To obtain a basic understanding of art, we must project ourselves back . . . . The seemingly simple realization that a hollow space would allow someone to store water or grain must have been one of the wonders of primitive technology. How long people were satisfied with this breakthrough we do not know, but at some point someone must have noticed that if greater attention were given to such considerations as the shape of the space as well as the consistency of the thinckness of its walls, the container would somehow be more satisfactory. In perfecting the form in order to imporve the function, that anonymous fabricator was working on the level of enlightened craftsmanship. At a later stage the person making the container, or pot, felt an impulse to make adjustments on the surface of the vessel.
Decoration can only make the handling and the seeing of the object a more pleasureable experience.
Once the object was formed, shapes could be inscribed or painted in patterns that might include swirls, loops, straight lines, or combinations of any of these. The next stage, which followed decoration, placed primitive people directly in the line of their more sophisticated descendants, for they soon discovered that decoration would have meaning , that signs could stand for ideas. They fund that symbols not only clarified their fears, dreams, and fantasies but communicated their state of mind to other people. Decoration now moved into the more profound sphere of the image as metaphor, and not every member of the tribe was capable of making such a transference. Those who could we now call artists . . . . . . . .