Codex Seraphinianus

Luigi Serafini is an architect, ceramist, glazier, painter, sculptor, designer, opera director, set designer, and critic who works in Italy and abroad. In 2007, the Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea in Milan dedicated a successful mostra ontological (ontological exhibition) to him. He has illustrated works by Franz Kafka and Michael Ende.

the book really does live up to its reputation: The drawings are in turn hilarious, disturbing, bizarre and, sometimes, just flat-out incomprehensible, but all of them are annotated in Serafini s script. -Dangerous Minds
 
It s not the sort of thing that easily lends itself to classification, but probably the most accurate way to describe it would be as an encyclopedia of an invented alien civilization the Codex is still a disorienting and provocative vision of inscrutable otherness. -Slate.com
 
Codex Seraphinianus is an art book in the most direct sense there are big, beautiful drawings accompanied by indecipherable letterforms--and it is impossible to read in a literal way. The text has remained a mystery all these years, and perhaps that s part of its draw as an art object. -FineBooks Magazine

Is the best art book of the year one that is not only impossible for me to review, but one that is probably equally impossible for you to understand? It s a handsome, hilarious and enduring puzzle that not only features wonderful art in it, but in its entirety captures another kind of human creativity the encyclopedia, the result of compiling and collecting, and an unlikely medium for artists.  -North Adams Transcript

"Codex Seraphinianus: History s Most Bizarre and Beautiful Encyclopedia, Brought Back to Life...a weird and wonderful masterpiece of art and philosophical provocation on the precipice of the information age....Undoubtedly one of the most intricate and beautiful art books ever created." -Brain Pickings

Wow. One of the strangest and most beautiful books ever published. Faerie Tales
 
Codex Seraphinianus is in a sense the most elaborate book of doodles ever made. What makes it much more than that is not just the quality of Serafini s drawings and the superior book-making craft, but its brilliant structure. Part of the genius of the Codex is that there is enough information to be familiar but not enough to make any