Mesolithic art encompasses all arts and crafts produced between the end of the Palaeolithic Ice Age (10,000 BCE) and the advent of agriculture, i.e., the Neolithic period.
The art of the era was primarily concerned with how men lived, whereas the classical arts mostly depicted what men observed, and modern art primarily depicted what men thought. Due to the fact that the early art forms were closer to nature, they have a strong aesthetic sense, which appealed to the majority of people in comparison to Modern Art.
The primary characteristic of Mesolithic rock-cut architecture is rock cave paintings, which in some ways reflected daily life during that time period, as the majority of the paintings depicted animals, hunting scenes, and so forth.
Mesolithic sites also featured paintings depicting social life, sexual activity, childbirth, child-rearing, and funeral ceremonies. This demonstrates that Mesolithic man has an artistic sensibility, as the majority of the artwork reflected the natural world surrounding the men.
While early modern paintings were artificial and grandiose, they lacked aesthetic sense, since they were encouraged by British rulers and dominated by materialist themes, while nature was largely ignored, as in bazaar and company school paintings.
However, in the late nineteenth century, many modern painters such as Raja Ravi Verma, Amrita Shergill, and painters of the Bengal School such as Nandlal Bose and Abanindranath Tagore reflected the cultural times of the era and had a fine aesthetic sense similar to Mesolithic paintings, as nature was depicted with utmost realism in their paintings, an example being Abanindranath Tagore’s famous Bharatmata painting.
Even M.F. Hussein’s contemporary Indian paintings exhibit a refined aesthetic sense, as they are largely based on European neo-classical traditions. Whereas abstract modern art eschews the proportions and aesthetics of classical and stone age art and appeals to a narrow segment of the population.