Beyond the cave: Lascaux and the prehistoric in post-war French culture

French Studies

Volumn 58, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 219-232

  Smith, Douglas ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN   (Ireland)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34347285114     PISSN: 00161128     EISSN: 14682931     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/fs/58.2.219     Document Type: Article

References (53)

1. For Breuil's initial account of the discovery, see 'Rapport de M. l'Abbé Breuil' (1940), in Léon Laval, La Caverne peinte de Lascaux (Montignac-sur-Vézère, Périgord Noir, 1948), pp. 31-41.
2. Jean-Paul Sartre, 'La recherche de l'absolu' (1948), in Situations III (Paris, Gallimard, 1949), pp. 289-305 (p. 289).
3. Brassaï, Graffiti (Paris, Flammarion, 1993).
4. For the link between prehistoric art and modern urban graffiti, see in particular Brassaï's text 'Du mur des cavernes au mur d'usine' (1933), Graffiti, p. 139.
5. On the Petit Cabanon, see Le Corbusier, Œuvres complètes, V, 1946-52, ed. by Willy Boesiger (Zurich, Les Éditions d'architecture, 1970[1953]), pp. 66-67.
6. Wilson, 'Paris Post War: In Search of the Absolute', in Paris Post War: Art and Existentialism 1945-55, ed. by Frances Morris (London, Tate Gallery, 1993), pp. 25-52 (p. 33).
7. Filippo Marinetti, 'The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism' (1909), in Marinetti: Selected Writings, ed. by R. W. Flint, trans, by R. W. Flint and Arthur A. Coppotelli (London, Secker & Warburg, 1972), pp. 39-44,
8. André Malraux, Le Musée imaginaire (Geneva, Skira, 1947).
9. For the notion of museum as 'white cube', see Brian O'Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999 [1976]).
10. On the link between the museum and the prehistoric cave, see Thomas McEvilley, 'Introduction', Inside the White Cube, p. 8.
11. For an overview of the Vichy attitude to history and archaeology, see Olivier Dumoulin, 'L'histoire et les historiens, 1937-1947', in La Vie culturelle sous Vichy, ed. by Jean-Pierre Rioux (Brussels, Éditions Complexe, 1990), pp. 241-68.
12. On the role of local ethnography and folklore studies during the period, see Christian Faure, Le Projet culturel de Vichy: folklore et révolution nationale 1940-1944 (Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1989).
13. See Jean-Claude Demoulé, 'Lascaux', in Les Lieux de mémoire, III, ed. by Pierre Nora (Paris, Gallimard/Quarto, 1997), pp. 4071-4101 (pp. 4088-89).
14. Malraux, Œuvres complètes, III, Le Miroir des limbes, ed. by Marius-François Guyard (Paris, Gallimard, 1996), p. 455.
15. Leroi-Gourhan, Les Racines du monde (Paris, Belfond, 1982), p. 62.
16. Leroi-Gourhan's scepticism is confirmed by Guy Penaud, André Malraux et la Résistance (Périgueux, Pierre Fanlac, 1986), pp. 68-69.
17. Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art (University of Chicago Press, 1983).
18. Malraux, Les Voix du silence (Paris, Gallimard, 1951);
19. Bataille, Manet (Geneva, Skira, 1955),
20. La Peinture préhistorique: Lascaux, ou la naissance de l'art (Geneva, Skira, 1955),
21. reprinted in Bataille, Œuvres complètes, ed. by Denis Hollier and Francis Marmande, 12 vols (Paris, Gallimard, 1970-88), IX, 103-67 and IX, 7-101 respectively. Subsequent references are to the latter edition and appear in the text using the abbreviation B.
22. Bataille, 'René Char et la force de la poésie', in Critique, 53 (1951), 819-23, reprinted in B, XII, 126-30;
23. Blanchot, 'René Char', in La Part du feu (Paris, Gallimard, 1949), pp. 103-14.
24. Char, 'Y a-t-il des incompatibilités?' (1950), in Œuvres complètes, ed. by Jean Roudaut (Paris, Gallimard, 1983), p. 204 (subsequent references appear in the text using the abbreviation C);
25. Bataille, 'Lettre à René Char sur les incompatibilités de l'é crivain' (1950), in Cahiers de l'Herne, 15 (1971), 43-58, reprinted in B, XII, 16-28.
26. On the relationship between Char and Bataille, see Élisabeth Bosch, 'René Char, Georges Bataille et Lascaux', in Lectures de René Char, ed. by Tineke Kingma-Eijgendaal and Paul J. Smith (Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1990), pp. 98-115.
27. For Blanchot's account of his friendship with Bataille, see 'L'Amitié', in L'Amitié (Paris, Gallimard, 1971), pp. 326-30.
28. On the friendship between Bataille and Blanchot, see Michel Surya, Georges Bataille, la mort à l'œuvre (1987; Paris, Gallimard, 1992), pp. 378-86,
29. Leslie Hill, Bataille, Klossowski, Blanchot: Writing at the Limit (Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 8-10.
30. On both monographs and their place in Bataille's work, see Vincent Teixeira, Georges Bataille, la part de l'art: la peinture du non-savoir (Paris, L'Harmattan, 1997).
31. For a study of the Manet book which also discusses the Lascaux monograph, see Youssef Ishaghpour, Aux origines de l'art moderne: le Manet de Bataille (Paris, Éditions de la Différence, 1989).
32. On Bataille and Lascaux, see also René de Solier, 'L'Homme de Lascaux', in L'Arc, 32 (1967), 58-62,
33. Jean-Michel Besnier, 'Lascaux, ou la révélation de l'inattendu', in Éloge de l'irrespect et autres écrits sur Georges Bataille (Paris, Descartes & Cie, 1998), pp. 83-91.
34. Bataille, 'Sommes-nous là pour jouer ou pour être sérieux?', in Critique, 49 (1951), 512-22,
35. Critique, 51-52 (1951), 734-48, reprinted in B, XII, 100-25.
36. Bataille, L'Érotisme (Paris, Minuit, 1957),
37. Les Larmes d'Éros (Paris, Pauvert, 1981 [1961]), reprinted in B, X, 7-270, and 573-628 respectively.
38. For example, Georges Poulet, 'De la constriction à la dissémination', in L'Arc, 22 (1963), 33-45;
39. Jean Starobinski, 'René Char et la définition du poème', in Liberté, 10/4 (1968), 13-28;
40. James R. Lawler, René Char: The Myth and the Poem (Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 51.
41. On the prehistoric in Char's poetry in general, see Françoise Han, 'L'Homme de Lascaux, allié substantiel', in Europe, 705-06 (1988), 31-36;
42. Eric Marty, René Char (Paris, Seuil, 1990), pp. 194-97.
43. On Char's suspicion of origins, see Lawler, René Char: The Myth and the Poem, p. 74,
44. Starobinski, 'René Char et la définition du poème', p. 16.
45. For a sustained examination of the theme of the origin in Char, see Jean-Dominique Poli, Pour René Char: la place de l'origine (La Rochelle, Rumeur des âges, 1998).
46. Blanchot, 'Naissance de l'art', in L'Amitié (Paris, Gallimard, 1971), pp. 9-20,
47. first published in La Nouvelle Revue Française, 35 (1955), 923-33. Subsequent references appear in the text using the abbreviation A.
48. 'La Bête de Lascaux', Nouvelle Revue Française, 4 (1953), 684-93. Subsequent references appear in the text using the abbreviation BL.
49. Plato, Phaedrus, in Works, trans. by Harold North Fowler, 12 vols (London - Cambridge, MA, Heinemann and Harvard University Press, 1976), 1, 505-79.
50. For Plato's allegory of the Cave, see Plato, The Republic, trans. Paul Shorey, 2 vols (London - Cambridge, MA, Heinemann and Harvard University Press, 1935), II, 119-33.
51. Hollier, La Prise de la Concorde: essais sur Georges Bataille (Paris, Gallimard, 1974), p. 52.
52. For this view, see Ishaghpour, Aux origines de l'art moderne, p. 16,
53. Besnier, 'Lascaux, ou la révélation de l'inattendu', p. 91.