"Is the Makapansgat pebble “art”? In modern times, many artists have created works critics universally consider art by removing objects from their normal contexts, altering them, and then labeling them. In 1917, for example, Marcel Duchamp chose a ceramic urinal, set it on its side, called it Fountain, and declared his “readymade” worthy of exhibition among more conventional artworks. But the artistic environment of the past century cannot be projected into the remote past. For art historians to classify as an “artwork” a found object such as the Makapansgat pebble, it must have been modified by human intervention beyond mere selection—and it was not. In fact, evidence indicates that, with few exceptions, it was not until three million years later, around 30,000 BCE, when large parts of northern Europe were still covered with glaciers during the Ice Age, that humans intentionally manufactured sculptures and paintings. Only then does the story of art through the ages really begin."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Fred S. Kleiner, Gardner's Art Through the Ages: A Global History (14th ed., 2012), p. 16
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Prehistoric_art
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Prehistoric art
1 quote on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Prehistoric art →
Related Quotes
"Colonel Kyd, an Englishman, had the following to say regarding general surgical skill in the subcontinent: (In) chiru…"
"Dr. H. Scott wrote the following letter on January 12, 1792, again on the subject of Indian surgery: In medicine I sh…"
"Whether or not the artistic quality of the bullfight outweighs the moral question of the animals’ suffering is someth…"
"There is an image I will never lose, much as I wish I could. It is of a man standing with half his face held in his r…"
"The crowd are on their feet, stamping and cheering, but El Cid just stands and stares at the bull in grave silence, h…"
"What you are interested in is the art whereby a man using no tricks reduces a raging bull to his dimensions, and this…"
"At the first bullfight I ever went to I expected to be horrified and perhaps sickened by what I had been told would h…"
"Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the p…"
"The Roman public's thirst for blood and pleasure in witnessing pain seems to have been unquenchable and without limit…"
"He was an admirer of the bullfight, and had once drawn my attention to the fact that only cricket and bullfighting ha…"