Between the end of the nineteenth century and the 1980s, prehistoric art specialists often relied on the classifications, ideas and narratives of art historians. For instance, Breuil and Leroi-Gourhan, the two archaeologists who presided over the study of prehistoric images for most of the twentieth century, viewed the history of prehistoric art as the continuous development from simple images to highly naturalistic representations, a storyline that replicated the narratives of art history. Moreover, they inherited art historians’ modern captivation with paintings. This explains, for example, why their theories about the meaning of ‘prehistoric art’ were, in fact, theories about the significance of cave paintings. In addition to this, art historians such as Salomon Reinach, George-Henri Luquet, Christian Zervos and Max Raphaël made significant contributions to the study of prehistoric art.
The ascendancy of art-history in prehistoric art research was called into question in the 1980s. At that time, a number of developments in art theory (including what Hans Belting (Reference Belting1987) and Arthur Danto (Reference Danto and Danto1997) called ‘the end of art’, and the rapid expansion of new intellectual fields such as visual studies), together with the rise of a critical self-consciousness in scholars in this field, seriously undermined the influence of art-historical approaches upon prehistoric art research. Paralleling similar developments in anthropology, archaeologists attacked the concept of ‘art’ in ‘prehistoric art’. They argued that this term reduced an impressive number of depictions and images to one single monolithic category. Furthermore, that category would have been unfamiliar to prehistoric groups. Likewise, they called into question the tendency among archaeologists to focus on those images and depictions that looked similar to our modern art. As a result of these critiques, art-historical approaches lost their appeal among prehistoric art specialists.
This situation has evolved considerably in recent years, however. Since the 2000s, a number of anthropologists and art theorists have argued that art-historical approaches can be beneficial for studying objects and images made by non-Western societies. Similarly, some archaeologists have recently claimed that the term ‘art’ can legitimately be used to describe a number of objects and depictions from past societies (e.g. Robb Reference Robb2017; Sjöstrand Reference Sjöstrand2017; Porr Reference Porr2019). It is in the context of this revival of art-historical approaches that we should situate Rémi Labrusse's Préhistoire: l'envers du temps.
The author, an art historian who has extensively published on contemporary art, examines the multiple processes that resulted in the consolidation of the ideas of ‘prehistory’ and ‘prehistoric art’ during the nineteenth century. Besides the fact that the academic solidity of this work leaves nothing to be desired (the book covers an impressive amount of historical, literary and artistic texts without neglecting critical interpretation), the interest of this volume lies in the fact that the author explores the concepts of ‘prehistory’ and ‘prehistoric art’ in a highly innovative way. As a general rule, historians of archaeology have examined these ideas through a number of dichotomies, including the clear-cut distinctions between past and present, real and invented, and myth and logos. For instance, they have carefully distinguished between what was ‘scientific’ and what was ‘mythological’ in early interpretation of the past (Quertelet Reference Quertelet2010). In Labrusse's work, the aforementioned dichotomies are, if not inappropriate, at least analytically irrelevant. As his book demonstrates, the idea of ‘prehistory’ is, at the same time, ‘scientific’ and ‘popular’, ‘exact’ and ‘ambiguous’, ‘rational’ and ‘mythical’, ‘precise’ and ‘metaphorical’. Likewise, his examination of the concept of ‘prehistoric art’ is not limited to those representations that, beginning around 1860, deserved such a label, rather it incorporates the reception of these images and depictions in a number of different milieus, from artistic circles to the general public. In this context, the author demonstrates how the ‘discovery’ of prehistoric images not only changed the landscape of modernity, but profoundly modified the Western perception of time (see, for example, the chapter devoted to modern artists from Caspar David Friedrich to Robert Smithson). In short, Labrusse's methodological freedom allows him to explore early conceptualisations of ‘prehistory’ and ‘prehistoric art’ without being restricted by the categories (and the expectations) that historians of archaeology have to live with. The result is a study that is fully alive to the cultural, social and artistic contexts out of which the study of prehistory emerged in the nineteenth century, from the popular depictions of prehistoric life to intellectual interpretations of archaeological materials.
In a moment during which archaeologists are intensively discussing how art-historical perspectives can be beneficial for the study of prehistoric art, Labrusse's book is a welcome addition to the debate. As Martin Porr has recently pointed out, art historians and theorists are sometimes reluctant to speak about rock art because this topic “is perceived to be outside of their competence and disciplinary boundaries” (Reference Porr2019: 154). As this book demonstrates, however, it is precisely because they are outside the field of archaeology that art historians can approach our old ideas and concepts with fresh eyes. If they are able to couple this with a critical view of their own prejudices and conceptions (such as the ethnocentric biases intrinsic to traditional conceptualisations of ‘art’), they can certainly contribute a great deal to current theoretical debates.
