Ways of Paradise

Born in Stockholm in 1942, Peter Cornell is a writer, historian and art critic. He taught theory and history of modern art at the University of Arts, Crafts and Design (Konstfack) and the Royal Institute of the Arts (Kungliga Konsthögskolan) in Stockholm, and is an honorary member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts (Konstakademien).

‘An underground classic…. The text is structured in a series of numbered fragments, reflecting a larger fixation on spirals and mazes of all kinds – the curl of a seashell, mimicking the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage’s focus on eternity, or the “ephemeral labyrinthine traces made by the folds and creases of garments” – and drawing parallels among a swath of disciplines and time periods…. [Cornell’s] slow deluge of intertwined facts and stories makes it hard to stop reading. Imagine this as the holy book of a new cult devoted to the spiritual possibilities of the spiral.’— Rhian Sasseen, The Atlantic