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What Heaven Looks Like: Comments on a Strange Wordless Book Hardcover – September 19, 2017

by James Elkins (Author)
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 23 ratings
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An unknown masterpiece of visionary art―as daring as Blake or Goya, but utterly different―reproduced in full color, with a commentary by one of our most original art historians

Somewhere in Europe―we don't know where―around 1700. An artist is staring at something on the floor next to her worktable. It's just a log from the woodpile, stood on end. The soft, damp bark; the gently raised growth rings; the dark radial cracks―nothing could be more ordinary. But as the artist looks, and looks, colors begin to appear―shapes―even figures. She turns to a sheet of paper and begins to paint.

Today this anonymous artist's masterpiece is preserved in the University of Glasgow Library. It is a manuscript in a plain brown binding, whose entire contents, beyond a cryptic title page, are fifty-two small, round watercolor paintings based on the visions she saw in the ends of firewood logs.

This book reproduces the entire sequence of paintings in full color, together with a meditative commentary by the art historian James Elkins. Sometimes, he writes, we can glimpse the artist's sources―Baroque religious art, genre painting, mythology, alchemical manuscripts, emblem books, optical effects. But always she distorts her images, mixes them together, leaves them incomplete―always she rejects familiar stories and clear-cut meanings. In this daring refusal to make sense, Elkins sees an uncannily modern attitude of doubt and skepticism; he draws a portrait of the artist as an irremediably lonely, amazingly independent soul, inhabiting a distinct historical moment between the faded Renaissance and the overconfident Enlightenment.

What Heaven Looks Like is a rare event: an encounter between a truly perceptive historian of images, and a master conjurer of them.

Previous page
  1. Print length
    128 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Abbeville Laboratory Books
  4. Publication date
    September 19, 2017
  5. Dimensions
    6.4 x 0.7 x 9.4 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1946053023
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1946053022
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A cryptic artifact . . . is the source of endless fascination in this alluring annotated reproduction."
― Publishers Weekly

"It might be a delicious intrigue cooked up by Borges: a manuscript of fuzzy provenance, consisting of 52 paintings, rests unvisited on the shelves of a library for generations. Rediscovered, it proves fascinating."
― Kirkus Reviews

"These cryptic visions from the trunk of a tree are captivating and beguiling. James Elkins has created a most strange and singular book about a most strange and singular book."
― Joshua Foer, author of Moonwalking with Einstein and cofounder of Atlas Obscura

"This might be the strangest book I have ever come across."
― Charles F. Altieri, Stageberg Professor of English, UC Berkeley

Review

Advance Praise for What Heaven Looks Like by James Elkins

"These cryptic visions from the trunk of a tree are captivating and beguiling. James Elkins has created a most strange and singular book about a most strange and singular book."
―Joshua Foer, author of Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything and cofounder of Atlas Obscura

"In What Heaven Looks Like, James Elkins has brought to light a fantastic late seventeenth-century work by an anonymous visionary artist. Elkins's poetic and erudite commentary provides a guide to the phantoms and figures, scenes and allegorical suggestions, in these rich and delicate works. Painted as if on slices of wood, the images are full of light and atmosphere, and Elkins attends to their details with equal generosity toward the artist and his readers. A rare treasure.
―Johanna Drucker, Breslauer Professor of Bibliographical Studies, UCLA, and author of Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production

"This might be the strangest book I have ever come across, partially for the fascinating indefiniteness of the intricately formed images, and partially for the efforts of Elkins to convince us (and himself) that his alchemical mysteries and embattled skepticism are adequate accounts of what is imaged. I love how his interpretations are cast as adventures in honoring the strangeness of an imagination not bound by public convention or high ambition. And I love even more Elkins's efforts to get at this strangeness in a historical manner by postulating a seventeenth century sensibility between belief and unbelief and devoted to making that betweenness itself a feasible mode of sensibility. We moderns have much to learn from that capacity to suspend both belief and disbelief―as scholars and as simple observers of our own experiences."
―Charles F. Altieri, Stageberg Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of Reckoning with the Imagination: Wittgenstein and the Aesthetics of Literary Experience

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Abbeville Laboratory Books (September 19, 2017)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 128 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1946053023
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1946053022
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.15 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.4 x 0.7 x 9.4 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 23 ratings

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
23 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

mourning dove
5.0 out of 5 stars This is such an amazing book to my eye.
Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2018
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This is such an amazing book to my eye. I love that it is mysterious.
2 people found this helpful
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Forbidding
4.0 out of 5 stars As described.
Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2021
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As described.
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Laura M Kroeger
5.0 out of 5 stars Would buy again
Reviewed in the United States on August 20, 2018
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This book is priceless I loved it!
2 people found this helpful
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John S. Beckmann
5.0 out of 5 stars A haunting and magical book
Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2018
MS Ferguson 115, preserved as an unique hand-made volume in the Glasgow University Library is a splendid enigma. This small manuscript, reproduced beautifully as What Heaven Looks Like: Comments on a Strange Wordless Book, is a visionary treasure, a sequence of 52 watercolors that seems to illustrate a bizarre and magnificent dream. No one knows who made this manuscript or exactly when it was assembled. The meaning of the book remains a mystery, although the images, sometimes sinister, often weirdly comical, and, frequently, ecstatic, are immensely powerful and communicative. They speak to us in a language that seems, sometimes, a half-forgotten murmur, almost familiar but indecipherable. Chicago art historian and critic, James Elkins provides a highly tentative commentary on the pictures, acknowledging that their meaning is arcane, and, probably, inaccessible. Much of what Elkins surmises is debatable, but this is a valid approach to MS 115 -- the author challenges his readers to interpret the manuscript's strange emblems for themselves. One of the most remarkable aspects of the manuscript is that it fuses alchemical symbols with pareidolia. When we see a dragon in a cloud or imagine a profile lurking within random shadow, we engage our imagination to form pareidolic figures. The manuscript's 52 emblems are circular and appear to wrest images from the knots and annular rings of cross-cut wooden logs. Thus, the book seems to be, at once, an arcane alchemical diary as well as a celebration of the human imagination's capacity to forge form from chaos. Elkins' book is a gem and I recommend it highly. (Elkins has written a number of fine books, including, notably, Pictures and Tears about paintings to which people respond with tears -- this is also a wonderful book.)
4 people found this helpful
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Anonymous
5.0 out of 5 stars A Charming and Intimate Book
Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2018
What Heaven Looks Like is a charming and intimate book, Elkins introducing and sharing with us his observations on a little-known collection of images housed in the Glasgow University Library. Peppered, occasionally, with references to other works and paintings, along with hushed conversations with colleagues, one feels quietly privileged as if invited to view his latest addition to his cabinet of curiosities. As Elkins admits, the reproductions in the book don’t do justice to the original (they never do), the book, nonetheless, remains a compelling series of readings and viewings.
3 people found this helpful
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Mel Ristau
1.0 out of 5 stars Very poor images and commentary.
Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2019
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Horrible reproductions.
4 people found this helpful
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ART.ST
3.0 out of 5 stars Really? as daring as Blake or Goya?
Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2019
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Really publisher/distributor... you say this unknown artist who created these abstract-ish sketch-booky paintings so tiny and few is as daring as Blake or Goya?

Well No. He/She is delightful and charming but not even as daring as I was at 20... not as daring as many other 20 year old artists either.

The book is a pleasure and shows the miniatures well but let's not go overboard. These are miniatures right?
One person found this helpful
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Mark F
3.0 out of 5 stars What Chaos and Beauty Look Like
Reviewed in the United States on November 7, 2017
'What Heaven Looks Like' is a reprinting of an obscure and unexplained set of 18th century** watercolor paintings with commentary by James Elkins. The original work is housed at the University of Glasgow (as MS Ferguson 115) and is an utterly mystifying work of art. This book is the first publication of all 52 paintings other than a UK-based, limited edition.

Elkins and the publisher have clearly produced a labor of love so it's disappointing to say that I generally did not enjoy the commentary by the author. My main issue is that he chose to ascribe a gender to the artist and I found this to be pointless and distracting. In general, I mostly found that Elkins' observations stomped on the mystery of the paintings rather than fitting nicely next to them. It's probably fair to say that I wish my first reading of the paintings would have been without the author's text - maybe he's not completely to blame for my frustration.

While I am not a fan of the commentary the fault could lie partially in the layout of the book. In the original manuscript the images stand alone, one per page. As book-nerdish as it may sound the printing of text on the facing pages ruins the impact. It would not have been unheard of to put the commentary in a separate section.

I greatly appreciate that 'What Heaven Looks Like" spurred my interest in MS Ferguson 115 - enough that I sought out the limited edition printing by Adam McLean. McLean's edition is a near facsimile of the original, wordless, manuscript. For the curious, it is well worth seeing this series of paintings their original format.

**NOTE: Elkins does not cover all aspects of the dating of the work. The registration dates of the watermark on several sheets of the paper suggests that those sheets were likely produced in the mid to late 18th century. Assuming those dates are correct, the work could obviously have not been made earlier.
8 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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sam ainsley
5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant book!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 14, 2023
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can I have a receipt please?
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Ora Clavis
5.0 out of 5 stars Une belle découverte
Reviewed in France on June 29, 2020
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Très content de mon achat. Livre très intéressant
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