WITH
ART ROCKS
ROCK ART!
You might say that rock art, such as the images created on the stone surfaces of the caves of Lascaux and Alti-mira, is the true origin of the canvas,
paintbrush, and painting media. In
other words, rock art was the very first
“art.” For there, within caverns deep
in the earth, the first artists mixed
animal fat, urine, and saliva with
powdered minerals to create paintings
on rocks in black, white, and red.
Many of these forms etched or
painted on rocks and rock surfaces are
strikingly abstract, while others are
so realistic one would think they were
created by a Baroque master. Lovely
Marianne Bickett
horses embedded in stone galloping
in herds across the plains with bison
superimposed over them produced
intriguing palimpsests of the time
when humans were first inspired to
express beauty and aspirations, and to
record events. These images, preserved
for epochs, have been found all over
the world, from the caves of Europe
to the more recent Native American
sites.
than inside caves. Fantastic anthropomorphic figures are as abstract as
work by Joan Miró and Paul Klee.
Recent artists of the New World, such
as Rufino Tamayo and Frank La Pena,
may have been influenced by these
lively human and animal, or biomorphic, forms on rocks.
Petroglyphs at the Newspaper
Rock site in Utah seem to tell stories
of events, while petroglyphs on the
Big Island of Hawaii show symbols of
mythic heroes. Along the Columbia
River in Oregon, a few fortunate survivors linger on a hillside that now
overlooks the river that was once the
site of thousands of petroglyphs now
