Opening Night at the Cave Painting Gallery

The cave paintings deep in the interior of the caverns of Lascaux rank as one of the finest achievements of early man, indeed of all mankind through all the millennia.

For the first time man had taken the cognitive leap to transfer images in his head onto an physical surface.

The animals are rendered in realistic terms that no one thought Neanderthals of the times were capable of, but the totality of the experience goes beyond realism into something more universal, more ethereal, and more moving overall.

Are these animals depicted as prey? As objects of worship? As common inhabitants, brothers even, with Newborn Man, of this pulsing green world?

The man who stepped back, put down his colors and his tools, and gazed upon his work must have done so in a mood of wonderment and pride.

Of course his friends were there too.

Bog the Critic:  Hey, Glog, whatchya got going there?

Glog the Artist: Oh, nothing special. Unless you call a vast leap forward for nascent mankind nothing special. I call it ‘art.’

Bog the Critic: Art? There on the wall? What’s it supposed to be?

Glog the Artist: What’s it supposed to be? Do you need glasses when they’re finally invented 70,000 years from now? It’s those big animals we hunt and kill and eat, gazelles, wildebeests, or bison or whatever we end up calling them. That’s still up the air. The ones with the horns. You know, they have horns and everything.

Bog the Critic: (squinting). I guess I can kinda see it. You got the horns wrong though.

Glog the Artist (recognizing even in these early innings that the artist has to pitch his wares pretty hot and heavy to make a dent in a crowded marketplace): Kinda see it? The images practically leap off the wall at the viewer. It’s like a direct connection to your soul.

Bog the Critic: I suppose. Umm...

Glog the Artist: Umm what? Go ahead, say it. Umm what exactly?

Bog the Critic: Well, why did you do it?

Glog the Artist: Call it the swelling sense of our own humanity, Bog. A crying need to express my inner yearnings and a shout of defiance into the darkness. Call it what you will, but I tell you we are at a moment in time.

Mog the Unthinking Follower of the Critical Crowd: (joining the other two) What are you guys doing?

Glog the Artist: Tell him, Bog.

Bog the Critic: Well, our friend here, Glog, has gone off the deep end. I say that with all the good will in the world and a willingness to give him the benefit of the doubt. You see, all this time we could have been eating carrion and throwing our enemies off of cliffs and whatnot he’s been in here, umm, what do you call it, Glog?

Glog the Artist: Painting. Cave painting in fact.

Bog the Critic: He’s been in here painting. Depicting the inner state of his soul through the few harsh mediums available to our primitive times, if you can believe such a thing. Am I being fair, Glog?

Glog the Artist: Reasonably fair, I suppose, for a caveman, especially if that caveman is you. You see, the whole point is to capture these spectacular animals and our interactions with them in the moment. Here, right now! Isn’t that what art is? A glimpse into the inner soul?

Bog the Critic (in a musing manner, looking for just the right words, gazing off into the middle distance): But I have to say that the artist’s reach has exceeded his grasp in this instance. His command of his technical resources is sadly lacking and he often settles for the mundane when what the viewer wants is the transcendent. I’m just not buying it. You get it all wrong somehow. Did I mention there’s something off about the horns?

Mog the Unthinking Follower of the Critical Crowd: (peering at the various scenes on the wall. Stroking his beard in a thoughtful manner.) Yes, the horns, and the hooves are deeply unsatisfying, and you really get no sense of perspective at all. (But trying to avoid outright unkindness.) But it’s a good start, Glog! Better luck next time. Maybe mankind will be good at this in a few thousand years or so. It does make me hungry though. Hey, you guys want to scrape the marrow from the bones of that carcass under the big tree?

Glog the Artist: A good start?! What do you mean it’s a good start? It’s a great leap forward!

Mog the Unthinking Follower of the Critical Crowd: Oh, very nice, to be sure, to be sure. ((Long pause as he recognizes that he is being directly challenged. Bringing out the big guns.) If you like that sort of thing.

Glog the Artist: If you like that sort of thing? What kind of thing is that to say?

Bog the Critic: (Anxious to retake the lead in setting the rules of the critic’s game for the next few eons and jumping right in.) Yes, Mog is on to something I think, in his own clumsy way. I can see where you thought you were going with this novice piece…

Glog the Artist: Novice piece? What other kind of piece could it be? It’s the first work of art ever created by mankind!

Bog the Critic (hurrying on): ….but I have to say it seems somehow….derivative.

Mog the Unthinking Follower of the Critical Crowd: (stroking his chin some more.)  Yes, derivative, the very word. All very nice, as I say, my friend, but don’t you think it’s been done? I mean, done to absolute death if you want to know the truth?

Well, I mean to say, galloping animals, flying hooves, a bunch of human handprints, arrows, some numinous sense of the presence of an abiding World Spirit and a kind of Universal Connection Between All of Life….nice, perfectly nice, but not what I would call cutting edge. A bit playing to the lowbrow crowd, wouldn’t you say, Bog? To the unwashed masses?

Bog the Critic: Well, we’re Neanderthals, so overall our brows are pretty damned low as it is, and as far as I know no one on earth has yet taken a bath as such, but I take your point and accept it as a metaphor, which is how I think you meant it.

Mog the Unthinking Follower of the Critical Crowd: Exactly so.

Glog the Artist: Where did you guys learn to talk like this?

Mog the Critic: Oh, Glog, you’re still here? Oh, call it the vocabulary of critical insight. It simply comes upon you when you stand in front of something that someone else has created. You just get this overwhelming urge to say something snotty. You should see what we do to the guys who are inventing poetry around the sacred fire at night. Hoo boy.

Mog the Unthinking Follower of the Critical Crowd: Hoo boy is right. It’s not pretty, I’ll grant you that. But the stuff they’re bringing, rhymed couplets for heaven’s sake, I mean at some point, you have to…

Bog the Critic: At some point you have to step forward and simply demand that the artist attend to standards.

Mog the Unthinking Follower of the Critical Crowd: Or at least attend to us, which is more or less the same thing.

Steve: (wandering in and munching on items from a small plate in his hands):  Man, great hors d'oeuvres, Glog, though the white wine’s a little…well, insipid might be the word. I’m sure it means well though. Say, Mog and Gog, I never thought I’d see you guys here! I didn’t know you were into modern art.

Mog the Unthinking Follower of the Critical Crowd: Modern art? Modern art? What’s that?

Steve: Oh, well, that’s a question and a half, isn’t it? Let’s just say that broadly the category captures artists that step out of traditional representation, and more towards abstract concepts. Well, take Glog here. These fine images are a perfect example.

Bog the Critic: They are?

Steve: Of course. (Striking an assessing stance.) We see here an artist who is more concerned with capturing the spirit of the world than simply transcribing it. I mean any competent draftsman can do that, yes?

Bog the Critic: He can?

Steve: Here you see, looking upon it, how it brings all the chaos and churn of the world to the viewer’s eye, as though capturing the flow in life in stop motion. It’s an unsophisticated viewer indeed who thinks the artist’s vision is meant to be taken as a straightforward narrative. It’s clearly presented as an allegory.

Mog the Unthinking Follower of the Critical Crowd: What’s stop motion?

Steve: Oh, it hasn’t been invented yet, but you don’t need to know exactly what it is.

(He pauses, meaningfully)

All the viewer needs to know is that modern art exists, an entire critical vocabulary has been overturned, and what once was viewed as primitive or limited is now celebrated as tapping directly into these souls of ours which we’re just now figuring out we have.

I mean if the critic doesn’t ‘get’ that, the listener has the right to ask what exactly does he get? (As if something just occurred to him.) And besides anyone that doesn’t ‘get it’ we throw to the wolves when no one is looking. Metaphorically speaking of course. Sort of. Well, not really. We really do throw them to the wolves.

Bog the Critic: (Adjusting to the new reality.) I was just about to say the same thing. (Stroking his chin and gazing at the images again.) Yes, not a perfect example of the category, but not bad, not bad.

Mog the Unthinking Follower of the Critical Crowd: I agree with whatever he says.

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And so the long afternoon wears on, another encounter with the arts, and if we can agree on one thing, we can agree that Glog is extremely lucky in his choice of friends. Every artist should have a friend like Steve.