Creation
A fully illustrated, panoramic world history of art from ancient civilisation to the present day
Published on 14. October 2021
Book
Hardback
464 pages
978-1-4088-7968-9 (ISBN)
Description
**SELECTED AS A BEST ART BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE SUNDAY TIMES**
'Stonard traverses the sweep of human history, moving between cultures and hemispheres ... His book consists of myriad flashes of brilliance and inventiveness' LITERARY REVIEW
'A worthy and richly illustrated successor to Ernst Gombrich's fabled The Story of Art' SUNDAY TIMES
'This bountifully illustrated book is a history of connections ... Lucid and thoughtful' COUNTRY LIFE
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A fully illustrated, panoramic world history of art from ancient civilisation to the present day, exploring the remarkable endurance of humankind's creative impulse.
Fifty thousand years ago on an island in Indonesia, an early human used red ochre pigment to capture the likeness of a pig on a limestone cave wall.
Around the same time in Europe, another human retrieved a lump of charcoal from a fire and sketched four galloping horses.
It was like a light turning on in the human mind.
Our instinct to produce images in response to nature allowed the earliest Homo sapiens to understand the world around them, and to thrive. Now, art historian John-Paul Stonard has travelled across continents to take us on a panoramic journey through the history of art - from ancient Anatolian standing stones to a Qing Dynasty ink handscroll, from a drawing by a Kiowa artist on America's Great Plains to a post-independence Congolese painting and on to Rachel Whiteread's House.
Brilliantly illustrated throughout, with a mixture of black and white and full colour images, Stonard's Creation is an ambitious, thrilling and landmark work that leads us from Benin to Belgium, China to Constantinople, Mexico to Mesopotamia. Journeying from pre-history to the present day, it explores the remarkable endurance of humankind's creative impulse, and asks how - and why - we create.
'Stonard traverses the sweep of human history, moving between cultures and hemispheres ... His book consists of myriad flashes of brilliance and inventiveness' LITERARY REVIEW
'A worthy and richly illustrated successor to Ernst Gombrich's fabled The Story of Art' SUNDAY TIMES
'This bountifully illustrated book is a history of connections ... Lucid and thoughtful' COUNTRY LIFE
_____________________________________
A fully illustrated, panoramic world history of art from ancient civilisation to the present day, exploring the remarkable endurance of humankind's creative impulse.
Fifty thousand years ago on an island in Indonesia, an early human used red ochre pigment to capture the likeness of a pig on a limestone cave wall.
Around the same time in Europe, another human retrieved a lump of charcoal from a fire and sketched four galloping horses.
It was like a light turning on in the human mind.
Our instinct to produce images in response to nature allowed the earliest Homo sapiens to understand the world around them, and to thrive. Now, art historian John-Paul Stonard has travelled across continents to take us on a panoramic journey through the history of art - from ancient Anatolian standing stones to a Qing Dynasty ink handscroll, from a drawing by a Kiowa artist on America's Great Plains to a post-independence Congolese painting and on to Rachel Whiteread's House.
Brilliantly illustrated throughout, with a mixture of black and white and full colour images, Stonard's Creation is an ambitious, thrilling and landmark work that leads us from Benin to Belgium, China to Constantinople, Mexico to Mesopotamia. Journeying from pre-history to the present day, it explores the remarkable endurance of humankind's creative impulse, and asks how - and why - we create.
Reviews / Votes
A worthy and richly illustrated successor to Ernst Gombrich's fabled The Story of Art * Sunday Times, Best Art Books 2021 * Stonard traverses the sweep of human history, moving between cultures and hemispheres ... His book consists of myriad flashes of brilliance and inventiveness ... In sheer scope and ambition, Creation finds a precedent in Ernst Gombrich's The Story of Art (1950) ... Stonard both emulates and expands upon Gombrich's masterly and ubiquitous account. But he also offers something distinct, substituting the grand narrative with a pluralistic, incidental and shifting approach. It leads into the near present in the style of a prolonged ellipsis - a promise of "more to come" -- James Cahill * Literary Review * If The Story of Art were written today, it would look very much like Creation ... This bountifully illustrated book is a history of connections ... [Stonard has a] lucid, thoughtful style ... He manages to show both how the great names of Western art and their peers elsewhere in the world were driven by the same forces, but above all that making art is "part of what it means to be human" -- Michael Prodger * Country Life * Creation has moments of delight and insight * The Critic *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Illustrations
Illustrations integrated throughout
Dimensions
Height: 253 mm
Width: 197 mm
Thickness: 41 mm
Weight
1552 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4088-7968-9 (9781408879689)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
John-Paul Stonard
Creation
A Fully Illustrated, Panoramic World History of Art from Ancient Civilisation to the Present Day
E-Book
10/2021
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
€25.49
Available for download
John-Paul Stonard
Creation
A Fully Illustrated, Panoramic World History of Art from Ancient Civilisation to the Present Day
E-Book
10/2021
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
€25.49
Available for download
Person
John-Paul Stonard trained as a painter before completing a doctorate in art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art. From 2005 to 2010, he worked as an editor at the Burlington Magazine, where he remains a member of the Consultative Committee. His writing has regularly appeared in the London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, Burlington Magazine and Apollo. John-Paul's publications include Fault Lines: Art in Germany 1945-55; Germany Divided: Baselitz and his Generation; Chatsworth, Arcadia, Now; and, as editor and contributor, The Books that Shaped Art History. Over a period of four years he travelled extensively to see the objects described in Creation.