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Chauvet Cave Through the Mind of a Sculptor
Visit to the Chauvet Cave in 2001 by John Robinson
The October of 2001 was hailed as the warmest since records began to be kept. The cliffs of the Ardeche Canyon shone golden in the late afternoon sunshine as my wife and I drove toward the town of Vallon Pont d’Arc. The car’s roof was open and we looked straight up into a cloudless sky. It felt like a midsummer day and matched my happy mood to perfection. I was on my way to meet Jean Clottes for my second visit to the Chauvet Cave.
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Two years had passed
Two years had passed since my first visit to the Cave. I had come away from the magic world of Chauvet with impressions that had left me in a state of wonderment. In the interval between then and now not a day had passed without my thinking about what I had seen and felt. The images had constantly been in my mind’s eye since then, and left me with hundreds of questions. On this visit I hoped that I would be able to peer through at least some of the veils that shroud the secrets locked inside Chauvet.
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New mental approach
The first visit had been one of the greatest experiences of my life and had made an enormous impact on my way of thinking about Art. However over the last two years I have found that it has made an even greater impact on how I thought about Cro Magnon, so I would make this visit with a completely different mental approach. My keenness to once again be in the cave was now linked more to thinking about the Artists than about the Art. I knew the adrenaline would once again race through my veins, but what would my reaction be this time?
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Evolution and Artistic Creativity
For me the two most wonderful things in the Universe are firstly, the Evolution of Mankind, and secondly, our Artistic Creativity. The fact that Mankind can balance on two feet and walk upright, is a miracle. The miracle is possible because a super computer inside our skulls interprets the millions of messages that travel every second between our feet and our brains. This super computer is our Mind, the seat of our Artistic Creativity, the power that enables Mankind to transcend Darwin's conviction that "no innate tendency to progressive development exists".
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Marcus Aurelius
I recently read something I think illustrates this perfectly. Marcus Aurelius wrote, “You consist of three things only, your body, your life, your mind; only the last is subject wholly to your control. All else is mere smoke”. Art is the pinnacle of Human Civilisation. I believe that the discovery of the Art in the Chauvet Cave is as important as Mankind travelling into Space and walking on the Moon. Art is the pinnacle of Human Civilisation. The Florentine Sperone Speroni, 16th century Renaissance writer, defined the key to Civilisation as “the Creation of Wealth and the Patronage of the Arts”. Art is the culmination of Mankind’s achievements and the oldest evidence of its existence is in the Chauvet Cave.
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