THE FIRST ARTISTS: In Search of the World's Oldest Art

Michel Lorblanchet and Paul Bahn / Foreword by Pierre Soulages

ISBN 10: 0500051879 / ISBN 13: 9780500051870

Editore: Thames & Hudson, NY, 2007

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Hardcover book with dust jacket -- very minor wear. Unmarked. Like new. Experienced full-time bookseller since 1994 (selling online since 1998). Images may be added by request. Questions welcome. Codice articolo 22546

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Titolo: THE FIRST ARTISTS: In Search of the World's ...

Casa editrice: Thames & Hudson, NY

Data di pubblicazione: 2007

Legatura: Hardcover

Condizione: Near Fine in NF dust jacket

Condizione sovraccoperta: sovraccoperta

Edizione: First American Edition.

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Riassunto:

Where is the world’s very first art located? When, and why, did people begin experimenting with different materials, forms, and colors? Prehistorians have long been asking these questions, but only recently have they been able to piece together the first chapter in the story of art.Overturning the traditional Eurocentric vision of our artistic origins, Paul Bahn and Michel Lorblanchet seek out the earliest art across the whole world. There are clues that even three million years ago distant human ancestors were drawn to natural curiosities that appeared representational, such as the face-like “Makapansgat cobble" from South Africa, not carved but naturally weathered to resemble a human face. In the last hundred thousand years people all over the world began to create art: the oldest known paint palettes in South Africa’s Blombos Cave, the famous Venus figures across Europe all the way to Siberia, and magnificent murals on cave walls in every continent except Antarctica.This book is the first to assess the discovery, history, and significance of these varied forms of art: the artistic impulse developed in the human mind wherever it traveled.

Dalla quarta di copertina:

Where do we find the world’s very first art? When, and why, did people begin experimenting with different materials, forms and colours? Were our once-cousins, the Neanderthals, also capable of creating art? Prehistorians have been asking these questions of our ancestors for decades, but only very recently, with the development of cutting-edge scientific and archaeological techniques, have we been able to piece together the first chapter in the story of art. Overturning the traditional Eurocentric vision of our artistic origins, which has focused almost exclusively on the Franco-Spanish cave art, Paul Bahn and Michel Lorblanchet take the reader on a search for the earliest art across the whole world. They show that our earliest ancestors were far from being the creatively impoverished primitives of past accounts, and Europe was by no means the only ‘cradle’ of art; the artistic impulse developed in the human mind wherever it travelled. The long universal history of art mirrors the development of humanity.