Codex Seraphinianus. Ein Orbis Pictus des Universums der Phan... by Luigi Serafini

Here, there are no wrong answers and the representations merely serve as stepping off points for the imagination. You are free to interpret the drawings and text in any way you like. The wonder of this book is that it doesn't constrain the reader with any kind of imposed narrative. Sections in the work display flora, fauna, environmental or biological cycles, mechanical systems, modes of transportation, modifications to human anatomy, different forms of dress and dwelling places of what one must assume are more primitive peoples, a taxonomy of human heads, maps, pictures of notable places and historically-significant events, and costumes of whatever culture is being represented. There's obviously something being explained, though one is never quite sure what. The language seems familiar, but is utterly alien. The asemic script that runs throughout merely heightens the strangeness of the volume. It is reminiscent of the old Harper's Magazine Travelers Companion, a 19th-century anthropological survey, a modern biology and environmental science textbook, and a series of travel brochures. Suddenly, a wayward creator-god shows up with a genetic splicer set to randomize the mixing of species and common objects, creating before the artists a set of real-life models from which they might take inspiration.Ĭodex Seraphinianus is a natural history of the surreal, a book that truly defies categorization.

Escher, Albrecht Durer, and Salvador Dali were locked in an underground dungeon with an infinite amount of art supplies and only LSD to eat.

Codex Seraphinianus. Ein Orbis Pictus des Universums der Phan... by Luigi Serafini