The first was 1982’s Quest For Fire, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud. In the 1980s, two films came out, both of which went to great lengths to try and imaginatively and credibly depict prehistoric human life. Nevertheless, the prevailing colonial mindset he inhabited led him there. So, while aspects of the ‘generic savages’ in The Savage State are probably appropriated from Native American cultural imagery, Cole did not consciously intend to depict Native Americans as prehistoric. Therefore, they might serve as models for pre-historical imagery. Unfortunately, the political conditions on America at the time meant that European settlers, of which Cole was one, believed that the Native Americans were less ‘civilised’ than Europeans. However, in the 19th century, before archaeology of pre-historical sites, there was little knowledge or understanding of what pre-historical communities in Europe might have been like. In his writings, Cole made it clear that he intended the human settlement to be European. These had been largely eradicated from the Hudson River region, where Cole worked. It’s unlikely that Cole had any experience of actual native communities. You should know that Cole also painted scenes from his friend James Fennimore Cooper’s novel The Last of the Mohicans. It does look like Cole’s ‘savages’ reference aboriginal North American life. The figures in the picture are tiny, and we can barely see them, never mind understand any details. Instead, Cole meant to show ‘the origins of modern society’. They do not represent any specific ethnicity. You can see them off to the right in a small encampment. There are indications of human ‘savages’ in the picture. In The Savage State, primeval humans live in a sublime landscape of swirling sky and rough terrain. We will use this as a starting point to consider how artists and filmmakers depict pre-history. Here I want to isolate The Savage State as a distinctive and possibly unique painting of pre-history. I will return to The Course Of Empire in another article. Cole’s series follows a coherent narrative, tracing the story as a primeval community develops into a vast empire, then falls into decadence. In it, he protests the ruin of the landscape by ‘civilisation’ (a theme he returns to in other paintings). The Savage State is part of Cole’s series The Course of Empire, five paintings depicting the rise and fall of an imaginary city. In The Savage State, Cole imagines a world before human civilization.Ĭole is best known as America’s first great landscape painter, founder of the Hudson River School. It is a remarkable painting that seeks to depict a primeval scene. I digress.Ĭloser to our topic, British-American Thomas Cole painted The Savage State in 1833. (Actually, Claude got other painters to paint the people). See, for example, Landscape with Narcissus and Echo it’s clearly about the trees and the clear golden light, not about the mythical figures. Of course, there are plenty of paintings which are pure landscape, but it is rare for an artist to depict an explicitly prehistoric scene.Įven the spectacular painter of light, Claude Lorraine, felt obliged to add human narratives to the landscape. Given that pre-history predates most of what we might consider urban society, it stands to reason that depicting pre-historical scenes would be about landscape and nature, and humans within that. Fortunately, a handful of artists have actually tried to do this.įirst, painting. As you’ll see, it takes a lot of imagination to conjure up what ‘caveman world’ might have been like. In fact, even the idea that writing is the mark of civilization ignores the sophisticated oral and visual cultures which never developed writing because they really didn’t need it.Īnyway, for the purposes of this article, the term pre-history really is about history it’s about what popular culture has long referred to as the ‘caveman (and cavewoman)’ era. We made a lot of visual art, architecture and jewellery, for a long time before writing appeared. This is a long time! But be careful not to imagine that prehistoric humans lived like animals. It is the long period between the use of the first stone tools (3.3 million years ago) and the invention of writing (9000 – 3400 BCE). Pre-history is different: the term means history before recorded information. Jurassic Park is not pre-history, it just has dinosaurs. How to artists and filmmakers depict pre-history? You might be surprised to find that it is actually very uncommon for them to try to do so. Gillian McIver By Thomas Cole – Explore Thomas Cole, Public Domain, Thomas Cole’s The Savage State, The Clan of the Cave Bear and Quest for Fire Part of the series ‘A History of the World in 16 paintings, and the films they inspired’ Here I feature Thomas Cole’s The Savage State Artists and filmmakers depict pre-history: the art of imagining the unimaginably real
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