Prehistoric Comparison

(Without Title by Josef Winkler)

(Wall Painting with Horses, Aurochs & Rhinoceroses by Unknown)

When I first began learning about "Wall Painting with Horses, Aurochs & Rhinoceroses" I instantly was drawn to the color scheme of the painting. The muddy browns, rust and creams were very appealing to my eyes. When I stumbled upon the more abstract piece by Josef Winkler, I immediately thought back to the cave painting from 30,000 BCE. The colors, lines and values of the paintings are extremely similar.

The untitled work of Josef Winkler was done in the year 2008 making it a contemporary piece. However, you can see the relation to the cave painting from over 32,000 years ago. The form of each painting consists of very organic lines. As you can imagine, the cave painting found in Southern France probably has a very rough and grainy texture. Even though Winkler's painting was done on a canvas, one could imagine the feeling of roughness when looking at the brush strokes. Another obvious similarity would be the colors used. Both paintings feature a rustic and natural color scheme. Even the values of both paintings stand out as similar. Each features an obvious contrast between light creams and darker brown/blacks.

A major difference between these two pieces would be the representational versus abstraction of both the works. For example, even though it fails to look like a photograph, you can clearly tell that the cave painting is representing animals. If you look at Winkler's painting, it is clearly abstract with no intended subject matter.