Paper short abstract:

Art history can be a description of borrowed influences and formal parallels. The creative process itself is not so limited, offering the potential for real empathy and engagement with human realities. Can one differentiate between the two and bridge the gap between the subjective “discovery” of the artist and the objective insights of archaeology?

Paper long abstract:

During summer 2007 I was the artist-in-residence in Catalhöyük/Turkey.

The aim of my project was to investigate in practice and in theory how an artist's interpretation can uncover new clues in the meaning of prehistoric painting. Fine Artists are open to lateral thinking unconstrained by academic conventions. Their reading of artefacts can suggest wider and complementing interpretations than the archaeological and anthropological ones. Professor Hodder, for example, applies the new dimensions of contextual archaeology to his conclusions, allowing subjective meaning as a tool for clarification. In the same way, "the fine artist" can contribute fruitfully by engaging with the problems and difficulties from the perspective of the maker-of-images.

Painters like Picasso and Miró made strong comments after seeing the images in the prehistoric caves of northern Spain. They stated that what followed was decadence. With such interpretation the prehistoric artist is no longer alone, nor isolated from the possibility of analysis by the silence of the historical record. Picasso's construction of the "Demoiselles," for example, revealed a profound and direct dialogue with the work of the African artist. Cubism can become a window through which we can read prehistoric painting.

Two days in Catalhöyük, and I found something that the archaeologist recognized immediately but via his/her methodology would not have found, namely a sun clock.

The issue is not art versus archaeology but a merging of the two that could argue for a new specialism in archaeological collaboration, bringing further light to the understanding of the past.