As he waded into the scholarly debate over using the tainted atlas, the doctor bristled at hearing others praise its illustrations as “unsurpassable.”

There are records that seem unsurpassable — only to be felled by the wrecking ball of a single stirring, stunning outlier of a performance.

In these moments, Cameron’s deranged dream of a sustained immersion in a world of natural-yet-wholly-artificial wonders is thrillingly, perhaps unsurpassably realized.

In his early days he spoke of creating monuments that would have “an unbridled intense satanic vulgarity unsurpassable, and yet be art.”

But it remains a central, seemingly unsurpassable text.