How Piranesi Saw the Future

The world of the great illustrator Piranesi is full of ruins and labyrinths. Looking over his body of work now, we can’t help but be struck by its modernity and relevance to the present day. So it is no surprise that Martin Meyer, the cultural all-rounder of the Germanspeaking arts arena, focuses on Piranesi in this volume of hand-picked essays representing his work over the past years. Meyer creates a rich web of connections between Piranesi and other artists and authors such as Thomas Mann and Martin Heidegger, Goya and Honoré Daumier. By this circuitous route we are led to Georges Simenon and Hergé’s comic strip character Tintin: for they too form part of the comprehensive chain of contextual associations which juxtaposes contemporary experience with art, literature and philosophy.