French Lascaux murals at Gwangmyeong Cave

If you visit France, you should not just see Mona Lisa at the Louvre Museum in Paris. You must see the Lascaux murals. The murals painted by Cro-Magnon 15,000 years ago are just as thrilling and inspiring as Mona Lisa painted by Leonardo Da Vinci. The murals have such value not just as cultural relics but as piece of art. The Lascaux Cave where the murals are located is called the "Sistine Chapel of the Old Stone Age." The cave almost even rivals the Sistine Chapel where the "Creation of Adam" by Michelangelo is found.

The Lascaux Cave was first discovered by accident by teenage boys in the village of Montignac in Dordogne, France in 1940. When it was discovered, the world was at the Second World War, and hence excavation of the cave started in earnest after the end of the war. As the murals were open to the public in 1948, countless people visited the cave and the murals were damaged rapidly. After all, then French Cultural Affairs Minister André Malraux, who was a novelist, decided on indefinite closure of the Lascaux Cave. Then, the French government created "Lascaux 2" that is a copycat of the entire original cave as well as the murals, at a location about 200 meters from the original site.

You should not disregard "Lascaux 2," because it is a copycat cave. One would not be touched more deeply even if he or she actually enters the genuine Lascaux Cave, which attests to extraordinary "r"eplique (replication) technique of the French people.

"Lascaux Cave 3" is reinstatement of murals that Lascaux 2 did not reinstate adequately. Since they cannot move ‘Lascaux 2’ which is fixed, they use ‘Lascaux 3’ instead for exhibition. Five pieces of massive actual-size Fresco murals have come to Korea, and are on display in front of the Gwangmyeong Cave in Gwangmyeong City, Gyeonggi Province.

The Gwangmyeong Cave is a theme park that has been created by developing a closed mine from Japan’s colonial rule of Korea. Daniel Ollivier, former the French Institute in Seoul, proposed exhibition of "Lascaux 3" at the Gwangmyeong Cave to Gwangmyeong Mayor Yang Ki-dae. The exhibition hall that was designed by world-renowned French architect Jean Nouvel is also a masterpiece in itself that one cannot afford to miss. The artworks demonstrate that both Cro-Magnon and Jean Nouvel are the homo sapiens or modern humans, and that they both possessed artistic capability that had not been found in the Neanderthal by overcoming a long history of more than 15,000 years.

최영훈 tao4@donga.com