Picasso's Comment on Paleolithic Artists

The famous cave paintings in several locations in southern France and northern Spain are between 11,000 and 37,000 years old and they are generally thought to be the earliest known examples of paleolithic art - perhaps even of all art. Imagine - thirty-seven thousand years! Judith Thurman in a June 23 article in The New Yorker ("First Impressions") says that Picasso reportedly remarked to his guide during his visit to Lascaux (discovered in 1940), "They've invented everything."

This includes not only grease lamps to light their rock wall canvases, scaffolds to reach high, the principles of stencilling and Pointillism, powdered colors and brushes and stumping cloths; they invented "the very concept of an image."

I'm tempted to say the Old Stone Age artists were Imaging That - and though they were, I won't.

Thirty-seven thousand years ago! Sheesh!