An unknown masterpiece of visionary art―as daring as Blake or Goya, but utterly different―reproduced in full color, with a commentary by one of our most original art historians Somewhere 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. 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. 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. What Heaven Looks Like is a rare event: an encounter between a truly perceptive historian of images, and a master conjurer of them.

What Heaven Looks Like: Comments on a Strange Wordless Book

Arts & Photography

Elkins, James

History & Criticism

Abbeville Laboratory Books

An amusing and possibly informative anthology of Notes and Queries, the Victorian magazine for which no subject was too odd or obscure. Recommended for history, literature, and trivia buffs. How did the Honorable Miss E. St. Leger become a Freemason? Did Lord Byron meet a hippopotamus, or was it only a tapir? Whence the popular prejudice against redheads? These were among the topics discussed in the pages of Notes and Queries, a weekly magazine founded in London in 1849 as "a medium of inter-communication for literary men, artists, antiquaries, genealogists, etc." Its motto was "When found, make a note of"―a saying of Captain Cuttle, the hook-handed old salt of Dickens's Dombey and Son. Some subscribers to Notes and Queries contributed brief notes on curious facts they had uncovered; other sent in arcane queries to be answered. The result was rather like an erudite Internet discussion board, complete with its flame wars and trolls. This book anthologizes the most interesting exchanges from the First Series of Notes and Queries (1849–55). Here, ordered by subject―with judicious footnotes, of course―are delightfully pedantic remarks on the daily life and amusements of olden times, the doings of faeries, revolting folk remedies, strange forgotten, poetry good and bad, and oddities of natural history, among many other things. Also included is a selection of advertisements from the magazine, for such products as Grosjean's Celebrated Trowsers, Rimmel's Toilet Vinegar (good for several purposes), and the Rev. Edmund Saul Dixon's treatise on Ornamental and Domestic Poultry: Their History and Management. Original drawings add an extra touch of humor throughout, and a lively introduction describes the history and workings of Notes and Queries. Full of useless information and Victorian fustiness, Captain Cuttle's Mailbag will fascinate trivia buffs and time travelers alike.

Captain Cuttle's Mailbag: History, Folklore, and Victorian Pedantry from the Pages of "Notes and Queries"

Welch, Edward

Reference

A book of beautiful and challenging mazes, full of optical illusions, meditative geometric patterns, and natural and abstract designs. A trap for the pencil. An escape for the mind. This book invites you to experience two dozen of the most varied and remarkable mazes, painstakingly drawn by hand—visions of a dazzling black-and-white world in which the austere beauty of geometry is infused with the warmth of imagination. They offer hours of mindful exploration for puzzlers of all ages. Art lovers will enjoy just looking at them, and catching their subtle historical echoes. Clear instructions help you start your journey through each maze. At the back of the book you will find not only solutions but also an illustrated guide to drawing your own mazes. 24 Mazes reflects the author’s belief that a good maze is both a picture and a puzzle, a work of art that you travel through. A maze can offer different sensations of physical movement, as well as an emotional journey—through hope and disappointment, insight and confusion, to an ultimate triumph. It is one of the great hybrid art forms, like opera or the comic strip.

24 Mazes: A Book of Artistic Puzzles

Fried, Henry

Religion & Spirituality

A linked collection of very short stories―at once funny and poignant―set in postwar Buffalo, New York. Illustrated in color with the author’s own critically acclaimed collages. "It all began in Buffalo between World War II and the Korean Conflict, as it was called, when the guys would meet up late at night in a diner for their brand of fellowship. They were mostly high school graduates in their late teens and early twenties, the sons of immigrant families. It didn’t matter; there was little trace of that showing. They didn’t look or act alike, but they had a sense of who they were, sort of proud for some reason, without much to show for it." —from the Introduction At the center of the group was Arnie. He might have been selling real estate for the time being, but he always had his eye on the next thing—Christmas tree farming, perhaps, or uranium mining. Then there were Moe, who had a gas station and garage, and Barney, who drove a truck for Pop’s Pies. Observing it all was an art student working odd jobs to afford his paints and brushes—Phil. In 110 vignettes about Arnie and the guys, Philip Sultz presents a fictionalized portrait of the working-class Buffalo of his youth. He also vividly sketches the downtown Manhattan of those days, where his protagonists are drawn to study and to work. These stories—by turns funny and poignant, perfectly told and full of telling details—evoke not only the life of two cities, but the atmosphere of postwar America. Even in shadow of McCarthyism and the atom bomb, it was a time emblematic of possibility and change. Lake Effect Days is illustrated with color reproductions of Sultz’s critically acclaimed collages, which echo the text in their formal perfection and add new layers of allusion.

Lake Effect Days: Brief Stories of Buffalo, New York

Literature & Fiction

Sultz, Philip

Literary

This critically acclaimed collection of very short stories about postwar Buffalo, New York--illustrated in color with the author's own collages--is now available in paperback. "It all began in Buffalo between World War II and the Korean Conflict, as it was called, when the guys would meet up late at night in a diner for their brand of fellowship. They were mostly high school graduates in their late teens and early twenties, the sons of immigrant families. It didn't matter; there was little trace of that showing. They didn't look or act alike, but they had a sense of who they were, sort of proud for some reason, without much to show for it." --from the Introduction At the center of the group was Arnie. He might have been selling real estate for the time being, but he always had his eye on the next thing--Christmas tree farming, perhaps, or uranium mining. Then there were Moe, who had a gas station and garage, and Barney, who drove a truck for Pop's Pies. Observing it all was an art student working odd jobs to afford his paints and brushes--Phil. In 110 vignettes about Arnie and the guys, Philip Sultz presents a fictionalized portrait of the working-class Buffalo of his youth. He also vividly sketches the downtown Manhattan of those days, where his protagonists are drawn to study and to work. These stories--by turns funny and poignant, perfectly told and full of telling details--evoke not only the life of two cities, but the atmosphere of postwar America. Even in shadow of McCarthyism and the atom bomb, it was a time emblematic of possibility and change. Lake Effect Days is illustrated with color reproductions of Sultz's critically acclaimed collages, which echo the text in their formal perfection and add new layers of allusion.

Lake Effect Days: Brief Stories of Buffalo New York

Humor & Satire