Book review of The Cosmic Dance by Stephen Ellcock

Stephen Ellcock has made a reputation for himself as a digital curator, or “image alchemist.” He ventures deep into visible artwork archives and surfaces with work, drawings, images and different pictures that encourage and intrigue. His fourth e book, The Cosmic Dance, is “but a tiny sample of the fruits of ceaseless foraging,” and like his earlier quantity, The Book of Change, it’s as curious a compendium as it’s troublesome to summarize.

Ellcock takes us on a magic carpet cruise via centuries of artwork and science by way of pictures from medieval artwork, summary work—you title it—that invoke the cosmos, the non secular realm, the geological and bug worlds, the human physique, geometry and rather more. This enchanting e book invitations readers to muse on the repetition of patterns and the facility of symbols, and to find illuminating connections between visible illustration and meaning-making throughout time and place.