Human heritage: a thousand years of visual art, by Ibrahim Al-Arees

The greatest productions of this millennium have always been works that move from the individual creator, who bears on his shoulders the history of civilizations, eras, and places combined, to humanity as a whole. Divine Comedy is not only Italian Latin, and when Ferdowsi chronicles the kings of Persia, he chronicles humanity. Ibn Rushd's colleges were not owned only by Arabs, and Shakespeare, Van Gogh, Viscotti, and others expressed themselves and their societies in a way that reflected all of humanity, and their output was directed toward all of humanity. This is what the researcher in this book attempts to depict and to portray through simple words, brief texts, and expressive images, a history of the human mind and culture, as it has manifested over a thousand years. The reader will find in this a mixture of ideas, arts, and cultures, and a mixture of nations and individuals. This does not mean that the author will take the reader on an academic, specialized journey, providing lengthy, boring, or school-like analyses... but he will try, as much as possible, to address timeless and fundamental works that have formed important milestones and building blocks in the history of humanity across all intellectual, political, philosophical, and literary fields, as well as in the arts, including theatrical, cinematic, painting, and sculpture arts. In an attempt to present a new perspective, giving the first place to glorifying the role played by the individual in the civilization of the collective, regardless of the individual's origin or nationality—whether a stranger or a foreigner, African or European, American or Asian. What matters is the model itself... There are no boundaries between Shakespeare, Naguib Mahfouz, Bach, Maugham, the first Japanese novels, or the latest African poetry, because all of this simply represents the history of humanity... It is presented through models that make it appear, like a crossword puzzle, which the reader reconstructs. It is worth noting that the author has formatted these articles, which he wrote daily for the newspaper Al-Hayat over more than twelve years, into topics such as: a thousand years of political thought, a thousand years of music, the history of cinema in 100 films, a thousand years of opera, and a thousand years of visual art.