Giedion has extrapolated the new art approaches to space 
“since Cézanne” to include “popular culture” and “anonymous 
history.” Art is for him as inclusive an idea as “mimesis” is for 
Aristotle. He is currently completing a massive work on The  
Beginnings of Art  as a companion to his artistic analysis of all 
the abstract modes of twentieth-century mechanization. It is 
necessary to understand the close interrelation between the 
world and art of the cave man, and the intensely organic 
interdependence of men in the electric age. Of course, it could 
be argued that a lyric disposition to applaud the audile-tactile 
gropings of child and cave art betokens a naive and uncritical 
obsession with the unconscious modes of an electric or 
simultaneous culture. But it was a great thrill for many late 
Romantics to break through suddenly into an “understanding” 
of primitive art. As Emile Durkheim had insisted, men could not 
take much more of the fragmentation of work and experience