The Ways of Paradise

In his foreword to The Ways of Paradise, Peter Cornell presents this so-called found manuscript, the work of a now-deceased, obscure researcher who spent three decades in the National Library of Sweden working on his magnum opus. Upon his death, no trace of this work remains aside from this set of notes and fragments which form an enigmatic set of texts on the connections between art, literature, spirituality and the occult through history, with a particular focus on spirals and labyrinths. Ranging from the Crusades to Ruskin, Freud to surrealism, cubism, automatic writing, Duchamp, the Manhattan Project, Pollock and Smithson, this cult book, first published in Sweden in 1987, is translated into English for the first time by Saskia Vogel.

Born in Stockholm in 1942, Peter Cornell is a writer, historian and art critic. He used to teach theory and history of modern art at the University of Arts, Crafts and Design (Konstfack) and the Royal Institute of the Arts (Kungliga Konsthögskolan), and is an honorary member of the Academy of Fine Arts(Konstakademien). He writes regular contributions to publications on contemporary art such as the catalogue for Swedish Ecstasy, an exhibition that took place in Brussels last spring presenting several leading Swedish artists whose creations have in common a sense of mysticism and esoteric speculations.