CHASING ROCK ART HISTORY: THE ROLE OF AMERICAN ROCK ART IN TRADITIONAL ART HISTORICAL DISCOURSE.

Rock art scholarship, and particularly studies on ancient American rock art styles, have long held a rather peculiar relationship to mainstream art history. On the one hand, most standard college art history survey textbooks generally ignore or marginalize rock art imagery almost to the point of non-existence, yet with one notable exception. Nearly all of these same textbooks typically introduce the entire history of human art with discussions on the significance of one of the most highly acknowledged and globally recognized rock art styles, the great Paleolithic cave paintings of Western Europe. Many of these textbooks exceed 1000 pages in length, including over 1000 total illustrations, yet after no more than two to three pages (at most) dedicated to the cave paintings as introduction, rock art is summarily abandoned and only fleetingly referenced in a very few cases. Given the global range, deep antiquity and persistency of rock art imagery throughout the history of human artistic production, such apparent dismissal by the core art history survey textbooks is difficult to rationalize. Rock art scholarship itself of course suffers from no such lack of publication or coverage, and has indeed evolved as a somewhat separate and rather robust field of art historical inquiry, existing parallel to, but only occasional directly engaged with mainstream art historical discourse. As J. J. Brody pointed out in 1991, the vast majority of scholarly publications on ancient American culture, including rock art studies, are routinely cataloged and shelved in the anthropology, religious studies, or history sections of libraries and book stores, rather than sections on the arts. Ancient American rock art often suffers from a second scholarly disadvantage within the general art history survey texts as well, as it is commonly subsumed within the broader coverage of Precolumbian art in general, only covered in texts which include the even broader distinction of Non-Western art coverage (including African, Asian, and Oceranic as well), and agaiun typically given less than adequate coverage. Rock art studies in the last 30 years have clearly established the extraordinary artistic sophistication of numerous ancient American rock art styles as significant painting traditions (as distinguished from the more archaeologically loaded, and less art historical term "rock art"). This presentation presents a brief review of the context and coverage of ancient American rock art images in the major art historical survey texts of the 20th and 21st centuries, and argues that several ancient American styles, such as the Barrier Canyon Anthropomorphic Style of Utah, or the great murals of Baja California, are worthy and comparable candidates for inclusion in more broadly contextualized art historical surveys, and that rock art scholarship as a process should target a more specific art historical audience, rather than specific rock art or anthropologically oriented publication venues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]