ABSTRACT
The art itself is the making of life – the great discovery of paleolithic people that representation is real, the borders separating what happens “in nature” from what happens “in the imagination” is porous, with one kind of happening running over into the other. Paleolithic artists drew, etched, or sculpted many women, emphasizing breasts, hips, and buttocks. The paleolithic visual art that remains – however impressive in itself – must be seen as the residue of a much richer process of performance events. The art probably expressed individual and group memories, desires, dreams, and imagination. The region with the most paleolithic cave art known today is the rugged terrain of southwest France and northwest Spain where more than 300 caves contain thousands of paintings, sculptings, hand stencils, footprints, and possibly altars. Making patterns on objects – whether to call such pattern-making art is open to debate – goes back to before there were modern humans.
