Don’t fall for a fake: the Chauvet cave art replica is nonsense
Version 0 of 1. Picture this. Visitors to the Vatican arrive in St Peter’s Square and are shepherded into a modern reception centre cleverly hidden under Bernini’s colonnades. After looking at a display on Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes, they are filtered into a full-scale replica, with a ceiling that is a giant photograph of the famous artwork. Perhaps one day this may come about, as the Vatican worries about preserving its artistic treasures. But I suspect no one would be very happy to visit a substitute Sistine Chapel. What would be the point? Similarly, no art lover wants to see a replica Rembrandt, a fake Freud or a simulacra of Seurat. Why then is it considered perfectly reasonable to offer fake ice age art as a cultural attraction? This month sees the opening of a replica of the Chauvet Cave, probably the greatest paleolithic painted cave ever discovered, as well as one of the very oldest known sites of artistic activity. It’s expected to be a popular attraction for France’s Ardèche region. But it is patronising nonsense. It short-changes the art lovers who are expected to go there, for we are being treated like fools. More disturbingly it reveals a contempt for the anonymous geniuses who created the real Chauvet paintings about 35,000 years ago. There are good reasons why the actual wonders of Chauvet will never be opened up to the public. Other painted caves – most notoriously Lascaux – were seriously damaged by exposure to visitors’ collective bad breath before scientists realised how vulnerable this ancient art can be to human contact. Chauvet, discovered much more recently, is rightly protected with the reverence it deserves. But that is no reason to fob us off with a replica. I visited the replica that has been created of Lascaux as a teenager, and still remember the crushing disappointment. What a tantalising farce, to promise cave art and deliver only a simulation. These second-hand cave experiences reflect an underlying prejudice about supposedly “primitive” art. The implication of cave art replicas is that such art is so simple and basic that a pastiche will satisfy. No one accepts a substitute for Rembrandt because his touch is considered unique, his genius singular. So it is. But cave art is no less marvellous or magical. The paintings of ice age Europe include masterpieces that equal the greatest in history. At the very least, ice age paintings deserve to be seen as unique, inspired works of art. It amazes me that in France, the civilised custodian of so many of these masterpieces, they can still be treated like the work of supposedly clumsy and ignorant “cave men” – and therefore something that can be replaced by a mock cave. When it comes to Chauvet, it is better to look at photographs and films than fall for a fake. Get the full report on the cave, lavishly illustrated, that gives a very close encounter: or watch Werner Herzog’s beautiful film Cave of Forgotten Dreams. If that is not enough, and of course it’s not, some real painted caves can actually be visited. I recommend Pech-Merle and Cougnac in the Cahors region. These mesmerising caves are open to the public and contain art almost as old as the paintings of Chauvet – and similarly special. To stand before a painted mammoth in Pech-Merle is an overwhelming encounter both with an extinct mammal and the mind that portrayed it. Everything about such encounters – however rare and difficult – is unforgettable. You need to smell the dank, hear the drip-drip of water, sense the massive darkness just beyond the lit pathways – and pinch yourself that here among these majestic underground rock formations an ice age artist created a portrait of a mammoth that has the power and truth of a Rembrandt. What great art the hunter-gatherers of the ice age made. Accept no substitutes. |