This extraordinary new illustrated exhibition gathers more than a hundred magnificent works, each chosen for their striking beauty, weirdness and the captivating story behind their creation. Brooke-Hitching’s new project has a similar ethos, traversing the globe in its exploration of artistic curiosities. In Japan, the author details kusozu, watercolors depicting the nine stages of human decomposition, which “were used to highlight the impermanence and foul nature of the mortal body,” as well as discourage lust among Buddhist monks and devotees. Enter The Madman’s Gallery and discover an extraordinary, illustrated exhibition of the greatest curiosities from the global history of art, featuring one hundred magnificently eccentric antique paintings, engravings, illustrations, and sculptures, each with a fascinatingly bizarre story to tell. For the benefit of our education in pigment sourcing before the era of Liquitex and Golden, we are treated to lessons about the early manner in which purple, mauve, and brown were crafted. The particular brown used in the artwork under discussion, Martin Drolling’s Interior of a Kitchen, is called Egyptian brown. To assure us that there were persons who shared twenty-first-century sensibilities, Brooke-Hitching offers a charming anecdote. It seems Rudyard Kipling was present when artist Edward Burne-Jones came running down the stairs with a tube of “Mummy Brown” in his hand. The artist exclaimed that the paint was “made of dead Pharaohs” and said he must bury it accordingly. I will admit, I get it. This is a madman’s library of eccentric and extraordinary volumes from around the world, many of which have been completely forgotten. Books written in blood and books that kill, books of the insane and books that hoaxed the globe, books invisible to the naked eye and books so long they could destroy the Universe, books worn into battle, books of code and cypher whose secrets remain undiscovered… and a few others that are just plain weird.

Anybody who loves the printed word will be bowled over by this amusing, erudite, beautiful book about books. It is in every way a triumph. One of the loveliest books to have been published for many, many years' Alexander McCall Smith Speaking with Smithsonian magazine in 2021, the author said, “Just taking this idea of strange books, it actually leads you around the world into different cultures. You realize everyone has their own form of curiosities, and that as a species, we’ve always been incredibly strange and weird, but also very funny and endlessly imaginative.”The most interesting section was the last entry, focused on Artificial Intelligence created art. Centered on the 'first' work created this way, the author uses it as a reflection point to consider all that was covered before "the depthless capacity of human imagination" (Pg 243), but what will it like partnered with AIs? Will they be just another tool or medium? Or will AI art become its own genre? Few will know of all the versions of The Mona Lisa, nude. For some reason, artists, including if not especially Da Vinci’s own students, found it necessary and irresistible to make nude versions the Master’s finest work. They are displayed in this book. Some of them are good enough to pass for his work. None of them rate anywhere near the real thing. My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Chronicle Books for an advance copy of this book of art history and why certain works speak to us, and yet makes others shake their heads in confusion. It’s possible, though there’s no certainty, that this was the preparatory drawing for the painted Joconde Nue,” curator Mathieu Deldicque told the London Times’ Charles Bremner in 2017. “We don’t even know if that portrait was really painted but there’s a strong probability that it was. What has tipped us off are retouches. There are little clues. … The creative work on this oeuvre is very close to the lower part of the Mona Lisa, the one in the Louvre.”

A writer and rare book collector based in London, Brooke-Hitching specializes in drawing readers’ attention to the unusual, from literary curiosities to dangerous sports to mysterious maps. As he tells Antiques and the Arts Weekly’s Z.G. Burnett, “I take a favorite fact or story from history that isn’t well known and think, ‘If this was in a book, what would the book be about?’ This way, odd material dictates an odd concept and fortunately, more often than not, the result is an original idea that offers readers new things to discover.”The book disabused me of the notion that the latter half of the twentieth century art was the golden age of freakish art (though that era is well represented with discussions of Dada, Surrealism, performance art, etc.) It’s interesting to learn how much wild and weird art was being producing in previous centuries, given how little of it made it through the filter of history to a general audience. Note: to see this same review with images the paragraphs describe, see https://medium.com/the-straight-dope/... The Madman’s Gallery has much in common with Brooke-Hitching’s previous book, The Madman’s Library, which focuses on unusual written works rather than art. In Russia, he highlights dog-headed icons of Saint Christopher—a reflection of the “widely held medieval belief in a foreign race of dog-headed men living somewhere at the edge of the world.” And in Peru, he revisits 17th-century portraits of the ángeles arcabuceros, or angel musketeers. Dressed in a mixture of pre-Columbian and Spanish clothing, these winged, armed angels combine local legends of “deities of the stars” with “the imperial magnificence of Christianity.”

This book focuses on “the oddities, the forgotten, the freakish, all with stories that offer glimpses of the lives of their creators and their eras.” It includes fertility art, doom paintings, revenge art and some artists sneaking portraits of themselves in paintings. There’s a lot of religious inspired art.Brought to light from the depths of libraries, museums, dealers, and galleries around the world, these forgotten artistic treasures include portraits of oddballs such as the British explorer with a penchant for riding crocodiles, and the Italian monk who levitated so often he’s recognized as the patron saint of airplane passengers. Discover impossible medieval land yachts, floating churches, and eagle-powered airships. Encounter dog-headed holy men, armies of German giants, 18th-century stuntmen, human chessboards, screaming ghost heads, and more marvels of the human imagination. A captivating odditorium of obscure and engaging characters and works, each expertly brought to life by historian and curator of the strange Edward Brooke-Hitching, here is a richly illustrated and entertaining gallery for lovers of outré art and history. I love this book. Beautifully illustrated, it's a superb cabinet of art curiosities, featuring the true stories of muses and masterpieces, uncovering what artists have really been inspired by, across history and cultures. A coffee table book that you'll actually want to read.' -- Ruth Millington, author of Muse: Uncovering the Hidden Figures Behind Art History's Masterpieces The Madman's Gallery reminds us that for the first 40,000 years of its existence art was a verb - something that does something. Protects you from demons and plagues, assists in childbirth, casting spells, summoning ghosts, standing over tombs, communing with ancestors, making the crops grow, safeguarding armies, and conjuring God.' -- Jerry Saltz, Senior Art Critic New York Magazine