Art… so easy, a caveman could do it

In “Beginning the History of Art,” Davis concludes with a beautifully simple statement that still manages to embody the complexities and ambiguities of the beginning of art. He writes, “At the end of an artwork’s becoming whole, art history begins. Before that point, there is only the beginning of the history of art” (51). The first sentence states that art history, as discipline, begins with artwork, but of course that leaves us with the question “what is artwork?” The latter sentence contends that before “artwork” is a history leading to art, but again, what is that point in time? As the article shows, these questions have been debated in detail and yet are impossible to answer.

Because the origins of art cannot be truly known or defined, I find the question “why do we want to know” more compelling. However, first it is important to clarify that the study of the history of art is hardly similar to the artistic process being studied, and is in reality much more of a scientific process. It is a type of science that uses forensic evidence, demands proof, strives to classify and organize, and, like all sciences, to test its limits. The limits of art history clearly lie in the Middle Paleolithic period of human history. At this point, it is not even clear whether these “cavemen” could do art. Though, again, this is a matter of definitions of “art” and also becomes simply an issue of human evolution. So why is it important to us to clarify an origin of art in a time that is so unclear to us. Maybe it’s analogous to the biologist’s quest to discover how life on Earth began. Although knowing will hardly affect the present or the future, there is something comforting in knowing that your chain of links begins somewhere, that it is possible to imagine a complete chain. However, from this article I have formed the opinion that it is futile to try to classify the origin of the art, the missing link. The origin can only be imposed by our contemporary classifications. Changing the fundamentals of art from symbolicity, to depictiveness, to semiotics, or to an intentional mental process may push back the origin of art history, but it does not change the history of art.