Pierre Demargne
The Birth of Greek Art.
Golden Press, 1964. The Arts of Mankind. First edition. Translation by Stuart Gilbert and James Emmons. 446 pages.
Large-format volume, measuring approximately 9.25" x 11.25", is bound in red cloth, with stamped gilt lettering to spine and publisher's emblem stamped in gold on front cover. Book is new. Price-clipped dust jacket is in fine condition.  Illustrated throughout in black-and-white and color, including fold-out plates, plus fold-out maps at rear. Volume is housed in cardboard slipcase (9.25" x 12") showing damage at top of spine panel.
This is the sixth volume of this series.
"Until quite recently, art lovers and art critics alike held the opinion that there was no true Greek art before the sculptures of the Parthenon. There was a widespread belief that the only artistic language spoken by the Greeks was that of beauty and fidelity to nature. Little by little, this opinion has changed, and we have become aware of archaic Greek art. There has slowly arisen the realization that like our Middle Ages, Greece had her own primitives, and even practiced an elementary "barbarian" art, the geometric, which was viewed with stern disfavor until our moderns discovered it on their own account. 
It is with these beginnings that this book deals. Divided into two parts, the first presents pre-Hellenic art, a true artistic prelude to Greek art, a whole art cycle that flourished, then disappeared on the same soil where, several centuries later, Hellenic art was to develop in its turn. The book's second part is devoted to the origins of true Hellenic art. This was a new beginning, an art that arose stripped clean of the approaches and attitudes of previous cultures, able to respond to the needs of a new, growing and uniquely brilliant civilization."