296
32.3 Life Before Conquest
Lascaux, Chauvet, and the Cantabrian Cueva de la Pasiega were not merely animistic compulsions, sudden seizures of representational exuberance, but the sustained
interrelationships and acute observations, noted upon surface, with dyes and tools
that could record for successive generations the stunning phenomena of life. Egos
were left at the entrances, by some psychological capacity to enter the halls of
humility, dispatching with hubris. Perhaps Chartres and the world’s other great
architectural sites of devotion have attempted to replicate those doors of restrained
Self, giving instead to perception the world before us. We can trace the movement
Fig. 32.1 Anonymous European Couple, Photographer Unknown, ca. early 1850s. (Private
Collection)
32 Cave Paintings of the Mind
32.3 Life Before Conquest
Lascaux, Chauvet, and the Cantabrian Cueva de la Pasiega were not merely animistic compulsions, sudden seizures of representational exuberance, but the sustained
interrelationships and acute observations, noted upon surface, with dyes and tools
that could record for successive generations the stunning phenomena of life. Egos
were left at the entrances, by some psychological capacity to enter the halls of
humility, dispatching with hubris. Perhaps Chartres and the world’s other great
architectural sites of devotion have attempted to replicate those doors of restrained
Self, giving instead to perception the world before us. We can trace the movement
Fig. 32.1 Anonymous European Couple, Photographer Unknown, ca. early 1850s. (Private
Collection)
32 Cave Paintings of the Mind