The Eternal Present: The Beginnings of Art.
(From the dust jacket: "Professor Giedion, well known as a...)
From the dust jacket: "Professor Giedion, well known as an historian of architecture, is concerned in this latest work with a problem that in his view has come more and more into the foreground: the dual concepts of constancy and change in many spheres, ranging from the creative to the philosophical . . .The two keys to the meaning of prehistoric art, S. Giedion maintains, are the symbol, portraying reality before reality exists, and the animal as man's superior in the unified primordial world in which both man and animal were embedded. The illustrations - more than 500, including 20 in color - include photographs of paleolithic paintings, engravings, and sculpture (mostly taken in the caverns of France and Spain under the author's supervision), examples from recent primative and contemporary art, drawings, diagrams, and maps." Contents are the following parts: Art: A Fundamental Experience; The Means of Expression in Primeval Art; Symbolization (consisting of The Symbol in Primeval Art, Hands as Magic Symbols; Manifold Meanings of Circular Forms, Fertility Symbols, The Great Symbols); The Human Figure (consisting of Venus Figurines, Figures Without Heads; Female and Male Reliefs; Masks and Hybrid Creatures, and Hybrid Creatures); and The Space Conception of Prehistory.
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