At Cap Sciences, the Lascaux III exhibition immerses us in prehistory and poetry

The traveling exhibition Lascaux III opens this Saturday at Cap Sciences and will be on display until August 31. A public immersion into the masterpiece of cave art and, more specifically, the exceptional Hall of the Bulls.

Amid the hustle and bustle of the world that dominates the news, what a joy to immerse oneself for ninety minutes in the Lascaux III exhibition. More than twelve years after its creation, it returns to Bordeaux, still at Cap Sciences but renovated and reinvented thanks to the museographer Nathalie Grenet, originally from Périgord, who was already part of the first team but has now taken the reins.

With a single, perfectly achieved objective: to present a universal exhibition accessible to all, "regardless of age, religion, or nationality." For this second season of Lascaux III, the Dordogne department wanted to shine the spotlight on the magnificent Hall of Bulls, 25 meters long and decorated with 130 animal figures.

This is the first room discovered by the four young boys who explored Lascaux in 1940. It is the centerpiece of the cave, nicknamed the Sistine Chapel of Prehistory, whose carbon-14 drawings cannot be precisely dated since they were made not with charcoal but with iron or manganese oxide.

The heart of the Lascaux III exhibition lies in a bull room recreated by artisans at the height of their art. A nine-minute animation, without commentary, accompanied only by music, the sounds of a river, and animal grunts. The realism of the bulls is so striking that one wonders if they might charge the spectators.

A poetic performance, the reconstruction of the Hall of Bulls is also a technical and logistical challenge. Remember that Lascaux III is intended to travel the world. The previous one stopped in 19 cities in 13 different countries and welcomed more than 2.5 million visitors. It also holds the attendance record for Cap Sciences, and it's a safe bet that this record will be equaled or beaten.

The reconstruction of the bull room borders on perfection thanks to the expertise of the Périgord facsimile workshops, with every detail reproduced at scale 1, using the latest 3D survey technology. This is a far cry from the early archaeologists who spent their nights in the cave and used tracing paper to copy animal drawings. The feat doesn't stop with these facsimiles; they now have to be transported all over the world, the first stop being Chicago. Four tons of material must be moved into containers, dismantled, and reassembled.

While it invites poetry and discovery, the message of Lascaux III is no less political, recalls Germinal Peiro, the Socialist president of the Dordogne department, for whom "there is only one human species." The artist Élisabeth Daynès has also recreated her four astonishing characters, to whom, in accordance with recent genetic discoveries, she has given darker skin.

The exhibition opens to the public this Saturday, June 14th, and is on display until August 31st. Open daily from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. For more information, visit www.cap-sciences.net.