© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:�0.��63/9789004398�90_008 302249 Chapter 6 Learning to Notice: Light and Shadow, from Chauvet Cave to Plato’s Cave and Beyond Paul A. Kottman Abstract From Chauvet Cave to Plato’s cave, we can track the achievement of a heightened awareness of our ways of noticing reality, not as an ‘intellectualization’ of reality, but as a series of visual, artistic accomplishments – a significant shift, precisely, in our play with light and shadows. This is the achievement of a heightened awareness of our ways of noticing reality, not as an ‘intellectualization’ of the world, but as a series of pictorial accomplishments – a shift, precisely, in our play with light and shadows from within the picturing itself. Noticing a painting of a lion, and noticing a threatening lion, are after all distinct kinds of noticing – not only because the former is an unreal appear- ance and the latter is not (since, again, that the ‘reality’ of the bear is noticed in part in the act of making the image) – but because coming to know the difference or contrast between the image of the bear and the bear is how we “let ourselves be guided by the world.” The installation of imagined bears and lions on the walls of caves provides the necessary contrast between being guided by the world, and being guided by something else (our “free association,” perhaps). Image-making is also one way we teach ourselves what is real. Keywords murals – Vasari – Sellars – Kant – Noticing – Concept – Intuition 1 Around thirty-five to thirty-seven thousand years ago, in the Ardèche – a mountainous region in south-central France where caves are common – Paleolithic artists left behind arguably the earliest known pictures.1 Named 1 For recent documentation, see Quiles et al. (2016: 4670–7) and Clottes (2003). On whether it is appropriate to refer to these as “images” or “pictures,” see the discussion in Davis (2017: 1–27), 0004308916.INDD 123 2/26/2019 8:00:26 PM