A Book from the Sky

Title page of Book from the Sky, in pseudo-Chinese characters. The characters “天書” do not appear anywhere in the book.

A Book from the Sky (simplified Chinese: 天书; traditional Chinese: 天書; pinyin: Tiānshū) is a book produced by Chinese artist Xu Bing in the style of fine editions from the Song and Ming dynasties, but filled entirely with meaningless glyphs designed to resemble traditional Chinese characters.[1] The book, which consists of four volumes totaling 604 pages, was printed in a single print run of 126 copies between 1987 and 1991,[2]: 61  and was first publicly exhibited in October 1988, in Beijing's China Art Gallery.[3]

The work was originally titled Mirror to Analyze the World: The Century’s Final Volume (simplified Chinese: 析世鉴－世纪末卷; traditional Chinese: 析世鍳－世紀末卷; pinyin: Xī shì jiàn—Shìjì mòjuàn), a title which "evokes the trope of the book as jian 鍳 or mirror in the venerable tradition of imperial historiography".[4]: 67  However, the artist eventually felt that this title was "cumbersome" and "heavily influenced by Western forms and the current cultural climate",[2]: 57  and decided to adopt the name that was already in popular use, Tianshu. In Chinese, the term tian shu (“divine writing”) originally referred to certain kinds of religious texts, but is now used to mean "gibberish"; it has thus been suggested that nonsense writing would be a more appropriate translation of the title.[5]

  1. ^ Two of the characters were later found by Charles Stone to coincide with attested Chinese characters; however, one of these was itself a 9th-century forgery Hung 1994
  2. ^ a b Xu Bing (2009). "The Making of Book from the Sky". In Spears, Katherine (ed.). Tianshu: Passages in the Making of a Book. Translated by Drew Hammond. London: Quaritch. pp. 51–63.
  3. ^ Xu & Cayley 2009, p. 163.
  4. ^ Liu, Lydia H. (2009). "The Non-Book, or the Play of the Sign". In Spears, Katherine (ed.). Tianshu: Passages in the Making of a Book. London: Quaritch. pp. 65–79.
  5. ^ Hung 1994