Ruminating about my proposition that the ultimate aim of art is the discovery and shaping of the artist him- or herself, today I remembered a book that I had read as a youngster. It took me a while to come up with the author’s name and the title, but at length it crossed my mind that it was Gordon Childe’s Man Makes Himself (1936). I was quite enthralled by it way back, most likely in a Serbo-Croatian translation. An Australian archeologist of renown, he examined the prehistory of our species. Inclined to Marxism, he endeavored to show that we make ourselves. Nothing else does. In retrospect, the connection with art is rather obvious, if not even trite. But it is still revolutionary. For what else could possibly be art’s ultimate aim? Whence the joy of discovery and shaping of myself in my own book, of course. Delighted by my recollection of Childe’s key book, I went in search of it through all the bookstores in Zagreb that carry foreign books. Long forgotten, though, it was nowhere to be found. When I told one of the sales people that the book used to be a bestseller, she grinned coyly on account of my gray hair: “Times change!” They surely do. But the aim of art does not. And we are the ultimate objects of art one and all.

Addendum (November 10, 2011)

Thanks to Amazon, Childe’s book is already with me. And it is a pleasure to browse through. But every bit that I attempt reading as I flip through pages backwards and forwards feels completely unfamiliar. It is as though I have never held it in my hand, let alone read it from cover to cover with relish. In short, I was a youngster long, long ago. So long ago, in fact, that the poor youngster is beyond my reach. I have changed over the years to such an extent that my memories smack of mere dreams. If man makes himself, as Childe claims, he makes himself ever anew. And the dross mounts over time to eventually burry him underneath. My Residua is my witness, of course.