The Cradle of Humanity: Prehistoric Art and Culture (Hardcover)

by Georges Bataille (Author), Stuart Kendall (Editor, Introduction, Translator), Michelle Kendall (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Fans of the filthy modernist masterpiece The Story of The Eye may be surprised when they encounter Bataille (1897-1962) in an almost academic mode-but, if so, they are forgetting that Bataille was the founder of the journal Critique, that he was a librarian specializing in Medievalism at Paris's Bibliothèque Nationale and that all that transformed primitivism had to come from somewhere. This book may not have much value as archeology or even as criticism, but it's terrific as a kind of poetics of prehistory. On animals: "we get along with one another in order to eliminate death, to rid it from our horizon, to create an end in the world in which it would be as if the animal's agony and death were nonexistent." Drawing on the cave paintings of Lascaux, the Lespugue Venus and many other works, Bataille articulates a world that is simultaneously ours and unrecoverable, where those who kill their prey ask it "to forgive them for killing it, and sometimes they cry for it, in a touching mixture of distracted sincerity and simple playacting."
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"it's terrific as a kind of poetics of prehistory"
— Publisher’s Weekly Online

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 210 pages
• Publisher: Zone Books (July 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1890951552
• ISBN-13: 978-1890951559
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,082,901 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Man Like Us, May 10, 2008

By	Mark Kerstetter - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

For me, Bataille's Skira book "The Birth of Art" is his most beautiful book. For that reason, this volume is most welcome. Translator Stuart Kendall has written an excellent introduction. There are, I think, roughly two kinds of readers of Bataille: those who love the Eye and don't have much time for his philosophy, and those who focus on the latter, tending to read his artistic works through an academic lense. In some of his works the 'two Batailles' come together, works like "Guilty" and "Inner Experience", but mostly "The Birth of Art". Some of the magic of that book can be found in the Cradle of Humanity essays. Bataille's writing, at its best, becomes an adventure that parallels the sense of wonder one experiences when contemplating ancient art. We are fascinated by that ancient artist. Bataille understands that our search for him is equivalent to the search for ourselves.