The Pan Am Building And The Shattering Of The Modernist Dream

Download or read book The Pan Am Building and the Shattering of the Modernist Dream written by Meredith L. Clausen and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How a building and the reaction to it signaled the end of an era; the transformation of architectural practice in the context of New York City culture and politics.

Download or read book The Accidental Possibilities of the City written by Katherine Smith and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Claes Oldenburg’s commitment to familiar objects has shaped accounts of his career, but his associations with Pop art and postwar consumerism have overshadowed another crucial aspect of his work. In this revealing reassessment, Katherine Smith traces Oldenburg’s profound responses to shifting urban conditions, framing his enduring relationship with the city as a critical perspective and conceiving his art as urban theory. Smith argues that Oldenburg adapted lessons of context, gleaned from New York’s changing cityscape in the late 1950s, to large-scale objects and architectural plans. By examining disparate projects from New York to Los Angeles, she situates Oldenburg’s innovations in local geographies and national debates. In doing so, Smith illuminates patterns of urbanization through the important contributions of one of the leading artists in the United States.

Download or read book Alloys written by Marin R. Sullivan and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-22 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new look at the interrelationship of architecture and sculpture during one of the richest periods of American modern design Alloys looks at a unique period of synergy and exchange in the postwar United States, when sculpture profoundly shaped architecture, and vice versa. Leading architects such as Gordon Bunshaft and Eero Saarinen turned to sculptors including Harry Bertoia, Alexander Calder, Richard Lippold, and Isamu Noguchi to produce site-determined, large-scale sculptures tailored for their buildings’ highly visible and well-traversed threshold spaces. The parameters of these spaces—atriums, lobbies, plazas, and entryways—led to various designs like sculptural walls, ceilings, and screens that not only embraced new industrial materials and processes, but also demonstrated art’s ability to merge with lived architectural spaces. Marin Sullivan argues that these sculptural commissions represent an alternate history of midcentury American art. Rather than singular masterworks by lone geniuses, some of the era’s most notable spaces—Philip Johnson’s Four Seasons Restaurant in Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building, Max Abramovitz’s Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center, and Pietro Belluschi and Walter Gropius’s Pan Am Building—would be diminished without the collaborative efforts of architects and artists. At the same time, the artistic creations within these spaces could not exist anywhere else. Sullivan shows that the principle of synergy provides an ideal framework to assess this pronounced relationship between sculpture and architecture. She also explores the afterlives of these postwar commissions in the decades since their construction. A fresh consideration of sculpture’s relationship to architectural design and functionality following World War II, Alloys highlights the affinities between the two fields and the ways their connections remain with us today.

Download or read book Walter Gropius written by Carsten Krohn and published by Birkhäuser. This book was released on 2019-06-17 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As founder of the Bauhaus school, Walter Gropius (1883–1969) is one of the icons of 20the century architecture. While his early buildings in Pomerania were still strongly marked by his teacher Peter Behrens, after an expressionistic phase focused on handicraft, he ultimately arrived at geometric abstraction. During the entire period he collaborated with other architects, founding the collective known as "The Architects Collaborative" in the US. The comprehensive monograph documents all 74 of the known buildings by Gropius that were realized, including many early works which he never publicized; but it also critically examines his unbuilt projects. The book is illustrated with new photographs by the author, historical figures, and with as new plans drawn by the author.

Download or read book New York City and the Hollywood Musical written by Martha Shearer and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-09-26 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In examining the relationship between the spectacular, iconic and vibrant New York of the musical and the off-screen history and geography of the real city—this book explores how the city shaped the genre and equally how the genre shaped representations of the city. Shearer argues that while the musical was for many years a prime vehicle for the idealization of urban density, the transformation New York underwent after World War II constituted a major challenge to its representation. Including analysis of 42nd Street, Swing Time, Cover Girl, On the Town, The Band Wagon, Guys and Dolls, West Side Story and many other classic and little-known musicals—this book is an innovative study of the relationship between cinema and urban space.

Download or read book Bauhaus Goes West: Modern Art and Design in Britain and America written by Alan Powers and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the Bauhaus school and its legacy in the context of the modernist period, including its wider influence on art, design, and education. Bauhaus Goes West is the story of cultural and artistic exchange between Germany and the West over a period of seventy years. It presents a view of the influential Bauhaus school in relation to the wider modernist period, distinguishing between the received idea of the Bauhaus and the documented reality. Initially, the Bauhaus was seen as an educational experiment, only later was it recognized as a style and a movement. Working from meticulous research, Alan Powers reexamines speculations about the reception and understanding of individuals connected with the Bauhaus school and what they ultimately achieved. Looking in greater detail at the theory and practice of art, design, and architecture between the arts and crafts movement and modernism, this book challenges the assumption that the 1920s represented a void of reactionary conservatism. Bauhaus Goes West offers an opportunity to recover some of the overlooked aspects of avant-garde that ran parallel with the work of the Bauhaus, such as the film-making of Francis Brugui re and Len Lye, and the development of art instruction for children under Marion Richardson and the London County Council.

Download or read book Terms of Appropriation written by Amanda Reeser Lawrence and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-06 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection focuses on how architectural material is transformed, revised, swallowed whole, plagiarized, or in any other way appropriated. It charts new territory within this still unexplored yet highly topical area of study by establishing a shared vocabulary with which to discuss, or contest, the workings of appropriation as a vital and progressive aspect of architectural discourse. Written by a group of rising scholars in the field of architectural history and criticism, the chapters cover a range of architectural subjects that are linked in their investigations of how architects engage with their predecessors.