[Reprint] Mitsumasa Anno’s “ABC Book”

O(∩_∩)O Haha~ Awe­some! Shar­ing with every­one~~Orig­i­nal address:Mit­sumasa Anno’s “ABC Book“author:Red Mud Study Group“The ABC Book” is hailed as Mit­sumasa Anno’s most sat­is­fy­ing work.

I recent­ly fin­ished read­ing anoth­er of his books, “Mit­sumasa Anno’s Sev­en Lessons in Paint­ing,” which is a record of his lec­tures on tele­vi­sion in 2004.

There is a pas­sage in the book that specif­i­cal­ly men­tions “The ABC Book,” as fol­lows:

“《ABCIn the “Book of the Dead”…, by care­ful­ly depict­ing the growth rings and wood grain, and apply­ing your imag­i­na­tion to the Eng­lish let­ters, you can draw shapes that can­not exist in three dimen­sions.

…

West­ern­ers grow up in a world of let­ters, so even if they were asked to imag­ine the three-dimen­sion­al ABCs…It might be dif­fi­cult to even imag­ine such a form. Please don’t think I’m boast­ing; although var­i­ous forms of ABC have emerged over the past two thou­sand years…Fonts, among which only this three-dimen­sion­al font is miss­ing.

This is relat­ed to the dis­cus­sion of imag­i­na­tion I’ll dis­cuss lat­er. You might think that draw­ing from imag­i­na­tion allows for any­thing you want, but if the imag­i­nary world does­n’t adhere to the laws of nature, its pres­ence is dimin­ished. As men­tioned ear­li­er, from the per­spec­tive of what we call “real­ism,” it’s uncon­vinc­ing.”
The fact that Mit­sumasa Anno could still speak so high­ly of his 1973 work in a lec­ture in 2004 sug­gests that he was tru­ly sat­is­fied with his cre­ation of “The ABC Book”.

What attract­ed me most to this book was the visu­al para­dox­es pre­sent­ed by the Eng­lish alpha­bet. The pos­si­bil­i­ties and impos­si­bil­i­ties revealed when observ­ing each let­ter were extreme­ly inter­est­ing.

For exam­ple, A:

I looked at this X many times but could­n’t see any­thing spe­cial about it. Then one day I acci­den­tal­ly dis­cov­ered the secret:

My favorite is the “O” because I still don’t under­stand it:

After­wards, I read some reviews of this book on Dan­g­dang, one of which was:

“This is an intrigu­ing book! Artists from all over the world have exhaust­ed their imag­i­na­tions and cre­at­ed all kinds of impos­si­ble para­dox­i­cal pic­tures. For exam­ple, Flem­ish artist José de Mae cre­at­ed an impos­si­ble bird­cage for the par­rots. Flem­ish artist Joseph de Mae cre­at­ed incred­i­ble columns. Hun­gar­i­an artist Thomas Vaks cre­at­ed impos­si­ble zigza­gs. Amer­i­can mag­ic world Andrews cre­at­ed crazy nuts. Swedish artist Oscar Reuter­sward cre­at­ed impos­si­ble tri­an­gles, etc. Mit­sumasa Anno’s “ABCThe Book of the Dream is an art game in which one lim­its one­self to mate­ri­als (wood­en wedges), space (let­ter shapes), tech­niques (para­dox­es that go against com­mon sense), and results (on the sur­face they appear to be let­ters, but in fact they are all kinds of impos­si­ble shapes).”

I found some of the works men­tioned in this review:

Paint­ing hands

Impos­si­ble Bird­cage

Impos­si­ble Stairs

The incred­i­ble pil­lar

Impos­si­ble zigza­gs

Crazy Nuts

Some peo­ple say: Picas­so is a typ­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tive of visu­al para­dox.Regard­ing visu­al para­dox, I have a ques­tion: What is the artistry and sig­nif­i­cance of visu­al para­dox?

Each page of the book fea­tures a cir­cle of dec­o­ra­tive paint­ings based on real­is­tic plants, shaped like spi­rals. Inter­est­ing­ly, each page’s dec­o­ra­tive paint­ings con­tain hid­den ani­mals, plants, and oth­er objects wait­ing to be dis­cov­ered, all care­ful­ly select­ed by the author and cor­re­spond­ing to words begin­ning with the let­ters of the page.

The book’s appen­dix includes a long vocab­u­lary list to help read­ers ver­i­fy their learn­ing on each page. Some of the words, espe­cial­ly those about ani­mals and plants, were new to me, so I looked them up in the dic­tio­nary one by one, and they are record­ed below:
A:
Acan­thus: Acan­thus (a plant in the Acan­thaceae fam­i­ly)
anemone: Anemone (a small wild or cul­ti­vat­ed plant with white, red, or pur­ple star-shaped flow­ers)
Aster: A daisy-like hor­ti­cul­tur­al plant with a yel­low cen­ter and white, pink, or pur­ple petals.

C:
canary; canary
Clover: a small plant that can be used as pas­ture, usu­al­ly with three leaves on each peti­ole, and flow­ers that are pur­ple, pink or white.

D:
Daisy
dove: pigeon

E:
Cal­i­for­nia pop­py (Eschscholzia): Cal­i­for­nia pop­py, also known as Cal­i­for­nia pop­py or gold­en pop­py, is a herba­ceous plant belong­ing to the genus Cal­i­for­nia pop­py in the fam­i­ly Papaver­aceae.

F:
for­get-me-not: For­get-me-not (For­get-me-not genus, with small blue flow­ers)

G:
grape: grape
Guinea pig: A small, rodent-like ani­mal com­mon­ly kept as a pet.

H:
Hon­ey­bee: Bee
hops: (dried) hops, hop flow­ers, hops

I:
igua­na: Igua­na (a climb­ing lizard native to trop­i­cal Amer­i­ca)
impala: Impala (native of Africa)
ivy: ivy

J:
Jas­mine: Jas­mine
Jay: Eurasian Jay (native to Europe, with bright plumage and a fond­ness for call­ing).

K:
corn­flower

L:
leop­ard: leop­ard
lily: Lily

M:
marigold: Cal­en­du­la; Marigold; Tal­cum
mus­tard: mus­tard

N:
nar­cis­sus: daf­fodil
net­tle: net­tle

O:
olive: olive
owl: owl

P:
par­rot
pea
pop­py: pop­py
pump­kin

Q:
quail: quail
quince: quince (a pear-shaped, pale yel­low, hard fruit, used to make jam, etc.); quince tree

R:
rab­bit
rose: rose

S:
shep­herd’s
purse: mus­tard greens
snake

T:
This­tle: This­tle (wild, with thorny leaves and pur­ple, white or yel­low flow­ers; a nation­al sym­bol of Scot­land)
tiger: tiger

U:
ure­na
sin­u­ate: ?

V:
Vio­let
vole: field mouse

W:
weasel: weasel
wil­low: wil­low tree

X:
xan­thi­um
stru­mar­i­um: cock­le­bur

Y:
yarrow: a hedge with lots of yarrow shrubs
wasp: wasp
yew: yew

Z:
zin­nia: Zin­nia

Cheng Li