Paleoart

the long version

"It was 1830 when English scientist Henry De la Beche painted the first piece of paleoart, a dazzling, deliciously macabre vision of prehistoric reptiles battling underwater dinosaurs, woolly mammoths, cavemen, and other creatures, shaping our understanding of the primeval past through their exhilirating images. In this unprededented new book, writer Zoë Lescaze and artist Walton Ford present the astonishing history of peleoart from 1830-1990. These are not cave paintings produced thousands of years ago, but modern visions of prehistory: stunning paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, mosaics, and murals that mingle scientific fact with unbridled fantasy. The collection provides an in-depth look at this neglected niche of art history and shows how the artists charged with imagining extinct creatures often projected their own asthetic whims onto prehistory, rendering the primordial past with dashes of Romanticism, Impressionism, Fauvism, and Art Nouveau, among other influences." --