By Date: Turning the Pages at the Art Institute of Chicago

Ed Flood, born and schooled in Chicago, exhibited in shows in the 1960s such as the Nonplussed Some. His sketchbook reflects his beautifully and obsessively crafted paintings and sculptures, and includes floral forms, ideas for objects and the typographic elements they are partially composed of, and figure drawings. Artwork © The Estate of Ed Flood.

"From the Strongholds of Sleep: Materialized Poems" is one of the rarest and most important photobooks produced in the 20th century. Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, Mary Reynolds Collection.

This pristine unbound copy of Picasso's Unknown Masterpiece shows the book in its original state and paper wrappers, the way it would have been offered for sale in 1931. (This digital version makes it appear bound.)

Kazimir Malevich put a Cubist and Neoprimitive spin on Russian Futurist books from 1912 to 1914. This one illustrates a poem on the exploits of the devil attempting to trap sinners via the title game of cards. Nathalia Goncharova made her own, very different version of this poem two years earlier, which the Art Institute also owns. Both books were intentionally produced inexpensively on low-quality paper decorated with lithographic image and text, and stapled together. As a result, these works of avant-garde ephemera were never exactly the same, and are now quite rare.

Nathalia Goncharova's futurist devil takes many forms as he plays a card game with sinners in this slyly ironic and provocative illustrated poem from the Russian avant garde. © 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

The first director of the Art Institute's notebook of observations and experiences during a trip to Europe in 1889.

This is the only known sketchbook by the French Impressionist painter Gustave Caillebotte, painter of the Art Institute of Chicago's famous Paris Street; Rainy Day from 1877 (1964.336). From 1876 he contributed regularly to Impressionist group's shows; he even organized the exhibition of 1877, where Paris Street; Rainy Day debuted. Until 1881, most of Caillebotte’s paintings depicted the contemporary urban life of Paris. This sketchbook of mainly landscape views demonstrates the artist's preoccupation with more bucolic topics in the years after he moved out of Paris to the French countryside. Little is known about his work, travel, or friendships during this period—save for his continued correspondence with Monet and well-documented interest in boating. As a result, this sketchbook, dated precisely during these mysterious years, provides new insights into the life and work of Caillebotte. Nearly every sheet is dated and most have additional inscriptions detailing the specific location depicted. As a result, one can now partially map his travels from June 1883 to September 1886.

Odilon Redon's oblong sketchbook of whimsical creations ranges from melancholy sketches to more finished designs, with contrasting darks and lights abounding.

This digitally-rebound sketchbook of animals, society portraits and copies of old master art by the French artist Géricault is one of two separate books from the same group of drawings now available in Turning the Pages.

A Bavarian monastery librarian's love letter to printmaking and religious imagery, completed on February 14, 1798 and comprising almost 1000 separate prints and drawings.

This rare album contains the frontispiece and 22 etchings of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo's Scherzi di Fantasia, as well as Saint Joseph and the Christ Child, forming one of nine known sets of the Scherzi di fantasia and the only one preserved in its original cover.

Lucas Cranach's patron, the Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony in sixteenth-century Germany, asked the artist to illustrate a catalogue of his famed collection of saintly remains so that visiting pilgrims and dignitaries could take a souvenir of the experience home with them.

This very early Book of Hours manuscript for personal devotions boasts intricate Belgian illuminations of the Life of Christ, and prayers added in English.

Over 475 human figures populate this over-20-foot-long handscroll, documenting a relatively undiscovered subject in the fourteenth century: the common people. See more handscrolls in motion at the University of Chicago: http://scrolls.uchicago.edu/.