THE MANY METAMORPHOSES OF LASCAUX

ÉDITIONS

SYNOPS

THE ARTIST’S STUDIO: FROM PREHISTORY TO TODAY

Text by Pedro Lima Photographs by Philippe Psaïla Preface by Jean Clottes, Scientific Advisor Translated by Venetia Bell

ÉDITIONS

SYNOPS

Les mĂŠtamorphoses de Lascaux The Many Metamorphoses of Lascaux

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The Many Metamorphoses of Lascaux

MAP OF THE LASCAUX CAVE

THE HALL OF THE BULLS 2

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THE AXIAL GALLERY 1

THE PASSAGEWAY 4

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THE NAVE

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THE SHAFT THE APSE 7

Wall line

Zones reproduced at Lascaux II

Ground line

Zones reproduced at the Lascaux International Exhibition Zones not reproduced

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The Artist’s Studio: From Prehistory to Today

SUMMARY

PREAMBLE PREFACE

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INTRODUCTION

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1 - A NEW LIFE FOR LASCAUX

4 - A FORGOTTEN LASCAUX COMES TO LIGHT

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2 - LASCAUX II: THE GREAT ADVENTURE

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3 - THE EMOTION OF LASCAUX RENDERED TO PERFECTION

ANNEXES

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The Many Metamorphoses of Lascaux

A DISCOVERY FOR ETERNITY

On September 12, 1940, just a few months after the fall of

France, four teenage boys left the little village of Montignac in the Dordogne, and chanced upon one of the most important archeological finds in history.

The oldest boy in the group, Marcel Ravidat lived in Montignac like Jacques Marsal. Georges Agniel came from Nogent-surSeine in the Champagne-Ardennes region and was on vacation at his grandmother’s house. Simon Coencas had fled Montreuil, a suburb of Paris, to seek refuge with his family in the Free Zone. That Thursday morning, the four friends set out to explore a hole that Marcel and his dog Robot had remarked four days earlier. It was a few hundred yards from what was known as the “Lascaux” manor house on the hill overlooking the Vézère River south of Montignac. In fact, the young explorers were not really hunting for archeological vestiges at all. It was a mythical treasure they were after!

After widening the hole, they threw some stones into it and the echo convinced them that it must be connected to a cavity. Marcel Ravidat, followed by his companions, was the first to climb in on all fours. A few yards further on, the narrow passageway widened and became a gallery leading at last to a cave. Once they found themselves in a vast circular cavity, later known as the Hall of the Bulls, the young men did not even notice that they were objects of interest to the impassive eyes of the majestic painted aurochs on the ceiling. Their own eyes were not yet accustomed to the dark, and the feeble light of their two homemade oil lamps did little to dissipate it.

Only when they reached a narrower corridor, now called the Axial Gallery, did the group discover with stupefaction an extraordinary sight: polychrome cows, stags and horses by the dozens that looked as if they were leaping across the milkycolored ceiling and walls.

After an hour spent exploring in the semi-darkness, the four boys had seen most of the smallish subterranean network and discovered large numbers of paintings. The next day, in the greatest secrecy, they returned with a rope and slid down to the bottom of a shaft that opened up in a recess of the cavity. It was a new revelation that awaited them on the light ochre wall: a fantastic man with the head of a bird seemed to

1.Three of the four young discoverers of Lascaux (Jacques Marsal, Marcel Ravidat and Georges Agniel) in the company of schoolteacher Léon Laval.

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be falling backwards beside a menacing bison with its guts trailing from its abdomen. Painted more than 20,000 years ago, today the famous Shaft Scene is considered to be the quintessence of prehistoric art.

It was only with the widening of the entryway on September 18 that a retired village schoolteacher, Léon Laval, who had been let into the secret, entered the sanctuary. This learned gentleman immediately grasped the immense importance of the discovery and in turn had Henri Breuil alerted. Breuil, who had taken refuge in the nearby town of Brive, was a priest and the uncontested authority on prehistory at the time. He visited it as early as September 21, 1940. “It’s almost too beautiful!” he declared as he left the cave, before writing the first official report on Lascaux and its paintings, published at the end of 1940 in the Perigord historical and archeological society bulletin. The cave was listed as an historical monument by the French state on December 27, 1940.

This marked the beginning of Lascaux’s new life. Decorated centuries ago by artists of genius, condemned, and consequently protected, by the collapse of the original overhang, Lascaux awoke from its long slumber one day in 1940, thanks

A New Life for Lascaux

IN THE WORDS OF… Jacques Marsal, co-discoverer of Lascaux “We arrived in Lascaux with the idea of finding a treasure. So we went down the hole, courageous but not foolhardy, with a little lamp that was a kind of a grease pump with kerosene. We could hardly see anything. We crossed the Hall of the Bulls without seeing the paintings. It was when we got to the Axial Gallery where the walls get narrower that our eyes grew accustomed to the light and we saw that the ceiling was covered with paintings (…). Then we went with the Parisians to see Monsieur Laval. At the beginning he was very skeptical because he thought his former students were playing a practical joke on him (…). We managed to convince him to climb up the hill. But when good old Laval saw the hole, he didn’t want to go down it. We went and got spades and pickaxes and dug a sort of starter ditch that reached up to the top of the first scree. There we made some rough steps so that our teacher could go down. And when he arrived in the Hall of the Bulls, he said, “Oh shit!”

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to four adventuresome teenagers. A new and frenzied life had begun in which eminent experts, but also millions of visitors attracted by the increasingly frequent articles in the press, would file in front of its walls, leaving widespread damage in their wake.

Extracts from a lecture by Jacques Marsal at the Musée de l’Homme, Paris, on October 14, 1986, quoted in “Dictionnaire de Lascaux”, 2008.

As for the young explorers, history was to separate them for many years. Coencas and Agniel returned to their home regions, the former only just escaping deportation thanks to his youth. Until 1942, Marcel Ravidat and Jacques Marsal, who had remained in the village, stood guard in front of the cave day and night. Most likely, their continuous presence protected it from deterioration or worse, vandalism, considering the unprecedented interest it had provoked in the Dordogne region and beyond. This was before Ravidat joined the Resistance and Marsal was sent to Germany as part of the compulsory work service decreed by the Vichy government.

The two boys later became de facto guides when the cave was opened to the public in 1948. It was only in 1986, forty-six years after their fabulous discovery that the group met again in Lascaux. Four pioneers to whom we owe the rediscovery of one of humanity’s most magnificent treasures.

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2. Entrance to Lascaux in 1940. Left to right: Léon Laval, Marcel Ravidat, Jacques Marsal, and Abbé Henri Breuil.

3. In the Hall of the Bulls, Lascaux cave, October 1940.

In the center, Count Henri Bégouën and Abbé Henri Breuil. Sitting in the foreground, two of the young discoverers: Jacques Marsal (in profile) and Marcel Ravidat (full face).

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The Many Metamorphoses of Lascaux

UNDER THE SIGN OF THE BULL

The Hall of the Bulls

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he entrance to Lascaux II is reached by a staircase that plunges underground into the hill. Once the eyes grow accustomed to the darkness of the antechamber, a heavy metal door opens. A few steps inside a circular chamber, lamps light up, and the shock is electrifying.

Magically, a polychrome animal farandole commences on a circular wall under the vault of the cavity. The spectacle is truly startling. Ochre and yellow stags, brown horses, red cattle and bison seem to be bursting with energy as they leap and gallop amidst mysterious geometric signs.

But above all, four immense black bulls, or aurochs springing from the depths of time, detach themselves from a background of immaculate white calcite. We are in the Great Hall of the Bulls, an absolute masterpiece of Paleolithic ar t. At first sight, what impresses us most? Perhaps it is the intense regard of those four huge aurochs, made even deeper by the particular black derived from manganese dioxide. From their privileged position on a panel overlooking a rocky ledge, they seem to be watching us from the corners of their eyes, as though they were impervious to our intrusion. There can be no doubt that the Solutrean-Magdalenian painters wished to create a dramatic effect and inspire the respect that these four powerful mammals command at first glance: by their stature, their size, but also their dominant position. Thus from the ver y first seconds within the sanctuar y, the visitor is overcome by a feeling of admiration, mixed with

23. Detail of the first great aurochs in the Hall of the Bulls at Lascaux II, and a symbolic sign, painted in manganese dioxide and red ochre.

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fear. A feeling perhaps that the uninitiated already had 20,000 years ago when they entered the site to attend its mysterious ceremonies. For it becomes obvious when in the presence of these majestic aurochs, that Lascaux, like all decorated caves of the Upper Paleolithic era, was a religious sanctuary. Even if we know nothing, or almost nothing, of the myths recounted on the walls and the rites that were performed in front of them.

A closer look reveals that in fact six bulls adorn the rotunda. However, the first of them, placed on the left wall just past the entrance to the chamber, is only partially visible due to the flaking off of a piece of rock that has taken the pigments with it. This accident is faithfully reproduced at Lascaux II in a concern for objectivity. Only the quadrangular muffle of the animal remains visible.

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24. View of the four great aurochs in the Hall of the Bulls, painted below the vault of the cavity. The room counts a total of 36 animals, among them 17 horses, 6 bulls, 6 stags and a bison.

25. (following pages) Panoramic view of the Hall of the Bulls. In total, 130 figures were painted on the corbelled panel covered with calcite. The majority of them are signs.

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