Alexis Rockman: Wallace’s Line

In this book, published in a limited edition of 750 copies, the acclaimed New York-based painter Alexis Rockman (born 1962) celebrates the life, ideas and influence of a forgotten founder of the theory of evolution, the Welsh scientist Arthur Russel Wallace, through a series of incandescent and brilliantly executed paintings and watercolors. The eponymous line refers to a demarcation between the fauna of Australia and Asia, and Rockman’s paintings abound with these animals that struggle for survival on either line of that border. The works are reproduced in the reference style of Victorian explorers’ folios, evoking the excitement those adventurers inspired in the popular imagination; likewise reflecting the world of its subject, the cover features a splendid Victorian-style printed gilt cover with marbled endpapers on the inside.