Flash in Naples by Jean-Michel Basquiat. This card arrived the other day from a friend and made me wonder. Would Basquiat have been a cave painter? Last week while driving through the radio wasteland (right-wing political ravings, country-western music, sports stations without updates---geez, and endless infomercials about the omegas), of central Pennsylvania, I hit on a Fresh Air rerun of an interview with Werner Herzog, about his latest documentary, to be released this week. Called The Cave of Forgotten Dreams, it is about the Chauvet cave, the site of the oldest cave art discovered to date. Located in the Ardeche region of southern France, the cave was found in December 1994, by three local speleologists. It is named for one of them: Jean-Marie Chauvet.
As soon as they entered the cave, the three realized that they had found something extraordinary. The walls were covered with cave art, now believed to be around 30,000 years old.
I was riveted by Herzog's account of his lifelong fascination with cave paintings and of how he came to be allowed to film inside the cave, which has been closed to the public and almost everyone else since it was discovered. After an initial visit to the cave, he decided to film in 3D, to bring out the undulations and irregularities in the limestone walls that hold the paintings. He was allowed to enter the cave for just four hours a day, for a total of six days, and could only bring equipment that he and his crew could carry on their backs. The technical challenges Herzog and his crew had to overcome were likewise fascinating.
When I got back the next evening from Pittsburgh, I went straight to the bookshelf. In 1996, Chauvet and his fellow spelunkers, Eliette Brunuel Deschamps and Christian Hillaire, put out a book, called Dawn of Art: The Chauvet Cave, about discovering the cave and the awesome paintings inside it. I bought a copy of the book the year it came out, but the last time I had looked at it was several years ago before going on assignment to northern Spain, a trip that had a stop scheduled at Altamira.
Altamira was then, rightfully, closed to the public. Instead, I (and the silly Philistine group I had to travel with) visited the reproduction cave and museum next to the cave. Both the Altamira and Chauvet paintings are stunning, but while the ones at Altamira feature animals of prey, those at Chauvet show hunting animals, including rhinoceroses, lions, and cave bears.
I was on my way across the state to interview a Chinese paper artist, who now makes her home in Pittsburgh. A paper artist from the country that some 2,000 years ago, invented paper. And on the way I was reminded of the oldest known paintings in the world. It was a bit of serendipity that sent shivers up my spine.
