What Heaven Looks Like: Comments on a Strange Wordless Book

Really publisher/distributor... you say this unknown artist who created these abstract-ish sketch-booky paintings so tiny and few is as daring as Blake or Goya?Well No. He/She is delightful and charming but not even as daring I was at 20... not as daring as many other 20 year old artists either.The book is a pleasure and shows the miniatures well but let's not go overboard. These are miniatures right?

This is such an amazing book to my eye. I love that it is mysterious.

Horrible reproductions.

As described.

This book is priceless I loved it!

'What Heaven Looks Like' is a reprinting of an obscure and unexplained set of 18th century** watercolor paintings with commentary by James Elkins. The original work is housed at the University of Glasgow (as MS Ferguson 115) and is an utterly mystifying work of art. This book is the first publication of all 52 paintings other than a UK-based, limited edition.Elkins and the publisher have clearly produced a labor of love so it's disappointing to say that I generally did not enjoy the commentary by the author. My main issue is that he chose to ascribe a gender to the artist and I found this to be pointless and distracting. In general, I mostly found that Elkins' observations stomped on the mystery of the paintings rather than fitting nicely next to them. It's probably fair to say that I wish my first reading of the paintings would have been without the author's text - maybe he's not completely to blame for my frustration.While I am not a fan of the commentary the fault could lie partially in the layout of the book. In the original manuscript the images stand alone, one per page. As book-nerdish as it may sound the printing of text on the facing pages ruins the impact. It would not have been unheard of to put the commentary in a separate section.I greatly appreciate that 'What Heaven Looks Like" spurred my interest in MS Ferguson 115 - enough that I sought out the limited edition printing by Adam McLean. McLean's edition is a near facsimile of the original, wordless, manuscript. For the curious, it is well worth seeing this series of paintings their original format.**NOTE: Elkins does not cover all aspects of the dating of the work. The registration dates of the watermark on several sheets of the paper suggests that those sheets were likely produced in the mid to late 18th century. Assuming those dates are correct, the work could obviously have not been made earlier.

MS Ferguson 115, preserved as an unique hand-made volume in the Glasgow University Library is a splendid enigma. This small manuscript, reproduced beautifully as What Heaven Looks Like: Comments on a Strange Wordless Book, is a visionary treasure, a sequence of 52 watercolors that seems to illustrate a bizarre and magnificent dream. No one knows who made this manuscript or exactly when it was assembled. The meaning of the book remains a mystery, although the images, sometimes sinister, often weirdly comical, and, frequently, ecstatic, are immensely powerful and communicative. They speak to us in a language that seems, sometimes, a half-forgotten murmur, almost familiar but indecipherable. Chicago art historian and critic, James Elkins provides a highly tentative commentary on the pictures, acknowledging that their meaning is arcane, and, probably, inaccessible. Much of what Elkins surmises is debatable, but this is a valid approach to MS 115 -- the author challenges his readers to interpret the manuscript's strange emblems for themselves. One of the most remarkable aspects of the manuscript is that it fuses alchemical symbols with pareidolia. When we see a dragon in a cloud or imagine a profile lurking within random shadow, we engage our imagination to form pareidolic figures. The manuscript's 52 emblems are circular and appear to wrest images from the knots and annular rings of cross-cut wooden logs. Thus, the book seems to be, at once, an arcane alchemical diary as well as a celebration of the human imagination's capacity to forge form from chaos. Elkins' book is a gem and I recommend it highly. (Elkins has written a number of fine books, including, notably, Pictures and Tears about paintings to which people respond with tears -- this is also a wonderful book.)

What Heaven Looks Like is a charming and intimate book, Elkins introducing and sharing with us his observations on a little-known collection of images housed in the Glasgow University Library. Peppered, occasionally, with references to other works and paintings, along with hushed conversations with colleagues, one feels quietly privileged as if invited to view his latest addition to his cabinet of curiosities. As Elkins admits, the reproductions in the book don’t do justice to the original (they never do), the book, nonetheless, remains a compelling series of readings and viewings.

Très content de mon achat. Livre très intéressant