Tentative Visual Encyclopedia of art

How to understand art?

Through reason with words?

Or through images of the thing itself?

I want to share a tentative visual encyclopedia of the evolution of art that I built on Pinterest. It divides the whole history of art in 24 sections representing the entirety of its historical evolution:

• The first section illustrates animist art. This is when art really started ...in tribal societies tens of thousands of years ago.
• The next 4 sections illustrate the arts that were practiced in the early kingdoms and empires that started the human civilizations on Gaia our mother earth. This section does not offer a catalog of the art productions of all civilizations. I limited this catalog to Chinese and Western art because I think that these two offer a perfect illustration of the fact that civilizations have had their own specific approaches toward art... What I mean to say is that, notwithstanding the hegemony of Western art during Late-Modernity the fact of the matter is that Western art is not the whole story of art.
• The next 19 sections relate to Western art during the era of Modernity that started with the Renaissance in Western Europe and which came to dominate the world art-scene with the globalization of Western Modernity. The last section, organic art, gives my personal take on the visual signs of what is coming after Western Modernity. Organic art, to me, is a Late-Modern impressionist illustration of the Zeitgeist in After-Modernity ...a new societal era that will emerge after  – the soon coming world economic implosion,  – followed by the fall of the West and its quasi-worldview of Modernity,  – followed by the collapse of the habitat of most living species including the habitat of modern human societies... After-Modernity is the era that will follow a monumental paradigm shift from the world we know today.

The entry point to each section of the encyclopedia is illustrated by 4 images that in a flash help to visualize how art changed from one stage of evolution to the next. And each section is an image gallery giving a selection of art productions of that particular moment in history. As of today these 24 galleries total 2250 images.

Here under is a still of the cover page of this visual encyclopedia of the evolution of art. To enjoy the full ride I invite you to visit my interactive page on Pinterest.

Next week I'll share the last post of  my short series about "The disconnect between the West and China".

In the meantime have a great week-end everybody.