After the retreat of Neanderthals across the European continent, modern humans made their way to this cave and began to create the first known works of pictorial art: buffalos surging across the rock background, rhinoceroses doing battle, lions searching for mates and dark-maned horses cantering, reports The New York Times.
Twenty years after these cave paintings were discovered near the Ardèche River in south-central France, they remain closed to the public for preservation’s sake. But on Saturday, a replica built nearby at a cost of $59 million will open, allowing the public to approximate the experience of the cave explorers who found the paintings.
The rock art in the Chauvet cave, created 32,000 to 36,000 years ago, puts flesh and fur and character onto a world previously known largely through fossil remains. Although archaeologists have recorded the impulse to create art in markings on rock and carved beads as far back as 75,000 years ago, the workmanship in these cave paintings is of another order. The subject matter, the animal world, is familiar, creating a remarkable feeling of connection with the distant past. The paintings are among the world’s most celebrated prehistoric artworks, featured in Werner Herzog’s 2011 3-D movie, “Cave of Forgotten Dreams.”
“The skill of these artists, the painting, is amazing,” said Jean Clottes, the French archaeologist who first authenticated the cave for France’s culture ministry.
“The walls are covered with engravings; the bison here appears to have eight legs — it’s as if he’s running,” Mr. Clottes said, gesturing toward a figure on the rock behind him as he walked through the replica of the cave with journalists before its official opening.
The first step in making the replica was erecting scaffolding and then covering it with a mortar that simulated the rock surface of the original cave. Photographs of the original paintings were projected onto the surface of the newly created rock. Artists led by, among others, Gilles Tosello, an expert in this prehistoric era who is also trained in the plastic arts, painstakingly copied the paintings with the same materials the original artists also used, charcoal made from Sylvester pine trees and ocher paint made from minerals.
While the paintings have been reproduced at the same size as the originals, the replica over all is slightly less than half the size of the 91,000-square-foot Chauvet cave. Kléber Rossillon, the company that manages the replica site, is planning to have groups of up to 30 enter every few minutes with a guide.
Marie Badisa, the Culture Ministry’s curator for the cave, views the Chauvet paintings as “a true conceptual artistic representation.” The sense of movement the artists captured has been described as “prehistoric cinema,” she said as she led four journalists on a rare visit to the original cave.