You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Sidney and Ethel Blatt's book is a monumental, awe-inspiring, and profoundly scientific work of great inner beauty. It explores the history of painting from the Paleolithic Period (15,000–10,000, B. C.) to Contemporary Art. With enormous erudition Blatt discusses the parallel developments in art and science for the following periods: Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Egyptian art, Greco-Roman art, the art of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, Mannerism, the Baroque, Impressionism, and 20th-century art. He conceives of three major epochs in the history of Western civilization: from ancient times through the Middle Ages; from the Renaissance through the Baroque; and from Impressionism through contemporary times. The thesis of Blatt's book is that the development of culture in mankind is fundamentally parallel to the cognitive development of the child as described by Jean Piaget. For some periods in the development of art, he adds concepts stemming from the psychoanalytic theory of object relations. Blatt examines the development of the concepts of the form of objects and of space in Western civilization as documented by paintings ranging from the cave paintings of the Paleolithic Period to the abstract art of the 20th century.
Piaget was convinced that what he had observed about the structural development of thought in individual children was applicable not only to all children but also to the development of culture. He assumed that culture, the progress of mankind, develops along the same lines as those of the cognition of the individual. Blatt sets out to test this hypothesis by carefully analyzing the history of art and by, at each point, relating the history of art to that of the history of science, philosophy, and sometimes of music or literature of the same period.
The book is well organized. Chapter 1 deals with the form of objects and of space in the history of art, with each period's search for a “vocabulary of form,” with the psychological criteria, and with the structu