Cave paintings at Lascaux followed the contours of walls and ceilings enhancing the dimensionality of the figures.
Cave paintings like those at Lascaux often conformed to the dimensional features of the cave walls. The artists took advantage of bulges and cracks of the irregular surfaces to create dynamic images. Deep inside the caves, a flickering fire was the only illumination. The movement of highlights and shadows produced an illusion of animation. The earliest artists understood multimedia.
As art “advanced” to more sophisticated techniques, cave walls gave way to cathedral walls and ceilings. Pigments and brushes evolved to offer artists broader choices. Wood panels became the substrate of choice, later replaced with stretched canvas or linen. There are many reasons for this transformation. Transportation of images may have been a primary driver for stretched fabric.
Somewhere along this evolutionary path, the viewing experience suffered a serious setback. Flickering storyboard images across an undulating cave wall created an interactive experience. The regularity of a flat, rectilinear canvas restricts the creativity of the artist. Our Flatland of perception isn’t limited to the canvas. Look at your phone or a TV screen. Flat images confined to a right-angled box limits your view and your imagination. Thinking “outside the box” suggests an extension of the X and Y axes. Bigger boxes or irregularly shaped boxes still severely limit your perception.
Of course, not all artists subscribe to this limitation. Rene Magritte, Joan Miro and many others explored painting on 3-dimensional surfaces. The Y axis changes everything for artists and their art’s relationship to viewers. Moving from 2D to 3D changes how the brain perceives and expresses ideas. A painter tries to create an illusion of depth and space on a 2-dimensional surface. A sculptor works with real depth and space to create an experience that physically moves viewers in and around the multiple surfaces.
Creating sculpture is synonymous with creating interactive space. Engaging the viewers’ brain beyond the boundaries of a flat surface is an experience that literally has more dimension. The walls of Lascaux may be high relief instead of actual sculpture, but the masters who created those images understood the multidimensionality of perception.