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Book from the Ground: From Point to Point - Hardcover

 
9780262027083: Book from the Ground: From Point to Point
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A book without words, recounting a day in the life of an office worker, told completely in the symbols, icons, and logos of modern life. Twenty years ago I made Book from the Sky, a book of illegible Chinese characters that no one could read. Now I have created Book from the Ground, a book that anyone can read. -Xu Bing Following his classic work Book from the Sky, the Chinese artist Xu Bing presents a new graphic novel-one composed entirely of symbols and icons that are universally understood. Xu Bing spent seven years gathering materials, experimenting, revising, and arranging thousands of pictograms to construct the narrative of Book from the Ground. The result is a readable story without words, an account of twenty-four hours in the life of "Mr. Black," a typical urban white-collar worker. Our protagonist's day begins with wake-up calls from a nearby bird and his bedside alarm clock; it continues through tooth-brushing, coffee-making, TV-watching, and cat-feeding. He commutes to his job on the subway, works in his office, ponders various fast-food options for lunch, waits in line for the bathroom, daydreams, sends flowers, socializes after work, goes home, kills a mosquito, goes to bed, sleeps, and gets up the next morning to do it all over again. His day is recounted with meticulous and intimate detail, and reads like a postmodern, post-textual riff on James Joyce's account of Bloom's peregrinations in Ulysses. But Xu Bing's narrative, using an exclusively visual language, could be published anywhere, without translation or explication; anyone with experience in contemporary life-anyone who has internalized the icons and logos of modernity, from smiley faces to transit maps to menus-can understand it.

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Review:

While this book might turn off readers looking to escape into a more conventional narrative, anyone interested in experimental fiction, modern art, or a little bit of challenge will be delighted.

--Library Journal
About the Author:
Xu Bing is an internationally acclaimed artist whose work has been shown and collected by museums and galleries including the National Art Museum of China; the British Museum; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Modern Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Museum. He is a recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant and is currently serving as Vice President of the Central Academy of Art, Beijing. Based in Beijing, he maintains a studio in Brooklyn.

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  • PublisherMIT Press
  • Publication date2014
  • ISBN 10 0262027089
  • ISBN 13 9780262027083
  • BindingHardcover
  • Number of pages128
  • Rating

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780262536226: Book from the Ground: from point to point (The MIT Press)

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ISBN 10:  0262536226 ISBN 13:  9780262536226
Publisher: MIT Press, 2018
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Xu, Bing
Published by The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (2014)
ISBN 10: 0262027089 ISBN 13: 9780262027083
New Hardcover First Edition Signed Quantity: 1
Seller:
Argyl Houser, Bookseller
(Turlock, CA, U.S.A.)

Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. Extremely rare SIGNED 1st Edition/1st Printing of internationally renowned artist Xu Bing's wonderful Book from the Ground: from point to point, a graphic novel that can be read by anyone because it is entirely composed of internationally recognizable symbols and icons and The Book about Xu Bing's Book from the Ground which tells the story of how the artist conceptualized and created his work. Both were signed and dated by the author at a recent lecture at the Huntington Library, San Marino, California. "Twenty years ago I made Book from the Sky, a book of illegible Chinese characters that no one could read. Now I have created Book from the Ground, a book that anyone can read. Though quite different, the two books share something in common: regardless of a reader's language or level of education, the books treat all readers equally. Book from the Sky was an expression of doubt and alarm regarding preexisting systems of writing; Book from the Ground expresses the ideal of a single universally understood language, and my sense of the direction of contemporary communication." -- Xu Bing. Both books are brand new and in new condition. Xu Bing has signed them in both English and Chinese with a date ("2014"), both on the first free endpage. We will pack each of these treasures in bubble-wrap to protect their corners and ship them in sturdy box to make sure they arrive in pristine condition. Signed by Author(s). Seller Inventory # ABH165

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