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A Book from the Sky

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One of Xu Bing's more recently designed characters

A Book from the Sky (simplified Chinese: 天书; traditional Chinese: 天書; pinyin: Tiān shū) is the name of a four-volume asemic book produced by Chinese artist Xu Bing in the style of books printed in the Song dynasty. It was first displayed in Beijing's China Art Gallery between 1987 and 1991.[1]

The 4,000 characters used in the book are constructed from the Kangxi radicals, but are not attested in written Chinese, and are intended to be meaningless. Xu spent years hand carving the typesetting blocks used to make the prints according to traditional Chinese block printing methods. Each block was embossed with a unique but meaningless symbol and then used to make the prints for the exhibit.[2]

The work was originally titled Mirror to Analyze the World: The Century’s Final Volume (simplified Chinese: 析世鉴－世纪末卷; traditional Chinese: 析世鍳－世紀末卷; pinyin: Xī shì jiàn—Shìjì mòjuǎn)[3] but the artist soon accepted the popularized title, A Book from the Sky. The work resulted in Xu losing favour with the communist government of the People's Republic of China[citation needed] and being vilified by some official critics as a "bourgeois liberal".[citation needed]

The Chinese idiomatic expression "天書" (celestial script) is a metaphor for incomprehensible writing somewhat akin to "chicken scratch" in English, referring to a writing system of unknown origins never seen before by mankind.

Later versions of these characters incorporated English letters into square word-shapes, which he called Square Word Calligraphy.[4] The example at right is a square word which reads "WIKI".

Notes

  1. ^ Description on Xu Bing’s website
  2. ^ Xu Bing: A Book from the Sky.
  3. ^ Spears 2009, p. 67.
  4. ^ url="http://www.xubing.com/index.php/site/projects/year/1994/square_calligraphy_classroom"

References

  • Liu, Lydia H. (2009). "The Non-Book, or the Play of the Sign". In Spears, Katherine (ed.). Tianshu: Passages in the Making of a Book. London: Quaritch. pp. 65–79.
  • Tianshu: Passages in the Making of a Book. London: Quaritch. 2009. ISBN 0-9550852-9-2. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |Editor= ignored (|editor= suggested) (help)
  • Xu Bing, Drew Hammond (translator) (2009). "The Making of Book from the Sky". In Spears, Katherine (ed.). Tianshu: Passages in the Making of a Book. London: Quaritch. pp. 51–63. {{cite encyclopedia}}: |author= has generic name (help)
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