Cave painting

Um, it goes back about 40,000 years, 40,000 years ago.

Now, on the left, mystery unsolved, this Lascaux paint- cave painting 17,000 years ago on the wall.

And then on the right, the world's oldest cave paintings showed human understood complex astronomy 40,000 years ago.

So what ha- the reason it's called the Lascaux Caves is because it's in Lascaux, France.

And there were some teenagers a while back that went into the cave, and they started exploring it, and they made their way to the back of the cave.

And I love, I think about so much of objects, the object code of, think that's why I work the way I do is I'm searching and fumbling for an object to hold on to and it's like tactility and when I was in graduate school I got to I got the Stanley Fellowship which is a grant from the University of Iowa.

I lived in southern France and studied cave paintings.

I was there for two months.

I lived in this woman's old barn.

So I think...

I think that's what, I think more conceptually and spiritually, I've held on to a lot that happened over there.

Because I didn't want to make paintings that looked like cave paintings, because...

I don't think I was really interested in that.

Yeah, yeah.

So the first chapter in my book is written about the prehistoric cave paintings at Chauvet in the Ardèche region of France, where there is a network of caves which are decorated.

It was probably completed about 36,000 years ago.

And many of the images inside this cave are created using ochre, dried earth, crushed, potentially in the palm of the artist's hand, mixed with a little water, perhaps a little spit.

Historically, we have analysed the paints used in cave paintings.

We know that they used often things like bone marrow, even blood.

But when I went to visit Chauvet Cave, you can't actually get inside.

Money has always been a hugely integral part of the creation of art and the role of the artist.

Sperm whales sleep vertically, and they toot bubbles to do it.

And looks like cave art has organizational grammar.

My friends.

The last time we spoke about our large lobed cetacean amigos known as sperm whales was exactly one year ago this week, during episode 203.

Still, these bubbles and their numbers will leave you amazed.

Then after the break...

The last time we spoke about cave art was just a month ago during episode 287.

And girl, it was exciting.