The Sun in Art - Digital Version

The Sun in Art is no doubt the most complete conspectus of the innumerable pictures man has made of the sun from the earliest dawn of human intelligence till the present day. Source of light and heat and even of life itself, the sun is richer in pictorial associations than perhaps any other single concept. Man has busied his mind with it over the millennia, carving and incising it in stone, hammering, chasing and engraving it in metal, cutting it in wood, painting and drawing it on parchment, paper and canvas. He has worshipped the as a deity, has made it a symbol of natural and supernatural forces and has given it a place in every sphere of his earthly activity. The Sun in Art contains a wealth of pictorial matter that has been reduced to manageable form and ordered clarity. About half the documentary material relates to history and folklore; subjects treated in this section are for instance the solar symbolism of ancient peoples, Christian sun symbols, the sun in the picture-lan-gauge of alchemy, in popular art and customs, in inn signs and in the sundials of the 13th to 18th centuries. Almost every is in which creative graphic art is practiced is re-presented here: from Japan to Denmark, from the U.S.A. to Italy, France, Great Britain, Holland, Germany and Switzerland. The section devoted to the sun in applied and advertising an treats these two provinces in their widest connotation: jewelry, pottery and tapestry are dealt with as well as advertisements, posters and printed matter of all kinds. The closing chapters are devoted to the sun in modern art and sculpture and to the child’s view of the sun. The Sun in Art is based on the hundredth number (Jubilee issue) of the international an journal Graphis. It is lavishly illustrated and contains inserts on Japanese and handmade paper. Thirty-eight of the 156 pages are printed in two or more colours. All texts are in three languages: English, German and French.