[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《ABCThe Book of the Immor­tal is hailed as Mit­sumasa Anno’s most sat­is­fy­ing work.

I recent­ly fin­ished read­ing anoth­er book of his — “Sev­en Draw­ing Lessons from Mit­sumasa Anno”.2004It is a record­ing of the lec­ture pro­gram I par­tic­i­pat­ed in on TV in 2008.

There is a sec­tion in the book that specif­i­cal­ly men­tionsABCThe text of the Book of

“《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 have lived in the world of let­ters since child­hood, and even if they are asked to imag­ine three-dimen­sion­alABCPlease don’t think I am brag­ging. Although there have been var­i­ous kinds ofABCFonts, 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.”
2004I can still speak so high­ly of myself in this lec­ture.1973It seems that Anno Mit­sumasa is real­ly sat­is­fied with his work onABCThe cre­ation of “The Book of”.
 

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:

thisXI watched it many times but did­n’t see any­thing spe­cial. Then I stum­bled upon the secret: 


 

My favorite is thisO, because so far, I still don’t under­stand:

 
 

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 (Acan­thaceae)
anemone: Anemone (a small wild or gar­den plant with white, red, or pur­ple star-shaped flow­ers)
aster: Aster (a daisy-like gar­den plant with yel­low cen­tral flow­ers and white, pink, or pur­ple petals)
 
C:
canary: Canary; Canary
clover: Clover (a short plant used as for­age, usu­al­ly with three leaves per peti­ole and pur­ple, pink, or white flow­ers)
 
D:
Daisy:daisy
dove:Pigeon
 
E:
eschscholziaCal­i­for­nia pop­py, also known as Cal­i­for­nia pop­py and gold­en pop­py, is a herba­ceous plant of the genus Cal­i­for­nia pop­py in the Papaver­aceae fam­i­ly.
 
F:
for­get-me-not: For­get-me-not (For­get-me-not, with small blue flow­ers)
 
G:
grape:Grape
guinea-pig: guinea pig, guinea pig (often kept as a pet)
 
H:
Hon­ey­bee:bee
hops: (dried) Humu­lus, Hops,
 
I:
igua­na: Igua­na (a large wood-climb­ing lizard native to trop­i­cal Amer­i­ca)
impala: Impala (native to Africa)
Ivy: Ivy
 
J:
jas­mine：Jas­mine
Jay: Jay (native to Europe, with bright­ly col­ored feath­ers and a fond­ness for singing)
 
K:
corn­flower
 
L:
leop­ard:leop­ard
lily:lily
 
M:
marigold: Marigold; Cal­en­du­la; Marigold
mus­tard:mus­tard
 
N:
nar­cis­sus: Nar­cis­sus
net­tle:net­tle
 
O:
olive: Olives
owl:owl
 
P:
par­rot
pea
pop­py:pop­py
pump­kin
 
Q:
quail:quail
quince: Quince (a hard, pear-shaped, pale yel­low fruit used to make jam, etc.); quince tree
 
R:
rab­bit
rose: rose
 
S:
shep­herd’s
purse:mus­tard
snake
 
T:
this­tleThis­tle: This­tle (wild, with thorny leaves and pur­ple, white or yel­low flow­ers, the nation­al sym­bol of Scot­land)
tiger: tiger
 
U:
ure­na
sin­u­ate:?
 
V:
vio­let: Vio­let
vole: Vole
 
W:
weasel:weasel
wil­low:wil­low, wil­low
 
X:
xan­thi­um
stru­mar­i­um：Xan­thi­um sibir­icum
 
Y:
yarrow: A hedgerow with lots of yarrow
wasp: Wasp
yew: Yew
 
Z:
zin­nia: Zin­nia
 

                                                                                
Cheng Li