DM
MONTREAL-Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carl Sandburg mused that ‘a book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one’ - and an artist is now bringing the saying to life.
Guy Laramée, 56, of Montreal, Canada, has produced a set of astonishing pieces of art by carving up books and creating small-scale landscapes inside.
While literature enthusiasts may gasp at what Mr Laramée is doing to books, the mountains and rock-face monuments he has created are spectacular.
One of his latest two works is called Han Shan, in dedication to the 9th century Chinese poet whose name literally translated as ‘Cold Mountain’.
And his other is called A Caverna, or ‘The Cave’, which took its inspiration from the 2000 novel by Portuguese Nobel Prize author José Saramago.
The story regards an ageing potter who is told by his only purchaser that consumers no longer want to buy his products and are moving to plastics.
It is built upon the Allegory of the Cave by Greek philosopher Plato, which looked at the effect of education and the lack of it on our nature.
The novel looks at how our judgment and opinions might enslave us, as well as our attachment to imagination and all of our cultural productions.