Skipping ahead a few hundred years, the artist Xu Bing created Book from the Sky as a monumental print. It is brobably among the most ambitious, labor intensive, and useless books ever to be printed in China or anywhere else. He created 4,000 unique characters on wood blocks to print this massive "book" but while those characters look like Chinese writing, they are actually completely meaningless.

A Book from the Sky is one of the required artworks for AP Art History. Check out my Spotify playlist, AP Art History Cram Session to learn about other artists and artworks from that curriculum.

Check out my other podcast Art Smart | Rainbow Puppy Science Lab

Who ARTed is an Airwave Media Podcast. If you are interested in advertising on this or any other Airwave Media show, email: advertising@airwavemedia.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Xu Bing | A Book from the Sky