Book: Swimming Pool, Umbrella, Gravestone

The following illustrations appeared in the New York Times over the past couple of weeks. Now that I'm on the look-out for "the book as symbol," I see it virtually everywhere. Students in my seminar completed an assignment earlier in the semester that took them to the National Gallery of Art to find examples of "pictured" books (and sometimes, "sculpted" books). They wrote little meta-essays on three works of art and how the book or books operate conceptually and compositionally. I'll post some of these in the near future. For now, I give you the Book as swimming pool (by Marie Asenat), the Book as umbrella (by Javier Jaen), and the Book as gravestone (by Gerard Dubois). The Book is radically polysemic!