1.19 The Four Dimensions of Reality and the Two Dimensions of the Canvas Part 1: Caveman Proto-Movies, Aivilik Carvers, and Spaces

Dilettantery

“From paleolithic times to the present, all painters have been challenged by a fundamental problem: how to express the four dimensions of experience on a two-dimensional surface.”

-Edward Wachtel

"According to Andrea Stone: In Maya thought caves were a conduit into the bowels of the earth, a dangerous but supernaturally charged realm, often referred to as the 'underworld' in current literature or by the Quiché term, Xibalda. Herein dwelt the ancestors, rain gods, various 'owners' of the earth, culture heroes, nefarious death demons, animal and wind spirits. The Maya made pilgrimages to caves to propitiate these beings … post-contact sources tell us that cave ceremonies usually concerned rain and other agricultural interests, hunting, ancestor worship, renewal/New Year rites and other calendrically-timed ceremonies, and petitions for various personal needs (e.g., health problems). Caves were also used by brujos (witches) to cast spells."

-Jean Clottes

"Caves are evocative underground constructions, which take humans away from the natural light and control or transform their visions of reality. This is the context in which caves have a powerful ritual role in early societies, a role that underlies contexts as widely distributed as the power of the rites of passage of transegalitarian societies (Owens and Hayden 1997), the allegory of the cave in Plato’s Republic, and the architectural metaphor of the grotto of the Renaissance (Miller 1982). They are multiple places of passage that emphasize transition from one state to another, from life to death, from light to dark, and from land to earth (Hume 2007). As such, their transition parallels the passage of the day and the seasons."

-Simon KF Stoddart and Caroline AT Malone

"Science and art: Two complementary ways of experiencing the natural world - the one analytic, the other intuitive. We have become accustomed to seeing them as opposite poles, yet don't they depend on one another? The thinker, trying to penetrate natural phenomena with his understanding, seeking to reduce all complexity to a few fundamental laws - isn't he also the dreamer plunging himself into the richness of forms and seeing himself as part of the eternal play of natural events?"

-Heinz-Otto Peitgen and Peter Richter

Sources: https://old.reddit.com/r/DilettanteryPodcast/comments/ng1z1n/119_the_four_dimensions_of_reality_and_the_two/?