Collection
Carnac, 1 de agosto, 2008. Lección de historia [Carnac, 1 August, 2008. History Lesson]
- 2008
- Gelatin silver printing on Baryta paper
- 20 x 25 cm each
- Cat. F_166
- Acquired in 2014
- Observations: The works are numbered.
The artist himself has said that this work is based around a guided tour (a 'history lesson') of the 'Ménec alignments' of prehistoric standing stones in Carnac. The tour then continues along the Kermario and Kerlescan alignments, via the great menhir of Le Manio, set in the middle of a wood by a horse-riding centre.
The Carnac stones, which date from 5000 to 3000 BC, are one of the biggest and best preserved prehistoric sites in Brittany, in northern France. They feature a large number of Neolithic monuments and form part of an extensive megalithic area that stretches as far as the British Isles. The extent of the Neolithic remains suggests that this was a single area of influence and exchange. The meaning of the prehistoric stone alignments and circles is open to debate, though the prevailing theory is that they were used for astronomical and ritual purposes. The enigmatic standing stones aligned in a field are reminiscent of sheet music left by the remote past for the future to interpret.
For Ribalta, the various interpretations are what we call 'history': 'In 1903, Aloïs Riegl established that the value of monuments lies in the fact that they are the crystallisation or fossilisation of the artistic will (kunstwollen) of their times; that aesthetic experience is rooted in historical memory: it is born from observing stones moulded by human hands but deformed by time and the weather. Monuments are in fact documents. The monument/document dialectic is part of the modern philosophy of history. The angel of history, looking towards the past but dragged along unstoppably by the hurricane of progress, gazes at a growing pile of ruins. It can be assumed that in the bottom layers of that pile we would find something like Carnac.'
Carnac, 1 August, 2008. A History Lesson (2008) is a clear nod to the photographer and writer Alan Sekula, one of the great benchmark producers of documentary photography, and more specifically to his work Geography Lesson, in which he presents a narrative sequence based on 75 images that speculate on the links between the Canadian landscape and the dynamics of financial capitalism.
Other works by Jorge Ribalta