FRIDAY, AUGUST 7, 2020 C1
N
NEWS CRITICISM
3 BOOKS
‘Twilight,’ from
the vampire’s
perspective.
BY CONCEPCIÓN DE LEÓN
Meredith Bergmann with a monument
featuring the suffragists Susan B. Anthony,
Sojourner Truth and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
to be unveiled on Aug. 26 in Central Park. Page 5.
THE SHOULDERS
OF GIANTS
ABOUT 17,000 YEARS AGO,in the caves of Las-
caux, France, our ancestors drew on grotto
walls, depicting equines, stags, bison, au-
rochs and felines. They wanted to convey to
other humans a political reality crucial to
their survival: They shared their envi-
ronment with other beings that looked and
behaved differently from them.
Those early artisans drew these crea-
tures over and over, most likely fascinated
by their forms and their powers, but also in-
tuiting that whatever happened to the ani-
mals would almost certainly be a harbinger
of what would happen to humans. The pres-
ence of the bison and stags, their physical
fitness and numbers, their mass migra-
tions, would have indicated the onset of
plagues or cataclysmic weather systems.
Containing some 15,000 paintings and en-
gravings from the Upper Paleolithic era, the
caves in Southwestern France were not
simply an exhibition space for local talent.
They essentially constituted a public
square where a community shared critical
knowledge.
These portraits and discrete stories are
not very different from our contemporary
forums: the street art adorning boarded-up
storefronts in New York City. They tell us
about our shared political realities, the peo-
ple we coexist with in social space and the
Listen to the Thunder
Once scrawled in caves, urgent
messages now fill city streets.
SIMBARASHE CHA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
SEPH RODNEY CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK
Left, a detail from a
larger work of street art
featuring a protest
organizer, by Manuel
Pulla, on Crosby Street
in Manhattan.
CONTINUED ON PAGE C6
7 TELEVISION REVIEW
Setting phasers
on funny in the
final frontier.
BY MIKE HALE
10 FILM
With an Iranian
director, looks can
be deceiving.
BY BEN KENIGSBERG
YAEL MALKA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES