This conference sure sounds interesting, and I wish I could be there, but that's another story.
Anne, this is going to be a workshop rather than a conference. For information I won’t be in the programme committee selecting invited participants.
But w/regard to some of the issues you have raised here, I they may be something of a "mixed bag". Robert Bednarik is well known for proposing that the origins of "modern" behavior(and art) lie somewhere in the Lower Paleolithic, and his thesis on this is quite a bit like yours.
Sorry for having tried to put too many ideas in a single post…
Robert Bednaric interest in my hypothesis is only linked to the fact that it challenges the other theories of art apparition, and in particular the theories of a late “big bang” In cognitive abilities such as postulated by Richard Klein, Steve Mithen, Ian Tattersall and a few others.
My theory proposes that there was indeed a continuous development of culture, on the one side and some exceptional artistic picks starting in the Upper Palaeolithic. The continuity of the “general culture” may have been staring somewhere in the Lower Palaeolithic if not earlier, and continuing throughout the Upper Palaeolithic in the form of very schematic shapes, rectangles with chessboard like separations, tectiform signs or key shaped symbols (as found besides the gorgeous realistic animal representations in most caves), and later on, stick men or animal figurative representations during the Neolithic.
I see the truly exceptional naturalistic animal representations of the Upper Palaeolithic as “points outside the curve”, made by exceptional people, not by the main stream culture which was producing the symbolic shapes. The fact that these naturalistic cave art manifestations are so sparse in time (even in a same cave they are often separated by thousands of years) is sufficient evidence of their exceptionality.
OTOH, I'm not entirely sure that "autistic savants" would have been emotionally capable of producing the drawings you see on the walls of Lascaux or other caves, though they might well have been *very* good at producing *some* pieces like the mammoth carving. Or they may not.
In my papers, and even more so in the latest versions of my presentation, I argue on the contrary that perhaps it is in part the lesser emotional character of such “autistic savants” that may have enabled them to produce such great work. But there are many other autistic like cognitive characteristics that do match the appearance of a large number of the Upper Palaeolithic naturalistic art allowing the comparison with the art produced by some autistic savants.
People who are *not* "autistic savants" have been known to do things like this, too. It's more a matter, IMO, of having what I call an "open imagination" and learning the techniques of working in certain kinds of media. Combine these elements and people with the right kind of training and temperament may produce such pieces.
I agree with you but only partly, there are some exceptional creative people who aren’t “autistic savants”, but in my opinion who have some autistic traits, albeit bellow a pathological level. Hans Asperger, one of the very first pioneers of autism with Leo Kanner, was saying : “It seems that for success in science and art, a dash of autism is essential.”
Even later on in art history, truly exceptional talents were very rare. Even though during the Renaissance there were hundreds of painters and sculptors, there were only a handful of truly exceptional artists whose works could be remembered through time: Michel Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, and a couple of other. I’m not claiming these were all “autistic savants” but certainly exceptional people and some like Leonardo had some traits (likewise Mozart later on). The rest of the artists could more or less reproduce/imitate but not create. Margaret Boden, a great philosopher of science talked about “hard creativity” for such individuals and of “soft creativity” for the others.
[/quote]In paleolithic times, the techniques were probably common knowledge, and someone with the right kind of imagination may well have "seen" figures in mammoth tusks or the like. [/quote]
I have started to answer that question just above: I would tend to think that, no, the drawing and painting techniques probably weren’t common knowledge. I don’t see how other AMM, even 40 K years BP, would be so different from us as to be all capable of exceptional art production contrary to what we can see nowadays.
In her fiction book “The Shelters of Stones” Jeans Auel attributes the artistic know how to someone special, not to the shaman whom she pictures as calling upon the talents of the artist. In my own analysis I think that this might be a far more realistic view than having the shamans as artists themselves. (The comparison with the renaissance art is here too a striking one: the Bishops and Cardinals were not the ones painting the walls of churches…)
It is not impossible that the shamans may have noticed early talents in some individuals (“autistic savants” or not) and may have nurtured them to the benefit of the tribe’s religious endeavours.
We hope that some of these points will be addressed during the workshop as well as several other ones to challenge them… Indeed this workshop should prove to be quite a fascinating one. Let’s hope that we will succeed in finding the appropriate resources to make it happen.
Paul
