Catagorization of Art

Whitney Davis in his "Beginning the History of Art" discusses the apparent dangers in interpreting pre-historic art. Not only interpretations, but the beginnings of interpretations. Further, the word "pre-historic" is criticized as neglecting the importance of time and art before its contemporary understandings. Throughout Davis' essay, he declaims methods of placing pre-historic art in context, rather, in relation to other art, claiming it in once sense to be "beyond compare."

I agree with this conjecture from a philosophical perspective because how can one really accurately describe a piece of art and place it in relation to other pieces? It can be done by era, style, artist, however in its basic sense artistic pieces stand alone as works of art. Davis cites the discovery of "Figurine" from Berekhat Ram and how it "the pebble might look something like a female figure." However, as soon as we utter a comparison, that is, to parallel the pebble to a female figure, Davis argues references of comparisons between the figure and Upper Paleolithic images of women are recalled thus creating a link between the Figurin and another class of collected art. I believe the point is that by virtue of speculating what the art piece is about, we neglect all other possibilities of what the pebble could be. By placing it in comparison to another object or idea, we immediately limit what it could be. And in the context of pre-historic art, assumptions of culture and intention should be made carefully since as investigators we are so far removed from the art piece most obviously by chronology.

Yet, I find Davis does not offer viable solutions to interpreting "the impossible links" we find in art. In fact, the way he defines "the impossible link" as "contained, autonomous objects" we could conceivably define any and all art pieces as "impossible links" at least in the context of individual consciousness and so, beyond comparison to anything else.