The color is vivid and fresh, surpassing all of my expectations. The animals seem to bleed out of the walls. Reds and ochres weave in and out of tarry black outlines. All sizes and shapes are either superimposed, overlapping, or nudging nose to nose. Forget Noah's version of Creation's tidy pairs of creatures queued up at the Ark like Brits at a bus stop. In Lascaux Creation romps and flies and humps and bolts. Sanctuary in motion.

Brilliant burnished color souffled within and beyond the linear contours creates an ambiance that is boisterous and gay. I see Modigliani's curves, Mondrian's squares, Klee's and Hannalore's wit. Beneath the hoofs of an enormous black cow are the red, gray, and yellow rectangular shapes that have mystified me since childhood, when I poured over richly illustrated books on prehistoric art. The cow moves against the traffic of dozens of small prancing horses.

The contours of the cave itself, rendered more shapely by its shadows, so strongly suggest form that I can see creatures within the water-worn, billowy surfaces waiting to be let out with only a line here, some color there. I summon imagination amid the specters cast by torchlight, perhaps just as these painters coaxed from the calcified conformations haunch and shoulder, then added little ears and lips on horses, and dainty hoofs on voluptuous cows.

Sacred space. Celebrant and joyous.

Lascaux