30,000 Years of Art: The Story of Human Creativity Across Time and Space
Starred Review. This enormous, extraordinary collection brings together 1000 high-quality color illustrations, showcasing the evolution of creative arts over diverse cultures from prehistoric to modern times. Arranged chronologically, each piece is given its own page and a condensed summary of its provenance, key features and cultural context. Book-ended by a ritual "lion man" figurine from 28,000 B.C. found in a cave in southern Germany, and an as-yet-unfinished environmental sculpture by American artist James Turrell (materials: "Extinct volcano and light"), it also contains two time-lines, one covering major movements in the 13 cultures represented (Mesopotamia, Iran and the Arabian Peninsula; Anatolia and the Eastern Mediterranean; Egypt and Africa; Europe; North America; Central America and the Caribbean; South America; Oceania; Japan; Korea; China; Southeast Asia; and Central Asia) and another comprised of a 28 page horizontal index that sets each piece against major world events. A 10-page glossary and comprehensive index completes this invaluable resource. Ably capturing the ancient and insuppressible creative drive of the human spirit and the sweep of history, this is a book art-lovers and cultural anthropologists-scholars and laypeople alike-are guaranteed to cherish.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.