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 sense.” –Spectrum Culture
“The intense strangeness of Codex Seraphinianus belies the joyous
feel of the artistry. Even the oddest, most unnerving images are
rendered with pastel beauty, and a softness that makes them almost
endearing.” –KQED
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