Paleoart - Visions of the Prehistoric Past (English)

Despite vanishing from Earth 66 million years ago, dinosaurs are one of our favorite cultural fascinations. In this history of paleoart, writer Zoë Lescaze and artist Walton Ford scour the globe for dinosaur paintings, drawings, prints, mosaics, and murals.

Dating from early 19th century to the digital era, this collection is a celebration of one of man’s most imaginative pictorial traditions.

DINOSAURS ARE FOREVER

Paleoart: Visions of the Prehistoric Past presents a pictorial history of paleoart from 1830 to 1990. Writer Zoë Lescaze and artist Walton Ford examine modern depictions of prehistory through paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, mosaics, and murals that combine scientific knowledge with artistic imagination.

In 1830, English scientist Henry De la Beche painted the first piece of paleoart, depicting prehistoric reptiles battling underwater. Artists around the world subsequently imagined dinosaurs, woolly mammoths, cavemen, and other prehistoric creatures, shaping public understanding of the distant past.

The book explores this often-overlooked area of art history and the ways artists projected their own aesthetic interests onto extinct animals and environments. Its works reflect influences including Romanticism, Impressionism, Japonisme, Fauvism, and Art Nouveau.

An essay by Lescaze and a preface by Ford accompany artworks drawn from major natural history museums, lesser-known archives, and private collections. Four fold-outs and dozens of details support close examination of the works. Photography made for the book includes Charles R. Knight’s paintings in Chicago and A. M. Belashov’s monumental mosaic in Moscow. The collection considers prehistoric animals through an art-historical lens, spanning fearsome reconstructions and fantastical interpretations.

BOOK DETAILS

FORMAT: hardcover with four fold-outs
EDITION: English
DIMENSIONS: 9.8 × 13.4 in.
WEIGHT: 6.79 lb
PAGES: 292
ISBN: 978-3-8365-5511-1

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR

Walton Ford, born in 1960, studied filmmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design before turning to painting. His practice includes large-scale narrative watercolors developed over three decades. His work has been widely exhibited, including solo shows at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin and the Brooklyn Museum in New York.

ABOUT THE EDITOR AND AUTHOR

Zoë Lescaze is a writer, editor, and podcast host based in New York. Her articles and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, T Magazine, and The New York Times Book Review, among other publications. With collaborators, she has worked on exhibitions of paleoart and fossils at museums in the Netherlands and Switzerland.