Table of contents:
Video: Books in art. Part one: Antiquity, Mystery, Knowledge
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Can a thing be wise? Can she speak? Can she live? Yes. If this book … True connoisseurs and experts can confirm: books are like people, and sometimes even more human than people. More mysterious. Wiser. This review is about books, each page of which holds more secrets of the universe and time than we can imagine; about Heavy Bindings and Shabby Pages, about Brass Covers and Headers. This review is about books in contemporary art.
Memory of millennia
Humanity is far from young. It has gone through so much that it could have grown wiser a long time ago. But - alas - it is forgetful, because with the death of the mind, its knowledge disappears. How can we preserve the experience of centuries? In a bookless era, something could only survive in oral art; but folklore is more suitable for forgetting than for memorizing.
Everything changed when writing appeared. It was then that a person met someone who never forgets and can outlive nations, civilizations, kingdoms and empires. That someone was a book. You may not think about it, but now, while you are reading these lines, in huge, carefully guarded and ventilated palaces there are scrolls of paper with words that are much older than Jesus Christ.
And our reverence for antiquity is still immeasurable. We may know a little about her; but there is always someone who REALLY KNOWS. This someone is a book. And it is truly valuable if it bears the imprint of antiquity. Seeing such a book, a person understands: he met a certain being who is older and wiser than him, and even is able to share his wisdom.
That is why artists are so attracted by ancient tomes and incunabula, saturated with the sour smell of ancient dust, sheathed with leather and copper shells, huge and heavy like dinosaurs … Or like dragons. Yes, it is with dragons that old books can be compared - semi-mythical witnesses of forever bygone times.
Knowledge is power
Oddly enough, the craving for knowledge is inherent in a person no less than the tendency to breathe or chew. The meanings that make up the Universe are the parishioners in the great temple of letters and pages. And the books themselves are the keys to this temple.
There is only one way to enter the temple of Great Knowledge - by opening a book cover. The portal that opens to the reader of the book is one of the favorite images of artists.
The one who has passed through these gates has no way back: no one can forget what he saw on the other side of knowledge, in the blinding truth of a book page. And all the same, brave wanderers again and again storm these gates - you cannot go past them to the truth.
Magic and mystery
But where knowledge is, there is magic. The sprawling fabric of the Universe can be held in the hands only by a miracle - and this miracle happens. The knowledge concentrated in books reaches such power that it becomes magic, and the book itself is an object from the otherworldly, wonderful world.
But if a thing is endowed with will and spirit, then it is magical in itself. Sometimes the role of a book in art rises no higher than a "magic helper" - but sometimes in postmodernism it is a scenario according to which all events take place. It is no longer being that organizes the text, but the text itself begins to reign supreme over life.
That is why books are perceived by us as artifacts. Artists, as empathetic as dogs, reflect this unspoken reverence for paper volumes in their works. Would millions have read The Da Vinci Code if the same ideas were presented not in a thick beautiful book, but in a thin training manual?
In general, the respect for books in European culture cannot be overestimated. The modern world is still saturated with their cult. And it's not for nothing that Muslims call themselves, Christians and Jews alike - People Books.
Recommended:
Why Marat Died in the Bathroom: The Greatest Mystery of Neoclassicism and the Mystery of a Revolutionary's Illness
Jacques-Louis David is one of those who created a revolution in the art of the 18th century. He pioneered a new direction of painting, called neoclassical, and his landmark work "Death of Marat" contains both political overtones and the personal tragedy of the deceased journalist. Why is the hero of the picture depicted in a bathtub and what have scientists and doctors been arguing about for 200 years?
The unsolved mystery of "The Little Humpbacked Horse": What hidden knowledge the author could encrypt in a fairy tale
When Pyotr Ershov wrote The Little Humpbacked Horse, he was only 18 years old. The genius of this tale, which has not lost its popularity until now, as well as the fact that after it the writer could no longer create anything outstanding (the rest of the works were clearly weaker), never ceases to amaze readers and literary critics. But lovers of mysticism and hidden meanings find a lot of encrypted information in The Little Humpbacked Horse. They believe that in this way the author wanted to pass on some secret knowledge to the descendants
What books did Marina Tsvetaeva love: “How many books! What a crush "
The talented poetess loved books since childhood, even in her poem "For Books" she very colorfully and emotionally described her childhood delight from visiting a bookstore with her mother at the age of seven. Books accompanied Marina Tsvetaeva all her life, and her literary preferences spanned different genres. The letters, diaries and questionnaires contain lists of authors who were preferred by the Russian poet of the Silver Age
The mystery of the bag of the Gods: the mystery of disappeared civilizations, over which modern scientists are fighting
Scientists around the world are struggling with a riddle: how is it possible that millennial images of the Anunnaki, which show a god with a mysterious bag in his hand, are found all over the world and even in Mesoamerican civilizations. Is it a coincidence that this mysterious handbag in the hand of God, which can be seen in the ancient Sumerian paintings of the Anunnaki, is found in several cultures in America and in Göbekli Tepe
One million coffee beans. One World, One Family, One Coffee: another mosaic of Saimir Strati
This Albanian maestro, multiple "record holder" for mosaics, Saimir Strati, has already been met by the readers of Culturology.Ru on the pages of the site. It was he who created a painting of 300,000 screws and a portrait of Leonardo da Vinci from nails, and also laid out images from corks and toothpicks. And the new mosaic, on which the author is working today, probably cost him more than one hundred cups of strong aromatic coffee, since he lays it out from a million coffee beans