Caveman Art?

“Hall of the Bulls” Lascaux Cave. Courtesy of faculty.umb.edu

An open letter to the person in the black Maxima that was driving in front of me this afternoon on our way home from the library: I noticed you had a couple of bumper stickers on the rear of your car. Now as far as bumper stickers go, yours were pretty basic inflammatory-generalizations-that-you-force-random-strangers-to-read-while-they’re-stuck-behind-you-in-rush-hour-traffic. Now among your plethora on political slogans, fiery non sequitur quotes, and declarations about the current socio-political climate, I noticed one of your numerous opinionated buzzwords was the phrase “Advertisements are the new cave art.”

Now I am not one to judge your opinion on the expansive and diverse world of advertising, nor am I to know the reason you decided to broadcast that particular statement to the world, but I was rather disturbed by your proclamation that advertising (which I assume you deem as idiotic based on the context of the other obviously anti-consumerist stickers you placed on the back of the car) is like cave art.

In this statement, you are obviously implying that advertising is lowbrow, ignorant, and uncultured, like prehistoric cavern drawings. Now I will not deny that advertising can be quite bawdy and often downright trashy, but I’d hardly equate it to the prehistoric art of our ancestors. I find that quite slanderous to say that the beauty and sophistication of Paleolithic artwork is stupid or simplistic.

But then again, I realize that many modern-day Americans are quite unaware of how awe-inspiring Paleolithic art is. I know before school started, I believed that all cave art was “primitive” little stick figures scrawled on walls by dumb cavemen, without meaning or style. But in this past month alone I have studied over 30,000 years of Art History with my fantastic art teacher Ms. McHugh and have been enlightened to the wonderful and evocative images that our ancestors created on the walls of caves so many millennia ago.

“Hall of the Bulls” Lascaux Cave. Courtesy of wmich.edu

Take this example of Paleolithic (meaning “Old Stone Age”) art found in the Lascaux Caves in France. This is from the gorgeous “Hall of the Bulls”, a huge cavern that has an entire ceiling covered in absolutely fantastic paintings of horses, bison, bulls, aurochs (a prehistoric cow) and rhinoceroses all captured in breathtaking detail. Looking at pictures of the Lascaux Caves, you can practically hear the thunderous clattering of hooves on stone as the horses leap from wall to wall, their powerful dynamic movement expressed in bold oranges and earthy browns, forms outlined with rich black charcoal. The fur of the shaggy horses is expertly contrasted the smooth hides of bulls, who dance from one rock outcropping to another in a graceful balance of color and texture. These paintings are estimated to be over 17,000 years old! Some of the bulls are over 17 feet long and there are over 2,000 figures that grace the ancient walls. These wonderful images were created with only the light of torches, using the simplest of materials, burned sticks, natural pigments from berries, and minerals found in rocks to express their world.

Horses at Lascaux Cave. Courtesy of popular-archaeology.com

Another exquisite collection of cave art is found in Altamira Cave in Spain. Here, beautiful red bison and spotted horses stand serenely on the expansive cave walls. When Altamira Cave was discovered in 1880, historians were in an uproar because no one had ever imagined that supposedly simple prehistoric man could have produced such breathtaking art. Some historians even accused Altamira’s discoverers of having forged the images. But science in the form of uranium-thorium dating proved that these glorious images had been painted over 30,000 years ago.

So yes, Ms. Black Maxima, you are not to blame for your mindset that prehistoric man was a simpleton. Even the greatest minds of the 19^th century thought beautiful art was something our ancestors were incapable of. But it has been over 120 years since Altamira was discovered, and over 50 since Lascaux. Why then, as modern Americans, are we so unfamiliar to the fantastic art of our forefathers?

Do we think it is unimportant? Some silly doodles splatted onto walls of stone tens of thousands of years ago? Do we think that these paintings are not important to the history of mankind? Think about it, these people, simple hunter-gatherers who lived their short lives on the very edge of death in a frantic and never ending race for survival, took precious time out of their all-consuming fight for the right to live to draw these “silly” pictures on the walls. They infused their life, their soul, their very being into what they drew on those dark stone walls. Why did they do it? What is the use of drawing a picture of a bull when you must go out and slaughter one?

Bison from Altamira Cave. Courtesy of archaeological.org

I believe that these people, these cavemen, who had no written language to pass down their stories, had to make their children’s children remember. They had to write their lives on stone and keep their stories and their way of life from being forgotten. These people, these human beings gave us a slice of their life, a tiny sliver of how they thought and what they valued. Their entire lives centered around the hunt and that is what they showed us, the magical beasts who gave them sustenance in a perilous world.

Why should we care, you might say? Well, all the people who painted those walls, who lived in those caves, and were buried in that ground are dead now and we cannot remember a single one of them. Even if we miraculously find their bones, we can never know who they were, what their personality was like or even their names. These paintings, these “primitive scrawlings”, are all we have left of them. These walls are the last legacy of the people who are our great to the millionth power grandfathers. We would not exist if they hadn’t existed so I think they deserve a little bit of respect.

In conclusion Ms. Maxima, if you equate advertising to cave art, then you are basically saying that Burger King peddling a Whopper Junior is the same as our forefathers’ final testament to the beauty and hardship of their lives. I guess the moral of the story is, don’t stick a questionable bumper sticker onto your car if it concerns art history because then you’ll get a thousand word rant from Maddie Kurtz.

Handprints from Cueva de las Manos (Cave of Hands), Spain. Courtesy of fineartamerica.com

Watching Paint Dry

My back ached and my hands shook as I finished slathering White Olive Green No. 4 Paint on the edges and corners of the secondary master bedroom. My father pushed a long paint roller on the walls, each greenish-grey swathe it cut over the dark jade of the previous wall color sending a wet squishing sticky sound out into the fumed air. The steady purr of the large fan in the door harmonized with the rough scratching of my paintbrush on trim as I desperately prayed not to ruin the crown molding as I tried to keep up with my dad.

I stepped off my shaky stool that constantly reminded me with its squeaking wobbles that I was one misjudged reach away from toppling head over heals onto the floor and covering every surface from carpet to ceiling to nose with White Olive Green No. 4.

I wearily stretched my back, hearing the vertebrae audibly crack as I set down my cup of paint and paintbrush on the top of the stool and sat down cross-legged on the beige carpet. I was wearing some ancient enormous work overalls that had to have the legs rolled up six times before my feet poked out, and I reached out my weary short legs across the floor.

“How do people do this for a living?” I wondered out loud. “I have no idea.” My dad said with a laugh as he wiped the roller with a fresh coat of Olive White. “How much do we have left to do?” I asked tentatively as I gazed at the haphazardly colored walls that were patterned randomly with some patches of dark green poking out mischievously where they should have been covered in their rightful neutral grey. “Well…” My dad said as he leaned his roller against the ancient halogen lamp we only used to paint, that occasionally sputtered with smoke when dust got too close to the bright burning light, “We’ll need to give this room at least a second coat, then you’ll need to cut in the ceiling and the closet. We should probably cover up any splotches in the bathroom.”

I groaned with exhaustion and flopped down flat on the ground feeling my tired muscles smart in exhaustion. “You know, in the movies we’d be doing this in a training montage with upbeat music in the background and it would be over in 30 seconds.” My dad laughed and sat down next to me on the carpet. “If we were movie people the house would already be perfectly painted and organized by legions of set design people.” I laughed as we looked up at the ceiling and literally watched paint dry. “Wow.” My dad said as he lay down on his back examined his handiwork, “I really hate painting ceilings!” “Sort of like Michelangelo.” I chucked, “He thought painting was an inferior form of art because he was a sculptor. He despised painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling so much that he tried to run away from Rome when the Pope was away at war.” My dad furrowed his eyebrows and gestured up at our ceiling “I’d hardly compare this to the Sistine Chapel!” “Yeah…” I laughed, “Though then again, you aren’t going to be taking half a decade to complete this either… I hope.”

John & Maddie

I looked over at my dad and smiled, “Do you remember when we stayed up to watch the meteor shower… the Persieds I think?” My dad grinned, his head propped up against his arms. “Yeah. You were bundled up so much you looked like you were off to discover the North Pole or something.” I smiled and copied his pose with my head resting on my arms. “Well, I guess in a sort of way this reminds me of that, you know, just hanging out with my daddy.” “I think the meteor shower was a bit more interesting than staring at the ceiling.” My dad said with a smirk. “Nah!” I beamed, “We only saw, like, three shooting stars. Though this,” I said as I gestured at the ceiling, “This is way more awesome.”

“I think there’s an spider walking across the ceiling.” My dad said as he pointed up at the white expanse before us. I didn’t see anything. “You lie!” I teased. Though I nervously scanned the wall for the presence of aforementioned spiders. My dad laughed and sat up. “Man… we’ve got so much work to do.” He said with a sigh as he looked at all the walls that needed fresh coats and the trim that needed whitening and the tile that needed replacing. “We can do it!” I smiled and I hugged him tight and we went back to work.

A Work In Progress!

Why Do I Write?

There are 192 documents on my laptop computer; each one a rabbit hole of stories and ideas that never really found their ways out of my mind. Scores of characters, as real and human to me in the moment as any real live person are captured there in the raw form in the little digital folder on the screen of a computer, dozens of stories and plots and attempts at philosophy are found there as well. All are incomplete, unhewn blocks of ideas that seep from the overflowing cauldron of my conscious and unconscious mind. The pot gets too full, there are so many thoughts and ideas that simmer in my brain and eat at the back of my skull until I must, out of necessity, imprison them in a cage of paper.

Most plainly said, I write because I must. The cauldron must be poured out a bit before more brain-soup can be added. Because I tend to be a quiet and even anti-social human being, words must thus be written rather then said, a pen scratched on paper or words typed in front of a screen. But in any case, everyone must have a medium to speak their voice, however insignificant or uninspired, so they don’t go insane from all the pressure of ideas in their heads. The pressure can be intense, especially for an adolescent like myself; thousand existential crises plague our every hour. “Who am I?” “What is the nature of human interaction?” “Is our world to forever be flawed or is there hope of perfection?”

I know many great thinkers have pondered over the same questions that all humanity must contemplate at any given point in life.

I too have mused on my purpose in life: Who I am? What I was meant to do? Others have always told me that only I can detangle the knotted ball of my own raveled consciousness. I suppose writing is the way I can do that. My pen is the sword that slices through the knot of my philosophical ideas, if only to unwind the craziness of endless reasoning. Words on paper become real, definite, and concrete, the physical manifestation of the strongest cyclones of logic and theories that whirl through my mind. When the ideas can finally be spewed out of my brain, I can be freer; my mind can function better, like a computer that runs faster with a couple gigabytes of data moved to a backup drive.

In the end, I write because words written are real. Oral tradition comes and goes and evolves and changes, but writing is forever and perpetual. The words of others from centuries ago still read the same as then, and the words I write in documents on my dusty old laptop from almost a decade ago are still there untouched, a lasting testament to a fixed moment in time, a point in the life of a child that is no longer a child anymore. If I can capture an idea in time, like a photograph captures a moment, maybe then I can shed one more pinprick of light into the shadow of time forgotten.

The Junior Load

Junior Year

The great writers have said that hard work breeds a good work ethic and a good work ethic breeds success and success breeds greatness. Well judging by the strained and frantic faces of the students of the class of 2015, we are all going to be great because MAN they are working us hard!

I’m back Back to School only three days and already I feel the pressure. Seven academic classes are on my roster and not one of them offering any solace of ease or simplicity.All my teachers profess rigorous courses and hard grading, “You guys aren’t babies anymore…” One teacher said sternly the first day as he handed out a packet of homework to do over the weekend, “So we aren’t gonna treat you like babies anymore.”

The Stack

Junior year is notoriously classified as the most difficult year of high school, and this week I have discovered that that reputation is not just a lie to scare freshman. Mounds of liberally doled out homework pile up in my backpack as the day wears on, while each teacher emphatically promise that their class will take all our work ethic and willpower to pass. Let’s just say the physical toll of their enthusiasm is already giving me aches in both my head and my back (its one thing to assign a packet from the textbook to a kid, it’s quite another creature to make that kid walk 1.2 miles uphill with seven such textbooks weighing down on their sore shoulders in the hot August sun… uphill, both ways, in two feet of snow with no shoes… Oh wait, that’s Bill Cosby… nevermind

Yes I cannot wait to get other means of transporting myself from school, as walking home, while it may be building my rather nonexistent muscles, is quite a trying affair after a long day of realizing I know nothing at all. Well, hopefully I can get my driver’s license in October and cease to be one of the carless masses.

But school isn’t all bad of course. I fact, I am quite enjoying this intense and brain-challenging curriculum so far, despite my more complaining muscles protesting the workload. All my teachers are the type that are fantastic and very involved in what they teach. Each poses their respective subject as a new and exciting way to expand one’s mind and become a more sophisticated and well-rounded person. My Chemistry teacher speaks of matter and bonds between elements as the basis of our world, my AP US History professor talks of making us informed and responsible citizens of this great republic, my French teach tells us in langue français that we will be able to speak with confidence in a language not our own, my Algebra teacher states with solid certainty that she will lead us through the doors of mathematical knowledge and show us the basic truths of our world through numbers, my AP Art History professor declares we will become cosmopolitan connoisseurs of complicated images from across the span of human history, my Journalism teacher tell me she will make a plucky girl-reporter out of me, and my AP Language and Composition teacher states his class will change our lives and mold us into free-thinkers who can write about the human condition in the same way as the titans of literature.

Study, Study, Study!

To each teacher, we are a brain to be shaped and filled with knowledge until our minds threaten to burst at the seems. We are not a commodity to them, I don’t think, but sometimes it feels difficult to reconcile the reality of life to what they say. Can I become a free thinker in 45 minutes a day for nine months when I am being shaped into an art connoisseur at the same time? Is my brain elastic enough to be pulled in seven opposite directions without tearing? Is my back strong enough to bear the brunt of the seemingly numberless tomes that are piled in my outstretched hands? Will my fragile and delicate GPA survive this dark night of a thousand facts clawing for space in my mind? Can I do this?

My English teacher said today that there were three reactions to the realization of how much hard work we were expected to contribute to this class. 1) Give up. Transfer out. Sue him for being too hard. 2) Go home and eat 50 Twinkies and cry over the misery of your existence. 3) Become hungry for knowledge and find the will to put in the extra 110%.

Well, when I got home today I felt like #2. Maybe when I started writing this post I felt that way too, bemoaning my existence and wishing for a less challenging year. But I don’t want to live my life in fear. I don’t want to be afraid of my GPA falling so much that I don’t try to aim for the stars. Even if that means I’ll be doing ten hours of homework every night, I am not going to take the easy route. That is not who I was taught to be.

I am going to give my all for the Glory of God and am not going to give up without a fight. Bring it on Junior Year! I am ready!

End of rant.

I Will Overcome!

My Great Grandmother

Jean E. Witter
1916-2013

Grandma Jean, my mother’s father’s mother, was someone who I saw only once or twice a year, but nonetheless was a powerful molder of my life. My formative memories of her consist mostly of absentminded play with her sturdy wooden trucks, and dolls made of buttons on the large Oriental rug in her living room. My parents would make a pilgrimage to her home every time we visited Pennsylvania, and they would sit on the teal velvet couch and converse with Grandma Jean who sat on an old wooden chair opposite. They would talk about a myriad of subjects in the hour or two they would visit, and occasionally Grandma Jean would ask me a question about my elementary schooling or hobbies which I would dutifully answer before going back to pushing small iron trucks along the carpet.

Maddie & Jean 1997

To be honest, I wasn’t extremely close to her when I was young. Annual social calls to a house seven hundred miles away did little to foster much closeness in a small child who was invested in more important matters like playground controversies and all the little worms to be dug under the tree in her backyard.

Yet despite the distance, I did remember her always sending me cards. There were Easter cards, and Christmas cards, and Halloween cards, and of course, birthday cards with a crisp Andrew Jackson inside. Grandma Jean seemed to make up the formidable physical distance between the two of us through notes and cards and small pleasantries that tied me to her with amiability, when otherwise our relationship would be formal. As I grew older, I began to write her back, detailing bits of my day, struggles with school, and upcoming events, and she attentively wrote back. Over time, I began to know her better through writing.

As the years passed, the letters that corresponded between us became much more frequent and often much longer. She shared bits of her day with me: her outings to play bridge, her recent success at a button auction, her affinity for playing piano at the Old Folks Home where she played to seniors sometimes a decade her junior. Our semiannual visits to her house became more enjoyable; as we discussed the experiences we had told each other about, had our private jokes that had been read in letters, and Grandma Jean began to encourage me to write more.

Maddie & Jean – 2012

As we became closer, I also began to hear the stories she told of her life. Her tales of farm life during the Great Depression shocked and fascinated me, as did her seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of every portrait on the wall. She talked about my ancestors, people I had no previous connection with, who seemed to leap from the walls and become flesh and blood as she spoke of her memories of them, so crisp and bright in her mind. I was enraptured by her love of history, one of the few subjects I loved more than writing, and wanted to know more about her life and the history of my family that I knew was locked inside her mind.

I had so many questions, about her, about my heritage, about everything. It suddenly hit me while I was reading a book called “Wisdom” in the library about documenting the ideas and sagacity of the older generation that I needed to capture Grandma Jean’s life and legacy, her thoughts and memories. I was one of the few kids that had the blessing of having their great-grandmother not only alive and lucid, but also an astute collector of nearly a century of history, both personal and public. So I sent her a letter with about twenty questions that ranged from basic information like her parent’s names and numbers of Siblings to deep and complex questions like what she though my generation was lacking in our society.

The Interview – Nov. 2012

So on a chilly November afternoon, my mother and I drove to Grandma Jean’s house to conduct the interview. I set up the camera on my laptop, and pulled out my freshly printed-paper of questions, and Grandma Jean also uncovered her own list of questions, characteristically highlighted and annotated in RED with careful precision. The interview began with a few basic questions to act as guidelines, but soon, her words and stories pulled me into her captivating past.

She spun her tales of a life in what many of us modern Americans would think of as abject poverty. No running water, electricity, or even shoes during the summer (she said she and her siblings had to push the spiky corn stubble with their feet in order to walk on it without cutting themselves), but Grandma Jean spoke of her childhood with great fondness, highlighting a simpler time and a close-knit family. She told us about her mother, a tireless woman who’s industrious work ethic put three of her four daughters through college before 1940 by working the land of their family’s small farm during the day and sewing as a seamstress all night. Paradoxically, she said that the Great Depression hardly affected her family, as those who were already accustomed to thriftiness and had strong ties to the land had little to adjust to during such times of hardship. She told one particularly funny story about waiting for wartime rations of sugar and being amused by the antics of those who found the cutbacks inconceivably stingy. She laughed and said that her family had been economic with sugar for as long as she could remember.

She spoke to me about her teenage years, where she met her future husband at a basketball game where she, 5’9 then, was a center. She was diligent in her studies, top of her class, and beloved by her teachers and principals. She had a lifelong love of learning, which never tired, even after she raised two kids. She said that one of her favorite times in life was when she got to go back to college at age 50 first for German then switched to education because German was frowned upon in the early years after World War II.

2004

Grandma Jean kept on reiterating that hard work was ingrained into her very being, as was moderation, temperance, and spirituality. God and faith were integral to her very being, she said, and that when she was young, her family walked many miles to get to church on Sunday. When I asked her what she believed my generation was lacking, she replied that it was an absence or indifference of God in many young people’s lives. In her last days, she enjoyed when my mother and grandmother would read her scriptures, especially Micah 6:8, which she regarded as her favorite:

“He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

Grandma Jean was one of the strongest women I have ever known, careful and disciplined and very intelligent, I believe she helped me discover my gifts and encouraged greatness in those she knew. I love her so much and she will never cease to inspire me to always do my best.

Maddie Age 16

Grandma Jean Age 16

School Supplies!

Packed And Ready To Go

Seven binders, various colors. Three, 200 page packets of college ruled filler paper. Two packets of 8 notebook dividers. One hard pencil case. Two packs of Paper-Mate mechanical pencils, 12 per pack. Two rolls Scotch tape. Three fine point Sharpies. Two packs of blue and black ballpoint pens, two per pack. One pack of 24 colored pencils. One red pencil sharpener. Two Elmer’s glue sticks. One pair Fiskar’s safety scissors. One box of twelve highlighters, assorted colors. One packet of 360 index cards, assorted colors. One pocketed folder, detail of The Avengers. One pack of mint gum.

Seven classes, 180 days of school, about eight hours a day from 7:00 Am to 2:30. That is how long the piles of supplies I bought yesterday in a frenzied tax-free shopping spree must last me. I gazed over my mountainous pile of binders and saw my not-so-distant future, a future where I am carefully balancing a leaning-tower-of-Pisa-like stack of textbooks and binders as I run through the congested halls of my high school that swarms with throngs of busy students pushing their way to class. Five days till then, as of now, when I will once again walk through those school doors that I haven’t opened since my two month long summer hiatus began in late May.

I must say I am eager to start. I have always loved learning new things and meeting new teachers. I relish in the smell of new textbooks and the easy way unused binders click open without the swell of random papers inhibiting their movement. I love the feel of new clothes on my back and a new year to make my own.

My Heavy Load

But then again, I am also sad, not just because a new school year forces me to wake up at such an ungodly hour as 6 AM, but also because I realize that my childhood’s end is fast approaching. I will be a junior, 11^th grade, my penultimate year of high school in which I have 180 days to go before I am a senior. I am growing up and getting dangerously close to adulthood. It’s scary. Every year that passes by is another year I am farther from being a carefree little toddler who’s only worries were when she could play with her Barbies and postponing bedtime to as far back as possible. I’m getting old, which may sound funny from a sixteen year old, but when you think about it, we are all on an inexorable march toward our inevitable mortality.

In the end, there is very little space between being 16 and 20, 20 and 35, 35 and 50, and 50 and 80. While the days are long, the years are short and eventually, most of us will grow old, and all of us will die. Heavy stuff, I know, but transitions like going into a new year of school have the tendency to make me ponder the transience of human life. Our meager span of 70 odd years seems so swift and insignificant, over in a blink of an eye. How does one find their purpose quickly enough to capitalize on what short time one has left?

Luckily, I have found my purpose early in life. Loving and obeying God and serving others is the greatest objective a person can have. A relationship with Him is the only thing that can save from the crushing hopelessness and finality of death, both in the literal and the spiritual sense. Love for God is the only thing that can give me true fulfillment, and love for God is the only thing that will bring me peace.

Now I gather all my many school supplies and stuff them into my bulging backpack, ready to be picked up and taken into a new year. Although weighed down by all my heavy books and binders, I look up and murmur a small prayer for His guidance through the year. I will work hard and do my best, but in the end, it is all up to Him.

Stuffed To The Gills!

Maddie Kurtz.com

The Inner Workings of my Eccentric Grey Matter

Monthly Archives: August 2013