Laura Bossi (Editor)
The Origins of the World: The Invention of Nature in the 19th Century.
Editions Gallimard, 2021. 9782072927003 383 pages.
Large-format hardcover volume, measuring approximately 9.25" x 12.5", is, together with dust jacket, new, still in shrinkwrap. Text is in English and includes quotations in French.
Catalogue of an exhibition held at the musée d'Orsay, Paris, from November 10, 2020 to February 14, 2021. This English-language catalogue was published simultaneously with the French edition "Les origines du monde: l'invention de la nature au XIXe siècle."
"The 19th century saw an unprecedented development in the natural sciences. While great voyages of exploration testified to the diversity of the world and the variety of living species, geology revealed the unimaginable antiquity of the earth, and the study of fossils revealed the beginnings of life and the existence of extinct species, including dinosaurs. The discovery of prehistoric man raised just as many questions: how to represent him? Who was the first artist? In the second half of the century, Darwin and his followers questioned the origins of man, his place in Nature, his links with animals and his own animality in a world now understood as an ecosystem. This upheaval in science, as well as the public debates that spanned the century, profoundly influenced artists. The symbolist aesthetic of metamorphosis was then populated with monsters and hybrids. The infinitely small, botany and the ocean depths inspired the decorative arts. At the crossroads of science and the arts, this work compares the main milestones of scientific discoveries with their parallels in the imagination."