Lot Nr. 06: Book of Nights

The art objects Book of Nights and Book of Dawns are part of my Book series and the first pieces finished in the year 2021.

My guess is that the color red initially meant blood to Arnaud de Vilanova (1235–1311). He, one of the great physicians of his time, endowed with Greek and Arabic knowledge, knew how to apply alcohol to the wounds of soldiers on the battlefields—a technique that was quite spectacular at this time, if only for the reason that the art of distillation was not an easy one. He also practiced the early detection of diseases by analyzing the dreams of his patients, believing that dreams foreshadowed symptoms that in reality would not erupt until later. I further suspect that, because of the verifiability of his successes as a physician, alchemists two centuries later set out to foist alchemical texts on Arnaud de Vilanova in order to enhance their own „science“ which had real difficulty producing results. Instead of doing something useful, these no-good guys kept talking about such things as nigredo (the blackening), albedo (the whitening), citrinitas (the yellowing), and rubedo (the reddening or purpling), from which you can make up anything and nothing. Probably the highnesses of alchemy would smile wearily at my pieces guessing that they were simple illustrations of old-known basic concepts of their guild. Maybe they would even smuggle in alchemical words into my artist’s statement, making you believe that I was inspired by their „art“. But I have to admit that I would be much more interested in which disease Arnaud de Vilanova would diagnose with me knowing that I actually had seen the Book of Nights and the Book of Dawns in my dreams. (for german version click here)

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