To make art is to be human

Creation: Art Since the Beginning

John-Paul Stonard (Bloomsbury, £30)

IN 1950, Ernst Gombrich published The Story of Art. The book was an instant bestseller and was the first to show that there was, indeed, such a thing as a story of art, that artists and movements existed not in isolated moments of time, but as part of a continuous flow of inspiration and development. Gombrich’s tale resembled a river that started with cave paintings and had reached—in his lifetime—Dalí, before meandering into a future of as yet unknown artists. Along its banks were stylistic movements passed in turn: Gothic, the Renaissance, Mannerism and so on.

Art history was still a young subject then; things have changed since the publication. Gombrich told the story, exclusively, of western art; there is nothing about Chinese, Japanese, Indian or South or Central American art, nor did women artists get a look in. Such a viewpoint now seems restricted and old-fashioned.

If were written today, it would look very much like , in which John-Paul Stonard roams the world like an obsessive air-miles hunter, looking at artworks from Cambodia to Chennai, as well as the old European and American heartlands; at artists from the anonymous sculptors of the Great Sphinx of Giza