The Origins of Art

Following up on Sugimoto’s End of Time (2005) and History of History (2008), the present Origins of Art exhibition cycle looks at the larger pageant of emergent human creativity. From our vantage point in late-capitalist society, entwined as we are in the spiral of mass reproduction and accelerated economic growth, we cannot help but recognize how uncontrollable human desire propels us toward ever-newer phases in human history.

Humankind has overcome countless hurdles in the course its development: the Ice Ages, the Great Flood, not to mention pestilence, rebellion and war even in civilized times. Each time we have applied our powers of imagination to overcome some difficulty we have gained a keen increment of intelligence, though by now our prospects so fatally overwritten in endless statistics are looking gloomy indeed.

Human imagination has spawned creative urges that we have given expression through art. But the time has come for us look back in order to read the unforeseeable that lies ahead. And in order to trace the course of human imagination, we must return to the origins of consciousness. What art can do at this juncture is remember, unearth the memories of when and how we humans became human.

Timed to a single revolution of the planet around the sun at a 23.4º tilt that plays out the rhythm of the seasons, this Origins of Art cycle is organized around four themes: science, architecture, history and religion.

Hiroshi Sugimoto