Bastokalypse

This stunning volume represents the culmination of a decade-long collaboration between two Swiss graphic artists, M. S. Bastian and Isabelle L. Bastokalypse reproduces the thirty-two large black-and-white canvases of their monumental graphic sequence of the same name; together the panels tell a story of apocalypse and the end of the world that amalgamates images inspired by a wide range of eras and art examples, including medieval Tuscan mosaics, renaissance panels, baroque engravings, Meiji-era Japanese prints, and contemporary graphic novels. The resulting work is alternately terrifying and amusing, reflecting the horrors and surprises of the world as it they reach us day by day through the media.

            
The thirty-two parts of this 168-foot long painting are gathered in an oversized sixty-four-plate concertina folder with an essay on apocalyptic motifs by art critic Konrad Tobler printed on the verso. The result is as much an art object as it is a book, as unusual and thrilling in its own way as the images it contains.