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Dawn of Art: the Chauvet Cave
Discover 18. 12 (Dec, 1997): 72 (2 pages)
Review
Dawn of Art: the Chauvet Cave. Jean-Marie Chauvet, Eliette Brunel
Descamps, and Christian Hillaire; with an epilogue by Jean Clottes;
translated by Paul G. Bahn. Harry N. Abrams, 1996, $39.95.
In January 1995 the world first got a glimpse of an artistic masterpiece
that had been hidden in darkness for 30,000 years. A few weeks earlier,
three explorers had stumbled into a cave in southern France
decorated with dozens of paintings of horses, bison, lions, and other
Pleistocene creatures. These spectacular images are scientifically revolutionary
because they drop-kick the origin of art back many thousands of years
before the earliest dates scientists had previously offered. This coffee-table
book comes with a workmanlike narrative of the discovery of the Chauvet
cave (named for one of the discoverers), as well as a long, fascinating
epilogue by a leading expert on European cave paintings, Jean Clottes,
that fleshes out the scientific study of the images. Since chances are
that only archeologists will ever get to go inside the Chauvet cave, the
rest of us are fortunate to have available the book's many bright, asp,
and mesmerizing photographs.
©1997 Walt Disney Company
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