been authored by an agent of the Ministry of Culture, described it as “ghosts building walls” (), i.e., obfuscation for the sake of obfuscation. Meanwhile, “New Wave” artists found it too “traditional and academic”. Nevertheless, the 1988 exhibition of the book at the China Art Gallery attracted a broad audience that included not only artists, but also professors and editors, some of whom visited the exhibition repeatedly in an attempt to find even a single real Chinese character. Later critics viewed the work more positively. A Book from the Sky is considered to be a representative of the “1985 Fine Arts New Wave” (), and has been interpreted as “a primary symbol of the broad liberalization movement that characterized the years prior to the Tiananmen massacre”. It has also invited comparisons with James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, as “a radical challenge to how we think about language, writing, literacy, and human-machine relationship”. However, according to Xu, his main purpose was to “expose the fact that Chinese literary culture is 討厭 taoyan”: ‘boring’ or ‘tedious’. In later works such as Square Word Calligraphy and Book from the Ground, he takes this idea further by subverting the logographic nature of the Chinese script in ways that make it broadly accessible. Notes References External links Description on Xu Bing’s website Blog post mentioning A Book from the Sky, with photographs Art exhibitions in China 1988 books Chinese characters Artists' books