Author: Maria Stavrinaki
Prehistory is an invention of the late 19th century. In that moment of technological progress and acceleration of production and circulation, three major Western narratives about time took shape.
One after another, these new fields of inquiry delved into the obscure immensity of the past: First, to surmise the age of the Earth; second, to find the point of emergence of human beings; and third, to ponder the age of art.
Maria Stavrinaki considers the inseparability of these accounts of temporality from the disruptive forces of modernity. She asks what a history of modernity and its art would look like if considered through these three interwoven inventions.
