Flying Out of this World

by Peter Greenaway

Flights of fancy and fear, ecstatic highs, dreadful falls, and beckoning these are the images British filmmaker Peter Greenaway collects and dissects in Flying out of This World , the second volume in a series developed by the Louvre and devoted to innovative writing on the visual arts.

As guest curator, Greenaway selected from the Louvre's collection of European prints and drawings ninety-one masterpieces that illustrate the human longing for flight. Greenaway's text, a compilation of brief commentaries that combine description, allusion, and interpretation, illuminate the images as depictions of flight desired and denied. Including works by Redon, Goya, Brueghel, Michelangelo, Mantegna, Rubens, Poussin, and Delacroix, this volume offers a combination of literary and visual art, of sight and insight.

A pursuit through the Bible, classical mythology, cosmology, theology, etymology, ornithology, and meteorology, Flying out of This World is not just an illustrated history of imagined flight, but a meditation on its meaning as a metaphor for the human condition, caught between a weighty body and a soaring spirit.

206 pages, Hardcover

Published September 1, 1994

About the author

Peter Greenaway, CBE is a British film director. He is currently professor of cinema studies at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

Reviews

[Fabio · Rating 4 out of 5]

The joy of list making and Greenaway's voracious cultural appetite targeted at a fascinating subject, the double con of depicting people flying in two dimensional art.

[Jacopo Sciascia · Rating 4 out of 5]

«Pure noi abbiamo bisogno di esempi. Immagini che ci lascino sperare che il volo sia possibile, addirittura probabile».

[Klaus]

Simply beautiful and thought provoking.