Realisation-from Seeing to Understanding: The Origins of Art

Our world view has changed from a flat earth under the dome of heaven to a planet spinning in the universe. We perceived the world as a body, like ours, then as a tree, a pyramid, an altar, and finally as a veil which became a window through which we peered only to discover ourselves on a sphere, a bubble which might burst at any moment. Our changing views are interpreted through iconic images of the remote and more recent past: the Venus of Willendorf, the Pyramids, Stonehenge, the Taj Mahal, the Scream, Sydney Opera House, and the Guggenheim, Bilbao.

JULIAN SPALDING’S books include The Poetic Museum, The Eclipse of Art, The Art of Wonder (winner of the Sir Banister Fletcher Prize) and The Best Art You’ve Never Seen. He was formerly Director of Art Galleries in Sheffield, Manchester and Glasgow (including the Burrell Collection and Kelvingrove) and established The Ruskin Gallery, The St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art, Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art, the Open Museum and, as Master of Ruskin’s Guild of St George, the Campaign for Drawing.