselves. Suppose we take a picture of our favourite cricketer or film star from today’s paper-would we enjoy taking a needle and poking out the eyes? Would we feel as indifferent about it as if we poked a hole anywhere else in the paper? I do not think so.
However well I know with my waking thoughts that what I do to his picture makes no difference to my friend or hero, I still feel a vague reluctance to harm it. Somewhere there remains the absurd feeling that what one does to the picture is done to the person it represents.
Now, if I am right there, if this strange and unreasonable idea really survives, even among us, into the age of computers and the internet, it is perhaps less surprising that such ideas existed almost everywhere among the so-called primitive peoples.
In all parts of the world medicine men or witches have tried to work magic in some such way-they have made little images of an enemy and have then pierced the heart of the wretched doll, or burnt it, and hoped that their enemy would suffer. Even the guy we burn on Guy Fawkes Night is a remnant of such a superstition.
Some tribes in the rainforest are sometimes as vague as little children about what a picture is and what is real. On one occasion, when a European artist made drawings of their cattle, the natives were distressed: ‘If you take them away with you, what are we to live on?’
All these strange ideas are important because they may help us to understand the oldest paintings which have come down to us. These paintings are as old as any trace of human work. They date from the Ice Age. At that time, when strange monsters roamed the countryside, man lived in caves and knew only the rudest of stone implements. And yet, on the walls and ceilings of such caves, particularly in Spain and southern France, paintings have been discovered, mainly of these animals, reindeer, bison and wild horses.
Most of these paintings are astonishingly vivid and lifelike, much more so than we might have expected. But it is very unlikely that they were made for the purpose of decorating the walls of these dark caves. In the first place, they are often found deep inside the mountain, far away from the places where man lived.
Secondly, they are often put there randomly, one on top of the other, without any apparent order or design. It is much more likely that these are the oldest relics of that universal belief in the power of picture-making; in other words, that these primitive hunters thought that if they only made a picture of their prey-and perhaps belaboured it with their spears or stone axes-the real animals would also succumb to their power.
Of course, this is guesswork-but guesswork pretty well supported by the use of art among those primitive peoples of our own day who have still preserved their ancient customs. True, we do not find any now, as far as I know, who try to work exactly this kind of magic; but most art for them is also closely bound up with similar ideas about the power of images.
There are still primitive peoples who use nothing but stone implements and who scratch pictures of animals on rocks for magic purposes.
There are other tribes who have regular festivals when they dress up as animals and move like animals in solemn dances. They, too, believe that somehow this will give them power over their prey. Sometimes they even believe that certain animals are related to them in some fairy-tale manner, and that the whole tribe is a wolf tribe, a raven tribe or a frog tribe. It sounds strange enough, but we must not forget that even these ideas are not as far removed from our own times as one might think.
The Romans believed that Romulus and Remus had been suckled by a she-wolf, and they had an image in bronze of the she-wolf on the sacred Capitol in Rome. Even up to our own times, under Mussolini, they always had a living she-wolf in a cage near the steps to the Capitol. No living lions are kept on Trafalgar Square-but the British Lion still leads a vigorous life in the pages of Punch.
Of course, there remains a vast difference between this kind of heraldry and cartoon symbolism and the deep seriousness with which savages look on their relationship with the totem, as they call their animal relatives.
For it seems that they sometimes live in a kind of dream-world in which they can be man and animal at the same time. Many tribes have special ceremonies in which they wear masks with the features of these animals, and when they put them on they seem to feel that they are transformed, that they have become ravens, or bears.
It is very much as if children played at pirates or detectives till they no longer knew where play- acting ended and reality began.
But with children there is always the grown-up world about them, the people who tell them ‘Don’t be so noisy’, or ‘It is nearly bed-time’. For the tribe there is no such other world to spoil the illusion, because all the members of the tribe take part in the ceremonial dances and rites with their fantastic games of pretence.
They have all learned their significance from former generations and are so absorbed in them that they have little chance of stepping outside it and seeing their behaviour critically. We all have beliefs which we take as much for granted as the ‘primitives’ take theirs-usually so much so that we are not even aware of them unless we meet people who question them.
All this may seem to have little to do with art, but in fact these conditions influence art in many ways. Many of the artists’ works are meant to play a part in these strange customs, and what matters then is not whether the sculpture or painting is beautiful by our standards, but whether it ‘works’, that is to say whether it can perform the required magic. Moreover, the artists work for people of their own tribe who know exactly what each form or each colour is meant to signify. They are not expected to change these things, but only to apply all their skill and knowledge to the execution of their work.
Again, we have not to go far to think of parallels. The point of a national flag is not to be a beautifully coloured piece of cloth which any maker can change according to his fancy-the point of a wedding ring is not to be an ornament which can be worn or changed as we think fit. Yet, even within the prescribed rites and customs of our lives, there remains a certain element of choice and scope for taste and skill. Let us think of the Christmas tree. Its principal features are laid down by custom.
Each family, in fact, has its own traditions and its own predilections without which the tree does not look right. Nevertheless, when the great moment comes to decorate the tree there remains much to be decided. Should this branch get a candle? Is there enough tinsel on top? Does not this star look too heavy or this side too overloaded? Perhaps to an outsider the whole performance would look rather strange. He might think that trees are much nicer without tinsel. But to us, who know the significance, it becomes a matter of great importance to decorate the tree according to our idea.
Primitive art works on just such pre-established lines, and yet leaves the artist scope to show his mettle. The technical mastery of some native craftsmen is indeed astonishing. We should never forget, when talking of primitive art, that the word does not imply that the artists have only a primitive knowledge of their craft.
n the contrary; many native tribes have developed a truly amazing skill in carving, in basket work, in the preparation of leather, or even in the working of metals. If we realize with what simple tools these works are made we can only marvel at the patience and sureness of touch which these primitive craftsmen have acquired through centuries of specialization.
Doug Hyde is a contemporary commercial artist, but note how some of his simple characters are similar to early cave paintings!
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