Now this is intriguing.
A visual-poetic book, where the artist has taken a Victorian novel (A Human Document, by W.H. Mallock, 1892) and has reworked it into a literary collage of visual gems, where each page is a self-contained message or poem. The first edition was seen “to be a defining product of post modernism linking traditions as various as medieval illumination, experimental poetry and non-linear narrative with the procedures of modern art.”
This picture from the site compares the Before and After of page 130:
The link above goes to the website for this ongoing project, which seems to be under constant revision. The website lets you individually view every page, as well as read essays explaining how the project got started, and the ways the artist (Tom Phillips) evolved his vision for the book. Looking through the galleries, I found myself stunned, not just at the snippets of words and thoughts expressed on each, but in how detailed and involved each page was. You can literally stare at a single page for the longest time before your eye is able to integrate all the alterations and depths that have been built up around the text. And if you look close enough, you can see the original text faded in the background of all the newly applied art. This is a visual delight, but more than just eye-candy. It harks back to those heavily illustrated Bibles that monks took lifetimes to craft. Take the time to let each page soak in before moving to the next, and wonder how else one might meld the literary craft with another artistic form. Any ideas, or something you’ve already done or seen?
I see that smile.