326pp., colour illus., hardback, First SA Edition, Johannesburg, 2019

First published in 2015 in French as Art rupestre d'Afrique australe. First published in English in 2018.

"This is a magnificent book, at once both a poetic and a scholarly reclamation of the authority and integrity of the art in San painting. Renaud Ego has done what no one writing about these images has managed to do before, and that is to explode the boundaries that have contained and constrained rock art research. In his extraordinary prose, and beautiful photographs, he reanimates the paintings for us, reminding us that the pervasive forms of academic iconographical analysis have 'decomposed' them, stripping them of their vibrant wholeness. It is a deeply moving publication." Pippa Skotnes, Michaelis Professor of Fine Art: Centre for Curating the Archive, University of Cape Town, and author of Miscast: Negotiating the presence of Bushmen and Unconquerable Spirit: George Stow's history paintings of the San

Poet, novelist and essayist Renaud Ego is a French specialist in southern African rock art, which he has studied for the past twenty years.H writings include poetry, La Réalité n’a rien à voir (2007); a volume of collected essays, Une légende des yeux (2010), and a study of palaeolithic art, Le Geste du regard (2017).

VISIONARY ANIMAL, rock art from Southern Africa, translated by Deke Dusinberre

: Ego (R.)

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