What is it about?
Demonstrates how the perceptual abilities of Upper Paleolithic hunters primes their visual system to project images of animals onto suggestive natural cave features in subdued lighting conditions that created the motivation to fixate such projections by drawing or painting the outlines.
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Why is it important?
This paper presents a novel approach to understanding the paradoxes of Upper Paleolithic art by drawing on evidence from perceptual psychology and visual neuroscience.
Perspectives
Most studies have looked at Upper Palaeolithic art from a symbolic "top down" perspective. In this paper I take a "bottom up" approach based on recent finding from perception and visual neuroscience that provides a new analytical framework
Derek Hodgson
University of York
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Visual Dynamics of Upper Palaeolithic Cave Art, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, October 2008, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/s0959774308000401.
You can read the full text:
Resources
The visual brain, embodiment and the first visual cultures: what can they tell us about ‘art’
Youtube video. Hodgson, D. 2014 (September 6th – 7th). “The visual brain, embodiment and the first visual cultures: what can they tell us about ‘art’ ”. Presented at the 11th International Conference on Neuroesthetics, “Seeing and Knowing, Vision, Knowledge, Cognition, and Aesthetics” sponsored by the Minerva Foundation at the University of California (Berkeley), USA.
The Visual Dynamic Theory of Upper Palaeolithic Art
Personal website with copious illustrations of the utilization and influence of natural features in Upper Paleolithic art
Contributors
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