But is it art? How stories give art meaning

Hands at the Cuevas de las Manos upon Río Pinturas, near the town of Perito Moreno in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina. Picture by Mariano Cecowsk in 2005.

In 1989, in company of two students — one of whom is now also a Fellow of the Academy — an old grazier guided us to Yulluna rock art near Cloncurry, NW Queensland on what he regarded as “his” property saying, “not that I would call them art, so much as scribbles.” We put this down to cultural differences between him and us—he was rich, we were not.

Thirty-five years later, I completed a book, Art or Scribbles? exploring the evolution of art, starting from that conversation, and taking seriously the insecurity many archaeologists feel about using the word “art” to name what we deal with. A referee of an earlier paper made me aware of the attitude of many art historians that only the “fine” art that they study (mostly produced after the 18th-Century) is worthy of the name—a further example of cultural imperialism.

So, is rock art “just” scribbles, or can it be called “art” such that “fine art” people can appreciate it too. Archaeologists use the word “art” in a way that defines our membership of a particular cultural group; art historians use it in a different way to define theirs. Is there a way to get over the privileges of such memberships?

Society decides what is or isn’t “Art”

I reached the conclusion that art is not a property of objects, but as Columbia University Professor Esther Pasztory (1943-2024) said, “It is society that decides what is and what isn’t art.” We need to look at the relationship between the artist who made the art and the people who see it, and also at the subject the artist sought to represent (say, the subject of an Archibald portrait) and the object they produced.

In more complex circumstances, the subject of the painting is an idea or image in the mind of the artist. The subject of the portrait is just as much the artist’s mental image of their subject as any often more abstract entity, what Leonardo da Vinci called a cosa mentale.

Finally, these relationships are tied together by the stories the artist tells and those the seers understand and then go on to tell. Art achieves its status because of these stories and art is always about the interactions between these stories and the the four elements — the artist, the subject, the (art) object, and the seers. That is part of how cultural differences and privileges are created.

Relating beginnings of art

The beginnings of art are more complicated and involve how human cognition evolved. I have, previously, emphasised the making of marks. The important point here is that people make marks and notice them. The prime early example is hand (and other) stencils. People come to expect that the marks can carry meaning, but, even in the case of the hand stencil, that meaning is indeterminate, except that it is an image of a hand. We do not know whose hand it was, or why it was that person who marked the place then and there. But we know it is an image that carries an indeterminate meaning.

Ways to make meaning clear

Dürer’s Hare, painted in 1502. (Albertina Museum, Vienna)

A large amount of the history of art, both early and later, is about how people came to reduce that indeterminacy, initially perhaps by telling a story about a repeated type of mark. Sometimes they reduced the indeterminacy through iconicity.

For example, when the marks look like bits of a subject in the real world (say, Dürer’s Hare) or by representing scenes in which a series of marks look as if the objects (animals, say) are interacting with each other, and thereby tell a story (say, two fawns and their mother).

Other times iconicity is produced through representing well-known stories such as religious or classical tales (da Vinci’s The Last Supper) or by telling new stories that the artist has illustrated with the marks they made (Velázquez’s Las Meninas). And, iconicity can also be produced through the rituals associated with the acts of making marks.

People, therefore, make art communicate a meaning to others that is different from the marks that make it.

Photo of 19,000-17,000 years old plaquette from Parpalló, País Valencia. Several plaquettes depict horses, goats, deer, as well as carnivores and birds. (Photo Valentín Villaverde with permission).

Changes in communication and the 3 tyrannies

This complex interaction between marks and meaning created a further peculiarity. All later changes in communication involved changes in the material circumstances of that communication: writing, printing, communication at a distance (semaphore, telegraph and radio), and now digital communication. Robin Derricourt FAHA uses a similar hierarchy in his recent book. But with that material consequence, went fundamental other changes. We all know the phrase “the tyranny of distance” because Geoffrey Blainey FAHA wrote about it. Graeme Davison FAHA described how when one travelled in planes instead of ships, the distance remained the same but time was reduced. This is an example of how art and its material changes overcame several tyrannies, and art of one sort of another contributed to overcoming them:

• the tyranny of place—rock art, for example, persisted in one location, until it was produced on portable media such as bone fragments or stone plaquettes.
• the tyranny of power—senior individuals or institutions lost control over access to the stories associated with the art—when multiple copies were produced by printing.
• the tyranny of time—the ability to access and then distribute identical versions as a result of printing.
• the tyranny of time and place—the ability to transfer the same story from one place to another very quickly, as with semaphore. In Australia this was achieved through the authority of message sticks, then by carrying messages in a “cleft stick”, and later through the telegraph.

Image of message stick from north-west Queensland published by Roth in 1897. The nested arcs at the top left are an example of the sort of sign that can be found across Australia in rock art from the Pilbara to the Selwyn Ranges.

Songlines & art

Australia is criss-crossed by songlines which relate places to mythological songs and stories that others can tell with more authority than me. In some instances, rock art sites mark places on those songlines which link together places across the country, largely because most (perhaps all) instances of art were accompanied by songs. The well-known rock art of Australia consists of clusters of images in, at least, the Kimberley, Kakadu, Cape York, Selwyn Ranges, Carnarvon Gorge, Central Australia and the Pilbara. All the famous images are rather different from each other. Yet, in amongst them are other images, often neglected because to the uneducated eye they might look like meaningless scribbles.

These signs show links between, for example, the Pilbara, Central Australia, the Simpson Desert, Flinders Ranges, Mutawinji (NSW), Dajarra, the Selwyn Ranges and Mount Isa. Such links are well-known through the Seven Sisters songs and Rainbow Serpent beliefs, and there are other song cycles throughout Australia. By engaging people in ritual and song while incorporating visual imagery into the ritual, people were able to make and remember connections across the country. Through this they overcame the tyrannies of place and time. And in a system which incorporated rituals, songs and art in particular places, modern studies of First Nations art exemplify that, as Howard Morphy FAHA showed long ago, the tyranny of power could be overcome too.

A seer looking for art at Ubirr, Kakadu National Park. With interpretation board that emphasises “Stories passed on”. (Photo Iain Davidson)

Resolving the dilemma of a rich grazier

By linking the history of archaeological art to other changes in means of communication, in this way, I think we can resolve the dilemma posed by that grazier 35 years ago, as well as the implied cultural differences. Provided the marks were made within an art system, they were art whether we belong to a group which thinks they look like art or to one that regards them as scribbles. The links between artist, subject, object and seers have remained fundamental so long as people told stories about the marks.

Sometimes the object relates to a well-known story, sometime to a new story, but always the artist has something in mind which came from stories and the seer is informed by stories, not always by the picture. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but often the thousand words are what gives marks meaning. Otherwise, it may be just a scribble.

Art or Scribbles? In the Eye of the Beholder: The Evolutionary Emergence of Visual Communication by Iain Davidson FAHA is out now with Springer.

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