Chauvet cave paintings. c.30,000 BP

These cave paintings are amongst the earliest expression of human feelings we have found to date. When Picasso first saw the caves of Lascaux, where the paintings date from c.17.300 BP, he said of Modern Art, ‘We have discovered nothing.’ Even those paintings show no progression in perception, appreciation, emotion or sensitivity from these by the people of Chauvet 12,000 years earlier. Today it’s safe to say we have still learned nothing more, and probably not evolved as much as we like to think.

What we don’t know is how quickly language developed in subtlety. Art seems to have been the earliest means of self-expression; the first evidence of human beings wanting to emulate, record, perhaps control, perhaps pay homage, to nature. 

Although feelings, emotions, desires, fears, and complex relationships were probably as important to the early Homo Sapiens as food, drink and safety, it wasn’t until the discovery of ‘Gilgamesh,’ a series of poems written in Sumerian 3,800 years ago, that we had evidence of the impulse to record in words something more than mere crop yields or lineage. Though art may have been the first enduring form of expression, words slowly became the primary language of communication for all human affairs and were eventually considered  important enough to find a means of preserving them and transmitting them beyond the time and space limits of the speaker.  The story of Gilgamesh meant enough to the people of Sumeria and then again in Mesopotamia (where it was written first in Old Babylonian, later in Standard Babylonian,) to be told and retold through hundreds of generations. It was at once a memory of a strong noble King and a morality tale of what happens to those who reach for that which can only be for the gods. 

Gilgamesh was like us, he yearned for close companionship, feared death, longed for immortality, was angered by the gods. The archetypal human story of his quest, first for a friend who was his equal (they fought to establish the equality! Strength was the important measure rather than birth or learning.) Then he searched, with his new companion Enkido, for immortality. Together they passed through triumph, elation, betrayal, disappointment and despair. Shades of human passions that could never have been portrayed by sculptures or paintings alone. 

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All the above was the result of being invited to introduce an Open Mike poetry reading in March with some remarks on the marriage of art and poetry. A poet friend has just had two of her poems painted onto a wall and the ceiling in the local art gallery. It’s quite an innovative event for our conservative little town, and probably fairly novel for the UK. I know there have been attempts to take poetry to the public in the form of sculpture and multi-media and think it’s a brilliant movement. I see the need for a poet incarnation of Banksy. That’s probably what I’ll say, probably all I’ll say, but it’s led me down an interesting pathway.

It’s easy for a visual artist to get an audience, even if their work is just hung in a café or put on Facebook. People like pictures. They are an undemanding enjoyment, don’t take much time, don’t take much thought, usually. To have to pause to read something is different and the majority of the population are too busy. I’m told that even people in publishing are more likely to read a magazine than a book in their lunch hour! The flick-flick magazine mentality.  Poems on a wall near the bus stop, or the walls of the underground, might get their attention when they have nothing else to do but stand and wait. Printing T-shirts, fridge magnets and tea towels with poems by modern writers might catch on, but needs a cash investment.