The Distinguishing Mark

TL;DRAbstract

Cave paintings have an almost mythic status in Western histories of art. Modernist texts charting the history of artistic progress refer to these ancient artworks as an origin point, the beginning of human self-awareness and the departure from animal contingency (Biederman, 1948; Huyghe, 1962). In particular, the ability to draw or paint other animals is taken as an indication that a threshold had been crossed; the cave artist was able to distinguish clear forms out of the “immense, crowded field of perception” (Huyghe, 1962) and to visually represent absent bodies. According to such narratives, the act of delineating the recognizable shape of an animal, marks a defining moment in which the figure of the human first emerges from the darkness of the cave.
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\nScientific experiments conducted with chimpanzees in the twentieth century showed that non-human primates can take part in drawing and painting activities (Morris, 1962). In some of these cases it was reported that the co

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