30,000 Years of Art 

London: Phaidon Press, 2007

When it comes to books on art, I have only ever found one that both celebrates our human visual creativity and, in these difficult and dangerous times, gives me hope for our planetary future. The massive, inclusive volume titled 30,000 Years of Art does both with its 10,000 beautifully presented images, its simple informative texts and its democratic, worldwide chronological presentation.

Many generic art history volumes end up largely Eurocentric in their expression. This book breaks from this tradition by simultaneously presenting works from vastly different locations, at each stage of human history. Turning to the art made circa AD 750 we are presented with a Hiberno-Saxon brooch from Ireland, a Zapotec funerary urn from Mexico, a bronze flying dragon from the Tang Dynasty in China, a church mosaic from Jordan and a painted limestone picture stone from Sweden.

Even the last section includes works from outside the main streams of modern art. Sandwiched between works by Gauguin, Picasso and Malevich, are equally prominently displayed artworks from Nigeria, Gabon, and Indonesia. The feminine Dan Mask from Liberia holds its own with Picasso’s Les Damoiselles d’Avignon as insight into the human condition. Similar masks may even have been the source of the inspiration Picasso found for his seminal cubist painting.

This open-ended presentation makes page-turning a delight; the next image we see could be from anywhere on the planet. Much of the art describes a deep reverence for all life, and much of it does not. Yet the overall effect, at least to this reader, is a holistic one. The first image shown is of a 30,000 year old lion-man. The last one depicts James Turrell’s Roden Crater, an interactive light installation built on an extinct volcano. Both pieces remind us of our dependence on the planet and the interconnectedness of all life. That message, along with the endless examples of human ingenuity, lift my spirits and give me a glimmer of hope for our continuation on this life-filled planet.

Jim Kalnin