{"product_id":"what-heaven-looks-like-comments-on-a-strange-wordless-book-9781946053022","title":"What Heaven Looks Like: Comments on a Strange Wordless Book","description":"\u003cp\u003e \u003cem\u003eSomewhere in Europe--we don't know where--around 1700. An artist is staring at something on the floor next to her worktable. It's just a log from the woodpile, stood on end. The soft, damp bark; the gently raised growth rings; the dark radial cracks--nothing could be more ordinary. But as the artist looks, and looks, colors begin to appear--shapes--even figures. She turns to a sheet of paper and begins to paint.\u003c\/em\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Today this anonymous artist's masterpiece is preserved in the University of Glasgow Library. It is a manuscript in a plain brown binding, whose entire contents, beyond a cryptic title page, are fifty-two small, round watercolor paintings based on the visions she saw in the ends of firewood logs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This book reproduces the entire sequence of paintings in full color, together with a meditative commentary by the art historian James Elkins. Sometimes, he writes, we can glimpse the artist's sources--Baroque religious art, genre painting, mythology, alchemical manuscripts, emblem books, optical effects. But always she distorts her images, mixes them together, leaves them incomplete--always she rejects familiar stories and clear-cut meanings. In this daring refusal to make sense, Elkins sees an uncannily modern attitude of doubt and skepticism; he draws a portrait of the artist as an irremediably lonely, amazingly independent soul, inhabiting a distinct historical moment between the faded Renaissance and the overconfident Enlightenment.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003eWhat Heaven Looks Like\u003c\/em\u003e is a rare event: an encounter between a truly perceptive historian of images, and a master conjurer of them.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Abbeville Laboratory Books\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 09\/19\/2017\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781946053022\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 128\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.15lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.10h x 6.30w x 0.60d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations: \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e 06\/19\/2017\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e 07\/01\/2017\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"James Elkins","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42059217371317,"sku":"9781946053022","price":21.25,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/products\/img_876c3e64-10a5-45fe-b311-6f655f43f6e2.jpg?v=1650341805","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/what-heaven-looks-like-comments-on-a-strange-wordless-book-9781946053022","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}