A History of Pictures - From the Cave to the Computer Screen by David Hockney and Martin Gayford

The making of pictures has a history going back perhaps 100000 years to an African shell used as a paint palette. Two-thirds of it is irrevocably lost, since the earliest images known to us are from about 40000 years ago. But what a 40000 years, explored here by David Hockney and Martin Gayford in a brilliantly original book. They privilege no medium, or period, or style, but instead, in 16 chapters, discuss how and why pictures have been made, and insistently link art to human skills and human needs.