The mansion of thought

"Recorded history bursts with manmade structures that make knowledge visual, to aid memorization, to record information, and to enhance ritual practice ... The quest for immortality, universal knowledge and paradise pervades material culture ... Over 60 paintings in watercolor give examples from cultures and religions around the world, especially those which used text to explain their ideas. The images interact in a folding picture-book that may be used to make omnipresent geometric forms: triangles, squares, cubes, hexagons, even a house shape. The quadripartite case that envelops the book outlines the main categories presented. Subjects range from sacred Assyrian trees to Renaissance Cabala and memory theaters, from Humanist Bibles to Buddhism, from Chinese mirrors to Maya astronomy, from Islamic urban planning to Jain cosmic geometry. Further text and the index of images are in the artist's digital archive ... This book builds on The Theater of Nature or Curiosity Filled the Cabinet (2002) about the history of museums from Ancient Greece though the Enlightenment in rhyming verse, watercolor and copperplate etching. The 1500s in Europe may have been an apex of attempts to picture universal knowledge, but efforts to package ideas in 3-D revolved north, east, south and west"--Colophon.