Description

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From distinguished critic and curator John-Paul Stonard, a dazzling, panoramic world history of art from ancient times to the present for the twenty-first century reader.

Creation tells the extraordinary story of how people all over the globe, from prehistory to the present day, have created images in order to understand the world they inhabit. It explores the remarkable endurance of this creative impulse, and by tracing the diversity of artistic forms through the ages, offers a comprehensive and exhilarating introduction to world art.

Historian, critic, and curator John-Paul Stonard has assembled a dazzling array of paintings, sculptures and artifacts to tell a story of vitality and renewal. Fully illustrated, each chapter of Creation allows intimate access to key works of art and the conversations surrounding them, from the earliest cave paintings of the Palaeolithic Era to the conceptual art of today. Stonard has written a captivating and searching look at the evolving legacies of the past and casts a cold eye on our own unstable vantage point.

About the Author

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John-Paul Stonard is a writer, art historian and member of the consultative committee of the Burlington Magazine, where he worked as an editor from 2005 to 2010. He completed a PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art and has published widely in the fields of modern and contemporary art. His publications include Germany Divided: Baselitz and His Generation and Fault Lines: Art in Germany 1945-55. He is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, the Burlington Magazine and Apollo.

Praise For…

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"In this thoughtful and engaging book, [Stonard] takes us around the world and through the ages to explore that shared creative impulse and its myriad results . . . Stonard's fresh, insightful approach to the history of art will appeal to both the aficionado and the casual museum-goer." - Booklist