Cave paintings
Maria Langsén
I'm reading a book that says that the people who lived in caves (20 000 bc)
saw the colour red as holy/magic and the proof off this is that they did all
their cave paintings in reddish colours (and painted some of their deads
bones with red ocra.)
I wanted to ask you if anyone knows if they used any other colours at all?
I´ve never seen anything mentioned about it.
Regards
/Maria
C Greenmun
I don't know of anywebsites, but I have read two good books on cave
paintings:
Altimira, by PedroA. Saura, and The Shamans Of Prehistory-Trance and Magic
In the Caves byJean Clotts and David Lewis Williams. The latter book
explains the theory that the cave paintings may have been the results of
shamanic visions while in trance, that the caves were maybe sacred sites for
vision questing and initiations.
As to the pigments, besides red ochere they used black charcol as "crayons"
to do the outlines. It seems to me that most of the paintings in different
caves were done in black charcol outline and filled in with red ochere
coloring. Some were filled in with yellow ochre as well. There are some
paintings or hand stencils done in white, but these are extremly rare...
That is, according to those books.
Hope this helps
Chris
Maria Langsén
/Maria
C Greenmun
Good luck!
Chris
Kierin mackenzie
An interesting side note...
Any culture with two colours always has the same two colours. Black and white.
Any culture with three colous always has the same three colours. Black, white
and red.
Any culture with four colours always has the same four colours. Black, white,
red and term that covers green and blue.
It seems to be hardwired into the human mind somehow.
Aidan J Meehan
However, as this thread is about the occurrance of two colours, red and
black, this breaks your own rule.
I think of black and white to be monochrome, a white figure on a black
ground, or the other way round. Red is a substitute for black in some cases,
used interchangeably as a background colour, . Black is often used as an
outline as in the cave paintings, and might be considered as other than a
colour, when reserved for drawing the outline which is then painted in.
West Coast art uses three colours, primarily: Black formline, red
background, green as a tertiary colour. In this case, the black line is not
the same as an outline, it is definitely a colour, the reserved surface of a
carving is painted black. White is rarely used, because the unpainted wood
is used as a contrast. Red is applied to secondary formlines, and so is
interchangeable with black, and is also used for areas which are excavated
to a level lower than the surface.
Celtic art uses red and black both as background colours, and white is
rarely used, rather, the surface us reserved as a contrast. Apart from red,
yellow is the second colour, from the early enamel work through to the
illuminated manuscripts. Green-blue - copper acetate (?), verdigris - is
less often used. In enamelling you do see red and blue together, but also
red and yellow. But sticking to painting, in the Book of Durrow, for
instance, the four colours used are black, red, yellow and green. White is
hardly used at all, and only as a special effect, to highlight a minor
detail. In this case, white is redundant, as the unpainted background is
white. The yellow used is a goldern yellow, called orpiment - arsenic
trisulphide . Apart from the yellow, it seems to me that the other pigments
used in early medieval painting are the same as those used in the
paleolithic cave paintings - rust red, charcoal, and occasional green. I
expect yellow ochre was sometimes used, also. There is a green ochre found
in some places, but it is rare.
Also, don't forget that red and black might be the only permanent pigments
that they used. If you stripped all the paint off the istine chapel, you
might wonder why Micheal angelo, drew everything in black outline and red
ochre outline. If he had used vegetal-based colours, these would have been
appropriate in a dark cave because such colours are only fugitive in strong
light. However, such fugitive colours might not withstand thousands of years
of moisture seepage as well as the reds and the blacks.
I would be interested to know if the cave painters used a binder such as
egg, to make the pigments last so long. Soot and red clay, if only mixed
with saliva, would flake off over time.
Kierin mackenzie <mack...@uvic.ca> wrote in message
news:38379C30...@uvic.ca...
Kierin mackenzie
Brent Berlin, an ethnobotanist has also done extensive work with colour
terminology cross culturally.
You may find this handy.
Berlin, B., and p. Kay. 1969. Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and
Evolution. Berkeley: University of California Press.
I think white is also fairly common in cave art, as is yellow, but I'm no
expert.