Search results for "paleolithic figurine"
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Al cuore del fantastico. Ibridi da pensare nel Paleolitico
2022
Our narrative abilities go back before Chauvet. Already the ivory figure of the so-called Hohlenstein-Stadel Lion-Man, dated to about 40,000 years ago, must be regarded as the most advanced product of a hundred if not a thousand years of figurative and narrative experimentation. In order to create this hybrid figure, as well the more or less theriomorphic figures which populate caves all over the world, the human mind must have possessed developed narrative skills. All the imaginary animals found in prehistoric art and all the teratologies found in caves, presuppose a narrative, more precisely the story of a metamorphosis. In this contribution I propose an interpretation that investigates t…
Bodies That Matter: Miniaturisation and the Origin(s) of ‘Art’
2020
Small things matter, especially in the so-called ‘arts’. From the visual arts to music and literature, ‘miniatures’ are a transcultural and transhistorical phenomenon that involves our aesthetic attitudes but also our everyday life, our emotional, social and cognitive life. Miniaturisation characterises our cognitive life and, of course, the ‘cognitive life of things’ that we produce, manipulate and discard. My paper is articulated into two sections: the first gives a quick overview of the miniatures of Homo sapiens, especially those of the paleolithic age, and a brief survey of the very challenging history of miniature-interpretation in twentieth-century philosophy of culture. In the secon…