Day started easy, with a delightful brunch on the sunny terrace in the company of Géraldine who, alas, will be leaving us today to return to her busy life in Paris. To give her a proper sendoff I made a truffe omelet which, for a first attempt, was not that bad. After much laughter we all went to the station, and with many hugs and kisses we said au revoir to our dear friend.
We then
jumped into the Cinquecento, because we had big things in store for the
afternoon: A beeline to Montignac, where the famous site of Lascaux is located.
Lascaux (together with Chauvet near Lyon and Altamira in northern Spain) is one
of the finest exponents of polychromatic cave paintings, and I really wanted
for Ronnié and family to get a chance to see it. I probably already told you that
there are four versions of Lascaux. Lascaux 1 is the original grotto,
discovered in 1940 and first open to the public in 1944, at the end of World
War II. It was an immediate success, but the traffic of millions of tourists
eventually started to damage it, and in 1963 became permanently closed. That is
when Lascaux 2 started to be built. In an amazing display of ingenuity,
workmanship, and artistic talent, the half of the cave where 90% of the
paintings are found was duplicated, to the smallest detail, so we tourists
would not be disappointed when we made an artistic pilgrimage to France. The
rough shape of the cave was dug with heavy equipment, and then a fiber glass
“skin” was cast using LIDAR measurements and glued onto the rough excavation.
Then a group of super talented artists carefully painted the original motifs,
using the same pigments and techniques used by the Cro-Magnon inhabitants of
the region.
Since they
had the molds to cast the fiber glass skins, the clever French created Lascaux
3, a traveling exhibition that has toured the world, showing the incredible
paintings. I had the chance to see Lascaux 3 in Vancouver a year ago, and ever
since have been in love with them. A second set of fiber glass skins has been
installed in the super-museum of Lascaux 4 that I visited with Géraldine a week
ago. I was torn on whether to visit Lascaux 2 or 4, but at the end we chose
Lascaux 2 because it is a closer re-enactment of the wonder with which the four
kids that discovered it in 1940 must have felt.
We got there
in time to have our picnic and, much to our delight found that our group was of
no more than 20 people (thank you Lascaux 4 and the late start of the summer
vacation for giving us the elbow room to enjoy the experience without being
chocked by a 100+ visitors). Our guide, speaking in French, forewarns us that
only half of the cave has been reproduced, and that the cave is not very long
(50 m). ☹ But then she tells us that the gallery that has been
reproduced contains 95% of the paintings, so we will not be missing much. She
let us wait in an antechamber while she gets things set, and she comes back
carrying a torch, with which she brings us into a first chamber that is maybe 3 m wide and 6 m tall, and we
stare in amazement as out of the dancing flame of the torch emerge the
magnificent drawings. It is an explosion of color, with hundreds of delicately
painted auroxes, deer, horses, and bisons, and in which the artists have
overlapped perfectly recognizable paintings at different scales and
orientations. They may have been stories told at different times by different
artists, or independent creations in their own separate dimensions to let the
shape of the cave walls bring the spirit of the animal out. There is no doubt
that they are alive.
As we moved
along down the cave, we see that the walls are loaded with fantastic
prehistoric beasts, and is a veritable Sistine Chapel of prehistory. Taking
photographs is not allowed, but I trust Ronnié will rely on memory to see the
polychromatic shading on the flanks of the auroxes, or the running herds of
horses (and I will definitely buy him a picture book of Lascaux once I get back
home).
Prior to
entering the cave the docent stopped by a reproduction of one of the walls of
Lascaux, with an imposing black cow. Then she turned out all the lights, turned
on a UV light, and like magic a band of horses appeared running all along the
wall! We were stunned. She then explained that, in addition of the painted
images, there are engraved images all over the cave (remember how I said that
these magnificent beasts seem to live in parallel universes?). My theory is
that they become visible under UV light because the calcite under the skin of
clay of the cave is slightly fluorescent. Alternatively, the sub-millimeter
resolution of LIDAR allowed them to “see” the engravings through the mineral
paints.
In high
spirits we ended the day by walking through the charming town of Montignac.
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