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Reconstructions by Elisabeth Daynès, how and why?
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Trollkillah # Ish Gebor: [QB] http://www.daynes.com/en/hominids-reconstructions/homo-sapiens-cro-magnon-30.html [QUOTE] Artist from France brings prehistoric man to life Written by Web in France team // September 12, 2008 // French sculptor Elisabeth Daynes combines art and anthropology for a unique window into the look and personalities of our human ancestors. [IMG]http://www.webinfrance.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/elisabeth-daynes.jpg[/IMG] When most of us think of an early human, an image of a flat-headed, lurching brute comes to mind; something more like a beast than a person. Certainly nothing like any of our relatives (with a few unfortunate exceptions!). But look into the eyes of a prehistoric figure sculpted by French artist Elisabeth Daynès, and you see something else. Intelligence, an emotional life, a personality…maybe even a soul. It doesn’t look like us, and yet, there is still something there that we understand and recognize in this reconstruction of our human origin. No wonder natural history museums all over the world clamor to display Daynès’ sculptures. [b]But how did this talented woman classically trained as a painter and sculptor in France end up in the world of anthropology, creating these hyper realistic hominid reconstructions of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons?[/b] Geography may have had something to do with it. France, after all, is the site of many notable moments in the discovery of human origins. In 1908, the first almost complete Neanderthal skeleton was discovered at La Chapelle-aux-Saints, France. The oldest stone tools found in France, in the Haute-Loire region, are thought to be 1,800,000 years old. There is the famous prehistoric site in Brittany, with its Carnac Stones, the Regourdou site in Lascaux, and of course, the jewel of prehistoric France, the famous painted caves, also in Lascaux, with their beautiful horses that are thought to be at least 15,000 years old. France has long been proud of and fascinated by its prehistoric heritage and its place in the discoveries of human origins and human evolution. Elisabeth Daynès also had her origins in France — a bit more recently, of course — where she started painting in an artist’s workshop at the age of seven. In 1981, at the age of 20, she joined the National Theatre of Lille’s Salamandre Troupe and began creating masks for the theater, a precursor of things to come. A year later, a German stage director noticed her talent and she began to experiment with more materials such as silicone and resins to create special effects. She founded her own studio, Atelier Daynès, in the 10th arrondissement of Paris in 1984. a few years later, she was commissioned by the Thot Museum in Montignac, close by the famous caves of Lascaux, to sculpt a life-size wooly Mammoth as a group of hominid figures from the Magdalenian period, around 15,000 B.C. Daynès was hooked, and began to devote her career to anthropological study and how it could be expressed through her art in the form of hominid reconstruction. In 1991, the opening of the Tautavel Museum in the Pyrenees region of France made her famous, as the world discovered her hyper realistic reconstructions of early humans and was transfixed. Since then, Elisabeth Daynès and her studio, Atelier Daynès have worked other European countries such as Germany, Sweden, Portugal and Spain, but also places as far-flung as South Africa, Japan, French Polynesia and Mexico, to name only a few. Among her many accomplishments worldwide, she has brought the famous first woman, “Lucy” to life with her hyper realistic reconstructions, and has been featured in the US on the cover of National Geographic depicting the young superstar Pharaoh Tutankhamen under the heading “The New Face of King Tut,” winning rave reviews and flooding Tutankhamen exhibits. Daynès is widely recognized as the best in the world at what she does. Hominid reconstruction is a painstaking process that can take four months or more to complete for one figure. Unlike other forms using only one medium, the technique takes several steps using many different materials, and each step must be perfect as the others layer over it. To do her hyper realistic reconstruction of the faces of early humans, Daynès begins with a cast of a prehistoric skull. The face is the biggest challenge, as Daynès strives to create a unique and specific early human or pre-human face using the scarce information left by the remains of a skull that might be thousands or even a million years old. [b]The process takes a delicate interplay of the knowledge of a scientist and the intuition of an artist. [/b] Daynès works closely with forensic anthropologist [i] Dr. Jean-Noel Vignalto [/i] piece together the clues and remain as scientifically accurate as possible throughout the process. The possible environment, diet, the age of the individual at the time of death amd many other factors give Daynès clues as to how her portrait should look. Once an accurate depictions of the skull has been constructed, Daynès’s work as a sculptor begins with the laying down of muscles, and later layers of skin. Finally, she adds the touches that have made her famous, the wrinkles, defects, quirks and expressions that give the figure an inner life and spirit and make him seem alive. Suddenly, we begin to understand how a person like this might have been able to paint the miraculous pictures in the Chauvet caves. In France and elsewhere, man looks to science to educate us the facts about human evolution. But for us to experience early humans as real human beings we feel we can know, it takes the hand of an artist. That is the lesson of the ChauvetCaves and of the work of Elisabeth Daynès. Atelier Daynès specializes in hyper realistic reconstructions of early humans and pre-humans for museums and galleries worldwide. [/QUOTE] http://www.webinfrance.com/artistfrom-france-brings-prehistoric-man-to-life-912.html [/QB][/QUOTE]
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