The Walls of Art and The Walls of War
Existing throughout the history of human kind is art and war. Art attempts to communicate sensitive feelings and reach for some kind of harmony in nature and of social graces. Primitive art such as cave and rock art was the means to seek some kind of order out of the chaotic universe such as in the violent forces of nature in the dawn of human emergence as a species. Art is usually categorized into three domains: functional art concerns with survival; fine art with beauty; fashion art with the conformity with social rules. Art came before the sophisticate communication art of speech and writing which broadened the complicate system of human interrelation.
The Magdalenian art system began during the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age period, 40,000 to 10,000 BC, with cave art and rock art. This period covered two third of the total time that humanity has been making art. First was body art as tatooing and cosmetics. Then it moved into more abstract realms of the setting around primitive people and reached outward into the mysterious firmament above them that consisted of the movement of the heavenly bodies of the sun, moon and stars.
Cave art portrays human hands, animals and their tracks, and geometric signs and symbols. In cave art, the methods and the materials rendered the utilization of scientific factors beyond their capability even to conceptualize the sciences. First there were finger drawings in soft clay on rock surface; engraving with sharp flints and stone picks. To give variety, striking colors and depth to their art works, the primitive artists employed different types of rock and rock formation. The first colors were red, iron oxide, hemahite that gave the color of red ochre; black in mannganese dioxide, juniper and pine carbons; white from kaolin and mica. At Lasscaux, pestles and mortars were mixed together from over 158 different mineral fragments. Pigment was formed even from human skull with cave water mixed with the calcium from the skull. Binders were from vegetable and animal oil. They sprayed paints and used stencils. Bird bones were used as blow pipes and tubes to apply paints.
Neolithic or New Stone Age marked the change from nomad to agricultural culture. Beside the art of painting potteries there was rock art. Megalithic monuments were built as menhirs or henges. Menhirs are upright stones arranged in formations. Henges are stone circles surrounded by a bank or ditch. In Canac, England, the sculpture park Menec has 11 parrallel megalith covered over 1,000 yards with 1,099 granite stones. The stones using are more colossal even than those of Egyptian pyramids. Stones weighing at least four tons were moved from the distance of at least 20 miles to the sites. Stonehenge, also in England, was described as "the original alignment of its entrance passages was to the most northernly rising of the full moon in midwinter through six lunar cycles of 20 years each" (author forgotten).
These primitive art systems seem to be the communual effort to create a sense of order and control in the chaotic universe made harsh by the powerful forces of nature. It was to introduce some regularity, predictability such as in recording the distinction between the seasons and even time itself, and also to reach out to create a connection between the heavenly bodies of the stars above the mysterious firmament and the fate of human kind below.
Civilization continues with conflicts and wars. Mankind continues to strive for justice and the welfare of the multitude with the conception of equality. Art is still the instrument to reach for an understanding of truth, in the effort to tame the harder side of human nature, and to embellish their world and enhance the meaning of life amidst confusion, in forging the expression of the attempt to merge peacefully in human social life.
On the occasion of the commemoration of the 32nd anniversary of April 30th, 1975, the granite stone structure of the Vietnam War Momemorial wall in Washington D.C. speaks plenty for the role of art in bridging the hearts and the proclaiming of the power of the human spirit, especially in the matter of violence in life and in death. As the modern world has celebrated the falling of the Berlin Wall, we should ponder deeper the building of walls in Israel; at the border of the United States and Mexico; worse, the 3-mile wall the American military gives itself the right to cave in the neighborhoods of Baghdad, Iraq! From the walls of peace to the walls of war, the role of art in human civilization distinguishes the difference. May we reach deeper into our common humaness and contemplate the healing power of art as our true sensibility for peace and harmony and disagree with the building up of those divisive walls of war!
