Rémi Labrusse's 'Préhistoire. L’envers du temps' Explores Prehistory's Impact on Time

In the third installment of a three-part series on books related to the exhibition 'Préhistoire. Une énigme moderne' at the Centre Pompidou, Annabelle Gugnon reviews Rémi Labrusse's 'Préhistoire. L’envers du temps' (Hazan, 2019, 240 p., €39.95). Labrusse, a contemporary art historian and professor at Paris Nanterre, co-curated the exhibition. The book examines how the concept of prehistory has reshaped representations of time, framing it as a 'desire for prehistory' that emerged from encounters with ancient signs. Labrusse traces the term's historical, scientific, and linguistic development, highlighting artists like Odilon Redon, Caspar David Friedrich, Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, and Robert Morris who appropriated prehistoric ideas. He links this to the Industrial Revolution, which unearthed archaeological finds through infrastructure projects. The book argues that parietal art challenged evolutionary timelines, suggesting that the Neolithic era inaugurated a 'multimillennial technophilia' culminating in a 'monstrous' present. Labrusse cites Claude Lévi-Strauss, who in 1963 described humanity's evolution as 'enslavement' to natural determinism. The work culminates in a poetic reflection on the cave as a matrix of being, urging readers to reconnect with the 'immemorial' within.