The art viewer is an anthropologist taking part in the ritual he investigates. Or, the viewing of a piece of art is a completion of the ritual initiated by the process of its creation. This is not to say that a piece of art without a viewer is akin to the proverbial toppling tree. The artist’s ritual is complete without the viewer because the drive to make art is not born in an effort to entertain. Rather, it is an essentially solitary challenge to the self to produce by hand what is conceived in the mind. This is accomplished in stages according to plans, formulae and habits.
By virtue of its relation to ritual, the drive to make art is rooted in what Sir James George Frazer described as a “misapplication” of “the association of ideas” – that is, the belief in sympathetic magic. “If we analyze the principles of thought on which magic is based,” he writes, “they will probably be found to resolve themselves into two: first, that like produces like, or that an effect resembles its cause; and second, that things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed. The former principle may be called the Law of Similarity, the latter the Law of Contact or Contagion. From the first of these principles, namely the Law of Similarity, the magician infers that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it: from the second he infers that what ever he does to a material object will affect equally the person with whom the object was once in contact, whether it formed part of his body or not. Charms based on the Law of Similarity may be called Homoeopathic or Imitative Magic. Charms based on the Law of Contact or Contagion may be called Contagious magic … Both branches of magic, the homoeopathic and contagious, may conveniently be comprehended under the general name of Sympathetic magic” (12-14).
This correlation between ritual, magic and visual expression is born out by one of the prevailing interpretations of Paleolithic art. “Magic beliefs,” writes Alberto Blanc, “including black magic, are widely evidenced in the Upper Paleolithic. The topographic location of engravings, paintings, and sculptures, often in the deepest and least accessible parts of the caves; the subjects treated; the almost constant alteration of the natural proportions of the human body; the fact that the same rock wall was repeatedly used and covered with successive artistic productions, covering one another and forming a sort of palimpsest, leave little doubt of the magic purpose of most of the Upper Paleolithic art.
“It is clear that the purpose has been not to ornament the properly inhabited part of the cave (i.e., the area neighboring the entrance, which is partly accessible to light or at least half-light) or to represent past events, but to promote the success of a future event that obviously had a major importance for the life of the community (a hunt, the increase of births, etc.). Once the event had taken place, the figures that had been engraved, painted, or sculptured lost any importance and purpose, and the same rock surface was used for new art productions. This was obviously a ‘sacred’ surface, since long stretches of wall just as suitable to be ornamented, and often more easily accessible, were left untouched” (120-121).
So, the earliest act of visually artistic creation was motivated by deeply rooted superstition, not even really “on view” (at the Gallery of the Deepest Darkest Cave in the Valley). Blanc does not hesitate to call this “art” (120). The cave paintings date to between 17 and 29,000 years old (Fagan 156).
Blanc continues, “If we try to penetrate the ideological world of Neanderthal man, our tentative analysis is hindered by the lack of any art production” (124). But he does describe “evidence of definite ideologies” between 40,000 and 60,000 years old (Larsen 204) in the form of a cannibalized skull. “The Monte Circeo skull, representing a late or typical Neanderthal […], about the age of 45 at death, was lying on the floor of a cave surrounded by a circle of stones. The skull bears two mutilations: one caused by one or more violent blows on the right temporal region that has caused conspicuous damage to the frontal, the temporal, and the zygoma. This mutilation points to a violent death more probably a ritual murder. The other mutilation consists of the careful and symmetric incising of the periphery of the foramen magnum (which has been completely destroyed) and the consequent artificial production of a subcircular opening […]
“Now,” continues Blanc, “this intentional mutilation is identical (author’s Italics) to one presently produced by head-hunters of Borneo and Melanesia with the object of extracting the brain and eating it for ritual and social purposes” (124-126). Blanc deduces that the Monte Circeo skull was produced by a ritual of similar character, and reinforces his deduction with the following observations: “the skull, after its mutilation, was laid on the floor in the center of an inner subcircular chamber of the cave and honored by a crown or circle of stones” ; “while the other chambers of the Circeo cave are littered with bones, antlers, and skulls, the one in which the Neanderthal skull was lying contained only three groups of a few bones each: one group lying between two big stones resting against the wall near the entrance; another one about two meters away from the skull …” (128).
Which also is very closely identical (artist’s Italics) to something I saw at the Whitney Biennial, though without the skull with the brain eaten out.
Professor Blanc is making a distinction. He classifies the cave paintings as “art” but not the remains of the Neanderthal-brain-eating ritual. But he is not clear on why these are different. Both are remnants of what he describes as ritual. In fact, the intent of the cave painters and the Neanderthal-brain eaters was the same. They were born out of the same misapplication of ideas – that a ritual action should translate into real-life actuality. None of these cave works was intended for an audience. Some could even argue that, since the cave paintings were not intended for an audience, they are not art either. I would argue that if the cave paintings count as art, and of course they do, though sadly that class is no longer available, then the remains of the Monte Circeo ritual is art too. Both are thoughtful arrangements of objects in a defined space. In a word, art. Thus, art is a habit that predates the species.
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