Creation: Artists, Gods, and Origins - Hardcover

Conrad, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0500513562 ISBN 13: 9780500513569

Publisher: Thames & Hudson, 2007

Synopsis

A new history of Western civilization told through creation myths from the past two thousand years by one of the great cultural critics of our time.

"[The world] was created not once but as many times as there have been original artworks."—Marcel Proust

In the 1940s, near the end of his life, Matisse designed a chapel near his villa in Vence. A Dominican novice said that he assumed the artist had been directly inspired in this work by the Heavenly Father. "Yes," Matisse replied, "but that god is me."

Since the beginning of civilization, humans have debated this fundamental question: did God create man, or did man create God? At the heart of the question lies a debate over who has the right to create, and this has led to a tension between the concept of God on one hand and artists of all types—painters, sculptors, composers, thinkers, writers—on the other. Sometimes respectful, sometimes antagonistic, this creative rivalry has led to sublime works of painting, poetry, and music.

Peter Conrad's exuberantly original new book operates on many levels. It is a treasure trove of creation myths and stories—whether from Genesis or from Ovid—exploring their origins and how they have been interpreted and subverted by artists over time. It also helps us understand what makes artistically creative people unusual. Brilliantly crafted, wonderfully written, and well informed on two thousand years of literature, music, art, religion, and mysticism, this book is a forceful reminder of the extraordinary power of our creative traditions. 150 illustrations.

About this title

About the Author:

Peter Conrad has taught English at Christ Church, Oxford, since 1973. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including Feasting with Panthers, The Hitchcock Murders, and Modern Times, Modern Places.

From Publishers Weekly:

In this expansive and often electrifying exploration, Oxford English professor Conrad (Modern Times, Modern Places) aims to present a celebration of art that doubles as a critique of religion. His supreme faith is in human, not divine creators, and though he thinks it unfashionable, his premise is that artistic genius does indeed exist. Plato, Mozart, Michelangelo, Schoenberg and Wagner are not surprisingly among the many examples; Mary Shelley and Hildegard of Bingen are among the few women discussed at any length. Thirty-three chapters are thematically arranged, probing concepts of creation in a sometimes dizzying, often brilliant fusion of the linguistic, aesthetic and philosophical. When focused on one artist or period, Conrad's ideas are most acute, his arguments most intrepid, as in the chapter on Leonardo. His conclusion that man is both a creator and destroyer, and that the beauty of aesthetic forms can deliver us from the world's entropic decay is hardly new, yet the book's vigorous, engagement with these ideas and others gives it a potency that will appeal to both general and scholarly readers. 160 illus. (Nov.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Thames & Hudson
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0500513562
• ISBN 13: 9780500513569
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 592