Creation: Artists, Gods & Origins
Conrad, Peter
£16.95
Creation: Artists, Gods & Origins. By Peter Conrad
Hardback with dust jacket. Published by Thames & Hudson, London, 2007. Approx size: 24cm H x 18cm W (9 ½” H x 7”W). 592pp. ISBN: 978-0-500-51356-9. List price £24.95
‘Despite the best efforts of scientists, theologians and aestheticians, creation and creativity both remain mysterious. How did our world begin? Where do we come from? And how can we understand or describe that obscure source we call imagination, from which works of art emerge?
Peter Conrad’s book investigates these mysteries, in a survey of cultural history that begins with the differing accounts of creation in the Bible and Greek myth and advances to our own world, where creativity – expressed in the almost divine power of nuclear weapons, or in the apocalyptic drama of 9/11 – seems to have warped into a fierce delight of destruction. He describes the long illness and eventual demise of the Christian God, and shows how artists and scientists were ready and eager to take over a creative role that was once a heavenly prerogative. At the same time, he probes the creative impulse of writers, painters and musicians, celebrating the audacity of the restless rebellious beings who first questioned the limits placed on thoughts and dreams, supplemented nature with their own creations , and came to be known for want of a better word – as artists.’
Book condition: Brand new.