​“The present contains nothing more than the past and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.” – Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, 1907. From the series Great Ideas of Western Man.

Edgard Pillet created this piece for the advertising campaign ​“Great Ideas of Western Man” for the Container Corporation of America. The arrangement of lines and geometric shapes evokes a modern cityscape. A large circle floats above the ​“city,” inside which a complex pattern of smaller circles resembles the inner workings of a machine. Pillet evokes the image of a clockwork universe, suggesting that the present is simply an outcome of processes that were set in motion before history.