No, he cannot say that he experienced the same emotion when entering the replica of the cave that bears his name. But about ten days ago Henri Cosquer, “the inventor” [le découvreur, NDLR] of the site, admits having had a twinge in the heart when he found himself faced with the staging of his own flashlight illuminating a hand painted red. “In 1991, when I saw this negative hand for the first time, I said to myself: ‘Since my previous visit, people have come to do tags’, before realizing what I had in front of me. me.”
An invaluable site threatened by rising waters
This “restitution”, to use another scientific term, of the only prehistoric underwater parietal cave whose entrance is today 37 meters deep remains for him the culmination of an obsession since he declared its existence in 1991: to introduce the public to an invaluable treasure, rich in 513 paintings and engravings made between 30,000 and 19,000 years before our era. “The objective is to show as many people as possible this sacred, magical and inaccessible place which is condemned to disappear because between global warming, the inexorable rise in water levels and pollution, it will one day be completely submerged”, explains Laurent Delbos, project manager for Kléber Rossillon, who in 2019 won the call for tenders for the creation of this prehistoric “interpretation center” with a substantial budget (23 million euros, of which 9 at the expense of the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur Region) and which opens its doors on Saturday June 4 near the Old Port of Marseille, a stone’s throw from the MUCEM.
With a boastful smile, an immediate familiarity and bursts of laughter, Henri Cosquer makes fun of the sums advanced just as he does not want to expand on the contract which binds him to the State and to Kléber Rossillon to see his name displayed in capital letters on the Mediterranean villa. On the ground floor, under the overhang, his eyes roll like marbles facing the artificial basin where the twin of the Cro-Magnon is anchored, the boat that has brought him so many times to the foot from Cap Morgiou, this rocky outcrop plunging steeply into the Mediterranean in the nearby creeks. It is this ship that welcomes the public before entering the building. Inside, everything seems to glorify the discoverer since on the left are two reproductions, one of his HQ bar, the Le France café and another of his diving club. You have to wait to cross the threshold of a totally hermetic box – a lift-diver supposed to reproduce the immersion phase at a depth of 37 meters – to leave this somewhat folkloric entrance. In the dark, a screen indicates the temperature, the speed or the pressure, as well as “portholes” with videos of the sunken creeks simulate the pressure. Suffice to say that it is not at the beginning that the success of this improbable journey materializes.
The Cosquer cave at the “Cosquer Méditerranée” museum, in Marseille, on June 1, 2022
afp.com/Nicolas TUCAT
A successful restitution in a constrained space
On the other hand, once you arrive in the basement of the Mediterranean villa, the atmosphere changes radically and imposes a cathedral-like silence. Each visitor is invited to board an exploration capsule (six seats) which rotates 360 degrees so as not to miss anything of the cave. “It’s a tool for understanding, not a merry-go-round, warns Laurent Delbos before the route begins. In reality, we have restored 80% of the original cave (1,750 over 2,200 square meters) to fit it into this constrained space .” Exit certain access corridors, certain heights, Cosquer presents itself in a compact but not truncated way. Such is the first great success of this facsimile: the engineers of the company Perspective[S] performed hundreds of scans to make a 3D digital model of the cave. Then they “cut” it into six large panels (called scales) where 90% of the engraved works are represented before assembling the whole and giving it a unity.
This tour de force, the visitor cannot even suspect it. Just as, with the naked eye, he will not perceive the degree of detail restored by today’s sculptors and painters, these “sworn forger artists” as Henri Cosquer affectionately calls them, with whom he worked for many years. month. There are the paintings of course, but also the engravings or the reproduction of the rock of the cavity, in particular what are called the speleothems reproduced by the visual artists: stalagmites, stalactites, fistulas, columns, etc. It is the diversity of these concretions that one quickly distinguishes when entering the first room of the so-called “La plage” cave, the one through which Henri Cosquer arrived the first time.
Hundreds of works of art
<img xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" data-optimumx="1.5" data-sizes="auto" alt="Réplique grotte Cosquer, le 21 mai 2022 (Photo by Patrick Aventurier)" class="article__item–img loading_medium lazyload lazy img_resp_full media_content_full" src="data:image/svg+xml;utf8,Cosquer cave replica, May 21, 2022 (Photo by Patrick Aventurier)
Patrick Adventurer
The exploration module progresses slowly (0.377 km/hour, very exactly), pivots on itself and makes a few prolonged stops. On board, each visitor is provided with an audio guide which allows for a detailed visit (but also to preserve a silent, almost contemplative atmosphere). After an explanation of this “geological garden”, a zoom is made on the traces – like the remains of a fire – left by these Gravettian men who did not populate the cave but saw it as a kind of sanctuary. But the magic operates completely when it comes to stopping at Cosquer’s main works of art with a succession of rooms with their decorated walls: the most represented animals are horses, then ibex, bison and the aurochs. Rarer, megaceros deer, a feline (lion) or a saiga antelope. Without forgetting the marine animals – seals, fish and above all 3 penguins which have become the emblems of the Mediterranean cave.
Most of this bestiary was made with charcoal. But Cosquer is also rich in hundreds of engravings, most made with flint. They are much less visible at first glance, so to distinguish them better and while the audio guide details them, a clever – very successful – game of light beams helps to distinguish them by highlighting the silhouettes: there a seal with his mustache and his tail, there the mane of a horse or even an imposing auroch. Without forgetting also the highlighting of some geometric shapes whose significance is far from being determined by prehistorians. Thus, for example, a superposition of several triangles could evoke a female sex (a vulva). Finally, the last stage of this route of more than 200 meters and which lasts thirty-five minutes, is a space-cathedral with a remarkable height which gives an idea of the original volumetry. There are also copies of the famous negative hands such as Henri Cosquer saw them. Some are incomplete; they can be black or red, of different sizes and have been made with the stencil technique. Above all, they give a humanity that everyone perceives when descending from their exploration module.
L’application L’Express
To track analysis and decryption wherever you are
Download the app
When Henri Cosquer is asked if the end result lives up to his expectations, he replies with the same banter: “I think that if Cro-Magnon Man came here today, he would say to us: ‘ You managed to move the rocks and put all the paintings in the right direction!’ That would be the greatest compliment, wouldn’t it? Let’s not forget that these are the Marseillais of a thousand generations ago.” It remains for those of today to appropriate this parietal heritage.
Opinions
Analyse
Nicolas Bouzou’s Time.news
Anne Rosencher’s analysis
Chronic
