This edited article about cavemen originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 698 published on 31 May 1975.

The discovery of the cave paintings at Lascaux by Clive Uptton

Before the great Ice Age came, about a million years ago, Early Man enjoyed a warm climate and did not need to build a home to protect himself against the cold.

But when the Ice Age passed, the continent of Europe was left with a bitterly cold climate. It was then that the hunters of the Old Stone Age were forced to find somewhere warm and dry in which to shelter from the weather. They chose caves and overhanging rocks for their dwelling places, knowing that these could not be destroyed by cold and storms.

The most famous dwelling places of these times are in a valley of the Dordogne River in France. It was here that the Neanderthalers lived. They made tools of short flint stone and hunted wild animals, many of which, like the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, and the cave bear, are now extinct.

The Neanderthalers lit fires of brushwood in the mouth of the cave and cooked the meat they had caught.

For bedding they probably had pine twigs and dry grass or bracken. When they slept, they covered themselves with animal skins and made clothes from these to wear during the day.

After many thousands of years, another type of man came to the Dordogne. He was much more like we are today. The newcomers, called the Cromagnon people, were much better craftsmen than the Neanderthalers, and on the walls of their caves they often carved with flints pictures of the animals they had hunted. Nearly all the European decorated caves are found in France and Spain, and the finest of all, discovered in 1940, is at Lascaux, in the Dordogne region.

This edited article about J M W Turner originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 697 published on 24 May 1975.

Turner famously lashed himself to the ship’s mast to paint a storm by C L Doughty

When a 28-year-old barber, who worked near London’s Covent Garden Market, and his 34-year-old wife had a son in April 1775, they were, of course, delighted. They probably did not know that this day, the 23rd April, was the very day of the year on which Shakespeare, England’s greatest writer, had been born in the 16th century; they certainly had no idea that England’s most famous painter had his birthday on the same day of the year, and that they were his parents. For William and Mary Turner were simple people; the father was really a Devon man, who had come to London after the death of his own father years before, and who had set up shop as a barber in what was then quite a fashionable part of the town. Being near the theatres, William used to dress wigs for actors as well as gentry, and was kept quite busy at these and the other tasks of a barber’s trade. His wife was the daughter of a London butcher, and in those days, was probably glad to marry a promising tradesman. Their son, born within a year of their wedding, was christened at the nearby church of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden; three years later, a little sister was also christened there. She died, however, when the boy was only eleven, and he felt the loss very deeply.

The heart of London, with its squares and alleys, does not seem a very promising place to grow up in for a lover of rich colours such as young Turner became. Grey stone, dull brick, and grimy plane trees did not offer much splendour, and the sun shone only fitfully in Maiden Lane, where the family lived over the barber’s shop. But young Turner was fortunate because, when his sister died, the parents feared for their son’s health so much that they sent him to lodge with an uncle at Brentford, in Middlesex, which at that time was a country village near the north bank of the Thames.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about St Paul’s Cathedral originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 691 published on 12 April 1975.

Sir Christopher Wren watches as the huge golden cross is placed on the top of St Paul’s Cathedral, by Peter Jackson

At the top of Ludgate Hill in the middle of the City of London, stands the architectural masterpiece of Sir Christopher Wren.

This magnificent domed building, called St. Paul’s Cathedral, was erected to Wren’s designs during the years from 1673 to 1711.

Wren had already submitted two other designs before the Church Commissioners finally accepted his third design, which was a compromise between the architect’s insistence on a Classical cathedral with a dome, and the clergy’s preference for a cross-shaped plan.

A great Gothic cathedral once stood on the site of the present building. This, the Old St. Paul’s, was one of England’s largest and finest Gothic buildings.

In September of 1666 it was almost completely destroyed by the Great Fire Of London, and it was then that Wren submitted his first design for the replacement cathedral.

In his later years, the great architect would love to visit the building and spend hours standing inside looking up at the great dome he had designed, and on which are the paintings by Sir James Thornhill.

Above is the climb to the Whispering Gallery, which picks up a whisper from the other side of the dome, then to the Stone Gallery, giving a view out across the city, and higher to the Golden Gallery at the top of the dome and finally into the Golden Ball.

The crypt of St. Paul’s is so large it is almost a cathedral in itself. It contains massive tombs of Nelson and Wellington, including Wellington’s 18-ton funeral carriage.

One monument which survived the Great Fire, was the monument to John Donne, built in the year of the great poet’s death, 1631, and re-erected in St. Paul’s.

In recent years the exterior has been cleaned of two and a half centuries of soot, revealing the beautiful carved decoration by Francis Bird, Edward Pierce, Caius Gabriel Cibber and Grinling Gibbons.

This edited article about the Mona Lisa originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 685 published on 1 March 1975.

The recovery of Leonardo’s stolen masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, by Andrew Howat

It was not everybody’s idea of fun, being a guard in the Louvre art galleries in Paris. Sometimes, it was frankly boring, despite being surrounded by some of the world’s greatest treasures, like the famous Mona Lisa portrait painted by Leonardo da Vinci.

Sergeant Poupardin shrugged as these thoughts came to his mind on the morning of 22nd August, 1911. “Overrated,” he thought to himself. “Take the Mona Lisa over there . . .” Then he gasped. Somebody had taken the Mona Lisa. Instead of the famous picture, there was a faded patch, and Sergeant Poupardin’s boredom was over.

The police were summoned, a meticulous search was made and suspects were questioned. But the culprit was not found.

It looked like becoming one of the world’s greatest unsolved mysteries until, two years later, an art dealer in Florence received a letter from a man named Perrugia offering to sell him the stolen painting.

Feeling that Perrugia must have a fake, the dealer went to see it in the man’s room. It took him only a few minutes to see that the picture was genuine, and only a few minutes longer for the police to arrive and arrest Perrugia.

At his trial, Perrugia told an amazing story. He had fallen in love with a girl who was the exact double of the Mona Lisa, after he had saved her from being attacked by a man with a knife.

The young woman’s name was Mathilde. When she died, Perrugia, obsessed with grief, planned to steal the Mona Lisa which, to him, was like a portrait of his love. It was exactly like her.

He visited the Louvre constantly and memorised its labyrinth of corridors, galleries and staircases. Waiting for the gallery to empty one day, he removed the picture, hurrying along the route he knew to the street.

Touched by his story, the court imposed a light sentence on the unhappy man who stole for love.

This edited article about Easter Island originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 682 published on 8 February 1975.

A sun-worshipping ceremony on Easter Island by Andrew Howat

Easter Island was a mystery from the moment the look-out of a ship spotted it in 1722. And it has been a mystery ever since to the people who have explored it and tried to unravel its strange secrets.

People have long puzzled over the intriguing story which began to unfold when the observant sailor saw the green blob of land and reported it to the skipper of his ship, Admiral Roggeveen, a Dutchman. Bewildered, the admiral consulted his charts, but no land was marked at that point.

The admiral inked a blob of land on his map and wrote beside it “Easter Island”, for it was Easter Day. Little did he know that by this action he had given a name to the most puzzling island in the world.

After he and some of his men had explored the island, the admiral wrote a report to his superiors, saying, “The island contains about six thousand souls. All over the island stand huge idols of stone, representing the figure of a man with big ears and bearing a head covered with a red crown.”

One can imagine how that report intrigued other adventurers. Many made landings. They tramped the island and counted the statues. There were 230 standing all over the place. And apart from size – varying from five to twelve metres high – the statues were all identical.

Legless, they rose from the earth at hip level. The faces were expressionless, with receding foreheads, tight lips, prominent chins and a curious tilt at the end of the nose.

But more curious still were the ears. Long and thin, they hung down to the jaw. On each statue was a hat-like crown of red stone.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about Pablo Picasso originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 680 published on 25 January 1975.

The bombing of Guernica inspired Picasso’s most famous painting which he called simply ‘Guernica’

The most influential and best known artist of this century, Pablo Picasso was born at Malaga in Spain on October 25, 1881. His father, Jose Ruiz Blasco, was a teacher at the local school of Arts and Crafts.

Picasso attended art schools in Barcelona and Madrid and early on showed remarkable talents in the field of art.

In 1903 the artist settled in Paris and from that time, spent most of his life in France. At first, he painted realistic pictures of ordinary people. He was fascinated by the life of the circus and the big city, although he painted not the gaiety of these subjects but their sadnesses.

This period of his life has been called his ‘blue period’ because he painted entirely in different shades of blue.

But it was not long before he was experimenting with different methods of painting in particular the cubism method. In cubism the artist does not try to paint recognisable pictures of actual objects, but to make pictures out of shapes such as cubes and triangles.

Later, sometime after 1918, Picasso’s paintings became more realistic again, but in 1924 there came another change in his work. Instead of using shapes and colours to give pleasure to people, he began to use them to disturb people. Distressed by the state of the world, he began to paint pictures which reflected the evil shown by mankind. Picasso’s most impassioned protest against a human act of aggression was revealed in his picture ‘Guernica’, a terrifying painting in which is seen all the artist’s horror at the bombing of the defenceless town of Guernica during the Civil War in Spain. This painting is a surrealist distortion of reality. He could have quite easily painted this picture in grotesque realistic detail in the manner of a photograph, but he chose to express his horror at such senseless inhumanity in his own individual, highly effective style.

And this brings us to the shocking aspect of Picasso’s style. By distorting reality, he shocked many people with his paintings and drawings which may sometimes seem as if they have been executed by a careless child. But Picasso was a superb artist, and could easily have painted his pictures in a realistic style. He decided to distort natural everyday things in order to make them more ‘real’ to the observer.

Few people today would dispute that Picasso has radically altered the course of art. His originality and imagination was to this century what Michelangelo’s was to his. Picasso has influenced every artist who has come after him, and today, nearly two years after his death at 91 on April 8th, 1973, his work continues to stand out among that of all others in the twentieth century.

This edited article about packaging originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 679 published on 18 January 1975.

Attractive packaging for confectionery was important for occasions like Easter, just as specific designer packaging was used to commemorate state occasions like Coronations, producing chocolate boxes, tins and of course, mugs.

If the packets we see in the shops today are a lot smarter though a little less individual than the packs of earlier generations, this could be due to the influence of professional package designers.

Such designers were almost unknown before the late 1920s, when they came into their own in America and in Germany. In England they were unknown until the early 1930s.

The first package design course in any English art school was included in the 1932-3 syllabus of Goldsmith’s College, London, and it was the first of many.

The designer of packs nowadays is concerned with the size and shape of the package, the choice of materials for it, the way it opens and closes, its colours, and its layout and lettering.

At times he has to compromise between his own idea of what is good design, what his client the manufacturer insists on having, and what the market researchers tell him is “what the public wants”. So a degree of similarity in many present-day package designs is only to be expected.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about Walt Disney originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 678 published on 11 January 1975.

Donald Duck and Goofy are famous Disney cartoon characters

Mention the phrase ‘Cartoon film’, and the chances are that most people will immediately bring to mind the name of Walt Disney.

For the cartoon films of this delightful film maker have been charming audiences of all ages ever since the first sound films appeared in the cinemas in 1928.

Walter Elias Disney was born at Chicago on December 5th, 1901. Trained as a commercial artist, he went to Hollywood in 1923. There, he built his first studio, in a garage, and drew animal cartoons. It was when he created one particular animal cartoon, Mickey Mouse, in 1928, that the garage developed into a huge film factory in order to keep pace with the sudden demand for Disney productions. Soon, Disney was employing hundreds of draughtsmen and controlling his own studios.

Mickey Mouse, the most famous of Disney’s creations, was followed by Donald Duck, Pluto, and Goofy.

In 1932 Disney began to make short colour films, featuring all these and a host of other characters from nature in his musical Silly Symphonies, of which Three Little Pigs is the most famous.

In 1938, Disney brought all the wit, brilliance and beauty of his film techniques to his first full-length musical cartoon film, Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs. This was followed by the moral fantasy Pinocchio. In 1942 came Dumbo, the baby elephant and Bambi, the baby deer. But a year before this, Disney produced his most ambitious creative work, Fantasia in which he set patterns and stories to eight pieces of classical music.

In 1948 he produced the first in a series of brilliant factual nature films.

In 1955 Disney opened a huge amusement park in Anaheim, California, with scenery and characters based on some of his films. He called it Disneyland, and today, eight years after his death, the park, together with the films which are being shown over and over again, both in cinemas and on the television, continue to give pleasure and delight to millions of people all over the world.

This edited article about Salvador Dali originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 671 published on 23 November 1974.

Salvador Dali was born in 1904 in Catalonia, Spain and studied in Barcelona and Madrid. His unorthodox views on painting and art brought him into conflict with the authorities and ultimately led to him being expelled from the Academy of Fine Arts. He went to Paris where he became involved with what was then a new art form called “surrealism.”

In collaboration with the film director, Louis Bunuel, Dali produced two films with a surrealistic tinge which got him into trouble with the police. But from 1932, he soon acquired a reputation throughout Europe and the United States.

Nobody quite knew what to make of his extremely bizarre canvases and subjects. Sometimes Dali allowed his innate sense of mischief to get the upper hand. A typical example is his painting of melting watches set on a rocky foreshore and called “Persistence of Memory.” Was this great art or merely a subtle joke? Even the art critics were divided.

Dali has been accused of distorting reality but indignantly denies that he does. His defence is that, just like someone with either a poetic or musical gift, he has found a deeper understanding of life than more mundane mortals. Dali attempts to communicate something of the “feel” of things or to convey what his emotions were when watching a sunset, for instance, rather than putting down on paper what a sunset looks like.

Dali is very much aware of the value of publicity and at his various exhibitions, he deliberately indulges in outrageous behaviour. He has grown a moustache with long tips that turn up at right angles like a bull’s horns. He says that they vibrate and that through them, he receives his artistic inspirations.

And Dali certainly is inspired. His remarkable three-dimensional painting of “The Last Supper” is so realistic that people commented that they felt they could reach out and pick up the crumbs spilling from the broken loaf of bread!

His draughtsmanship comes over supremely well in his magnificent picture of the Crucifixion, called “Christ of St John of the Cross.” This now hangs in the Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum.

Along with Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali will go down in art history as one of the greatest and most talented painters of the century. Spain has every reason to be proud of them.

This edited article about Van Gogh originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 668 published on 2 November 1974.

Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh was one of the greatest and most revolutionary artists in the world. He was born on March 30, 1853, the eldest of six children, at Groot Zunder in Holland.

Van Gogh began work in a firm of art dealers and at the age of 24 he decided to devote his life to religion. After becoming a volunteer preacher among the miners of Belgium he soon realised that he was not suited to the life and it was at this time that he turned to painting.

Between the years 1884 and 1890 he produced about 700 drawings and 800 oil paintings, only one of which was sold in his own lifetime. Van Gogh was always desperately poor, but his faith in the urgency of what he was doing, and the encouragement he received from his younger brother, Theo, kept him going.

The letters which Vincent wrote to Theo give a brilliant insight in to the painter’s aims and beliefs. His Collected Correspondence is not only a great autobiographical record, but is also recognised as great literature.

Van Gogh painted three types of subject: still life, landscape, and figure, all of them interrelated by Van Gogh’s interest in the peasants’ daily life, the hardships they endured, and the countryside they worked on.

In 1888 Van Gogh rented a house in Arles where, for two months, he worked with another famous artist, Gaugin. Relations between the two soon deteriorated and on Christmas Eve that year, Van Gogh cut off part of his left ear, having broken under the strain of his nerves. At the end of April, 1889, he asked to be ‘temporarily shut up’ in the asylum at St Remy de Provence so that he could work under supervision.

Feelings of guilt at his dependence on his brother, despair of ever overcoming his loneliness or of being cured of his mental depressions drove Van Gogh in deep despair to commit suicide in July 1890.

Virtually unknown at the time of his death, the name of Van Gogh is now famous throughout the world. His reputation has never ceased to grow and the influence he exerted on the development of modern painting, on artists like Picasso and Matisse cannot be overestimated.