Look! What Do You See?
An Art Puzzle Book of American and Chinese Songs
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- USD 5.99
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- USD 5.99
Descripción editorial
A puzzle, a work of art, and a collection of classic American songs, all in an innovative book by one of the world's foremost contemporary artists.
Every page of this book is filled with secret code. It seems like Chinese calligraphy, but it’s not. It seems like you can’t read it, but you can. Once the pieces of the puzzle start falling into place, you will understand it all. And some of it may even strike you as strangely familiar . . .
Twelve traditional American songs, such as "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" and "Yankee Doodle," as well as five classic songs from Chinese culture, are written here in artist Xu Bing's unique "square word calligraphy," which uses one-block words made of English letters. From a distance, these pieces are beautiful but unintelligible art. Up close, they are a mystery just waiting to be solved—like the fine art version of "Magic Eye."
For readers ages 7 and up, Look! What Do You See? is perfect for long car rides or coded notes to friends. Incredibly intricate and visually engaging, this is a book that children and adults will return to again and again.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At first glance, Stadtlander's graceful folk art scenes of American life appear to be accompanied by Chinese calligraphy; readers may be tempted to focus on the artwork and pass the Chinese characters by. But contemporary artist Xu's "top secret assignment" on the first page explains that the first 12 compositions are the words to American folk songs. With this information and the eventual recognition that the "Chinese" glyphs are built out of stylized Roman letters "I," "on," "my," and "oh" are pretty easy to read the characters begin to reveal themselves as blocks of Chinese-style brushstrokes that actually depict English words. The first painting shows men and women at a barn dance. Is it "Skip to My Lou"? (It is.) Once readers get the hang of it, guessing the other songs isn't too difficult, but it's plenty rewarding. Although the book is not intended as an introduction to reading Chinese, the process of puzzling out Xu's word glyphs isn't unrelated to the mental operation of decoding Chinese characters. Five Chinese songs follow for the truly intrepid, and the lyrics and an explanation of Bing's writing system appears at the end. Ages 7 10.
