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Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
Steadfast readers recoil from the term bookworm, not wanting to be aligned with insects that destroy the books they feed on. But artist Purcell is fascinated by the patterns paper-eating insects create. Renowned for her provocative improvisations on the collections of natural history museums and the obsessions of private collectors, Purcell makes images and collages that reveal the taboo beauty of dissolution and decay. In 125 startlingly complex works of many strata, extraordinary textures, luminous colors, and unforeseen juxtapositions, Purcell considers the vulnerability of books to the transforming powers of water, fire, gravity, organisms, and time. And she channels the aura of mystery and sanctity surrounding objects taken from tombs, shipwrecks, and abandoned buildings. Ruins were sublime to the Romantics, and Purcell concurs, achieving a Joseph Cornell-like magic, albeit more worldly. With a suitably sophisticated essay by Sven Birkerts and Purcell's own delightfully revealing introduction, this inquiry into the life cycle of objects, the metamorphosing powers of nature, and the timelessness of art is a mind-expanding experience. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Product Description
Books are man-made artifacts designed to convey information. When they are inevitably invaded by forces of nature and decay, they become suggestive of an alternative literary universe. Noted photographer and collage artist Rosamond Purcell has been exploring this universe for the past thirty years, and in this extraordinarily beautiful collection, the first retrospective of her work, her images teach us to read in a new way. Here are two conjoined volumes transformed by a nesting mouse into a heap of disrupted plot and straw; a 19th century French economics text re-interpreted by foraging termites, and many other oddities from a fertile imagination. Bookworm's 125 color reproductions are imaginative evidence of those processes that render literal meaning irrelevant.
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