Abstract
In 1953, Georges Bataille wrote that the prehistoric cave paintings at Lascaux constituted the “birth of art” and thus the human. Focusing not only on its iconic imagery but on the animal substances that made the images possible, my paper reframes this origin as not a purely symbolic rupture from animality but a deeply material entanglement with it. Drawing from methods in critical animal studies, art history, and media archaeology, the study foregrounds the use of animal by-products—specifically fat, bone, and collagen—in the production of Paleolithic pigments and binders. These corporeal remnants, harvested from hunted species, shaped the earliest known artistic practices. I argue that an attention to the transformation of animal bodies into art materials at Lascaux and elsewhere is foundational to understanding human image culture. The paper dovetails with my primary work on the role of gelatin—a derivative of animal collagen—in the development of modern film-based photography. By tracing the persistence of animal-derived substrates from cave painting to silver gelatin photography, I reveal a lineage of artistic dependence on animal bodies that both registers and obscures animal presence. In both cases, visual culture emerges not merely as a human endeavor but as an interspecies encounter in which specific animals become materially embedded in the image. This genealogical approach reorients the discourse of art’s origins, unsettling the presumed divide between nature and culture, human and animal, and shows that animal death is often the condition of possibility for many forms of image-making.
Presenters
Corey RatchFellow, Kunsthistorisches Institut, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Ordinary Practice and Collective Behaviors
KEYWORDS
Prehistoric art, Photography, Animal Studies, Material Culture, Media Archaeology
