Books Do Furnish a Painting written by Jamie Camplin and Maria Ranauro is a stylish interrogation of “how and why books became the single most ubiquitous feature of our cultural lives and, in large measure, our everyday existence”.
This text examines books as the subjects of and objects within art; the delicacy of their ruffled pages speaking not only to the symbolic representation of knowledge and wisdom but also as objects that occupy a physical space with the ability to ground a painting in the real and tangible (whilst the landscape in Augustus Egg’s Traveling Companionsis unfamiliar, perhaps even imaginary, the book is graspable).When surrounded by books people appear suspended in the verisimilitude of everyday life and thereby come alive.
Books do Furnish a Painting is not only a text that appreciates books as aesthetic markers of culture, but is and of itself the manifestation of such ideals; its marbled cover and sleeve with its ribboned book mark make it an object of elegant ornamentation fit to adorn the shelves of any art and book lover.
Comments