The role of art has evolved through history, but if you’re inclined to be waggish, you might say that art started as sensational (of the senses) bullshit where it remains firmly rooted today…

Li D
Australia.

Follow the link given below, which is a brief illustrated explanation, because, and to use a cliché, an illustration is worth a thousand words:

https://linguistic-determinism-art-language.blogspot.com/

There is also the problem going back thousands of years or more that human populations in most of the past have been very small compared for example with even small countries or states within countries today.

They are both (IMO) amazing takes on the Obamas. That said, it is easy to see why they have been commented on poorly by so many: they show different approaches to portraits, and there is the usual reason anything relating the former president and first lady is portrayed poorly by the right: the subjects aren’t white.

Why does she paint black skin in grayscale? “It just looked good, the gray skin on these bright colors,” she said. “I think, also, I was subconsciously struggling with not wanting to be marginalized. 

“And I say that because I feel like the black body is a political statement in itself, right? So, on canvas all of a sudden I’m making a political statement just because I’m painting brown skin. But, I paint the way that I paint. And she chose me, she knew what to expect.”

“There are some people who look at the portrait of the first lady, and they say, ‘I don’t see her in it. I don’t see the Michelle Obama that I know.”

Sherald said, “Everybody is invested in [the Obamas] in all kinds of ways, on all different levels. And so, for me to even want to paint her makes me crazy. Because I’m setting myself up for criticism, right? I feel like I captured her. When I look at it, I see her; I see the Michelle that was present at the sitting, you know, a contemplative, graceful woman who understands her place in history.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/artist-amy-sherald-on-painting-michelle-obama/

Striking image.

First, I bought the line that these are the official portraits, so I was a bit wary of the Obama’s taking the brunt of a total change in style for the official portraits. Then I learned that everybody seemed to have that wrong. They are not the official portraits, they are the National Gallery portraits, which historically range from different to outre.

I like the depiction of Barack Obama in his, but I feel like the background is going to fall on me. I like the overall look and feel of the Michele Obama portrait, but it is not as good of a likeness of her, lacks a certain spark I would have liked to have seen there.

To give you a feel of some of the other national gallery pieces:

Did you like the Obama portraits?

I’m actually saying something somewhat different. First, “art” truly is in the eyes of the beholder. The paintings and engravings of the past and art of today are probably very different things, and it is not the case that one is better or more important than the other. Think about religious iconography, tattoos, designs manufactures put on their products, trends in facial expressions or hair styles or how all the people in a particular culture walk or sit or march. These are all conveyable things that vary, so they are potentially linguistic, potentially expressive (of information), and potentially symbolic.

The ability to even do any of that is mainly confined today to humans, though other species, with a clever experimenter (sometimes too clever) can produce some of this.

Here is an important fact that most people are not aware of. Maybe two facts.

First, the vast majority of human cultures, as we define them in archaeology (spatio-temporal patterned manifestations of material culture that we assume often correspond to a belief system, economic system, and linguistic system, if often imperfectly) leave almost nothing, or absolutely nothing, behind in the way of expression. You’re lucky if you find a stone tool that looks really cool, in ways it does not have to to function. That is humanity from an archaeological point of view. Nothing cool to see at all.

We can assume that most of that is because those cultures express themselves in ways that melt or rot or were never particularly material. I think remembering that is important when looking at paleolithic expression.

Second: Even when you get a look at a culture in real life, a lot of them are actually pretty boring most of the time, when it comes to material expression of stuff. So between cultures varying in their output, and varying hugely in what is preserved, it is hard to complain about Neanderthals not producing much “cave art.”

From what I remember when working up a brief survey of hominins for a class in Historical Geology several years ago, art was practically the only thing that was thought at the time to have been unique to Homo sapiens among the things that could be inferred from physical (fossil) evidence. At that time there was already evidence for Neandertal’s making stone tools requiring foresight and technique, using fire, and at least occasionally caring for the injured and burying the dead.

Coincidentally, I was recently reading Eugene Harris’s book Ancestors in Our Genome, published in 2015. With the entire genomes of Neandertals now known, it appears that the question of interbreeding with Homo sapiens is now settled in favor of yes. That, of course, would imply close enough proximity and contact between the two groups to provide an opportunity for some borrowing on the part of one or both sides. Harris also mentions that some paleoanthropologists see evidence for possible Neandertal adoption of H. sapiens’ technology in the Neandertal Chatelperronian and Uluzzian stoneworking industries. According to what I remember from other sources and what’s in his book, it seems that the timing of the overlap between the two species in Europe is in the range 50,000-40,000 years ago which is less than the 65,000 years ago of the art which is the topic of your post.

I say 40,000 rather than 30,000 years because later in his book Harris mentions that some doubt has been cast on the lingering survival of Neandertals in the Iberian peninsula “until 30,000 years ago or even more recently” by “new pretreatment methods … that reduce contamination by present-day carbon” in radiocarbon dating. As a result, the actual date “may be as much as 10,000 years earlier” putting it at about 40,000 years ago.

Like many Europeans and Eurasians, I have a small Neandertal component in my genome so it would not hurt my feelings if they were also makers of art and Homo sapiens were just unique in degree rather than sole possession of artistic talent — and of course in still being extant.