{"id":534,"date":"2014-09-26T21:13:38","date_gmt":"2014-09-26T20:13:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/?post_type=product&#038;p=534"},"modified":"2015-06-29T08:40:16","modified_gmt":"2015-06-29T07:40:16","slug":"book-from-the-ground-from-point-to-point-xu-bing","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/product\/book-from-the-ground-from-point-to-point-xu-bing\/","title":{"rendered":"Book from the Ground: from point to point"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-534 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/?attachment_id=536'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"210\" height=\"136\" src=\"https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/BookFromTheGround01-210x136.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/BookFromTheGround01-210x136.jpg 210w, https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/BookFromTheGround01-480x312.jpg 480w, https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/BookFromTheGround01.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 210px) 100vw, 210px\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/?attachment_id=537'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"210\" height=\"299\" src=\"https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/BookFromTheGround02-210x299.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/BookFromTheGround02-210x299.jpg 210w, https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/BookFromTheGround02.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 210px) 100vw, 210px\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p>Overview<br \/>\nTwenty years ago I made Book from the Sky, a book of illegible Chinese characters that no one could read. Now I have created Book from the Ground, a book that anyone can read.\u2028&#8211;Xu Bing<\/p>\n<p>Following his classic work Book from the Sky, the Chinese artist Xu Bing presents a new graphic novel\u2014one composed entirely of symbols and icons that are universally understood. Xu Bing spent seven years gathering materials, experimenting, revising, and arranging thousands of pictograms to construct the narrative of Book from the Ground. The result is a readable story without words, an account of twenty-four hours in the life of \u201cMr. Black,&#8221; a typical urban white-collar worker.<br \/>\nOur protagonist\u2019s day begins with wake-up calls from a nearby bird and his bedside alarm clock; it continues through tooth-brushing, coffee-making, TV-watching, and cat-feeding. He commutes to his job on the subway, works in his office, ponders various fast-food options for lunch, waits in line for the bathroom, daydreams, sends flowers, socializes after work, goes home, kills a mosquito, goes to bed, sleeps, and gets up the next morning to do it all over again. His day is recounted with meticulous and intimate detail, and reads like a postmodern, post-textual riff on James Joyce\u2019s account of Bloom\u2019s peregrinations in Ulysses. But Xu Bing\u2019s narrative, using an exclusively visual language, could be published anywhere, without translation or explication; anyone with experience in contemporary life&#8211;anyone who has internalized the icons and logos of modernity, from smiley faces to transit maps to menus&#8211;can understand it.<\/p>\n<p>About the Author<br \/>\nXu Bing is an internationally acclaimed artist whose work has been shown and collected by museums and galleries including the National Art Museum of China; the British Museum; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Modern Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Museum. He is a recipient of a MacArthur \u201cgenius\u201d grant and is currently serving as Vice President of the Central Academy of Art, Beijing. Based in Beijing, he maintains a studio in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cWhile this book might turn off readers looking to escape into a more conventional narrative, anyone interested in experimental fiction, modern art, or a little bit of challenge will be delighted.\u201d\u2014Library Journal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":535,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[22,43,34],"product_tag":[80,78,79],"series":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-534","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-comics-and-graphic-novels","7":"product_cat-illustration-books","8":"product_cat-without-text","9":"product_tag-china","10":"product_tag-ikon","11":"product_tag-language","13":"first","14":"outofstock","15":"sale","16":"shipping-taxable","17":"purchasable","18":"product-type-simple"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_brand","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_brand?post=534"},{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=534"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=534"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}