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In the late 19th century, a centuries-old preference for highly ornamented architecture gave way to a budding Modernism of clean lines and unadorned surfaces. At the same moment, everyday objects--cups, saucers, chairs, and tables--began to receive critical attention. Alina Payne addresses this shift, arguing for a new understanding of the genealogy of architectural modernism: rather than the well-known story in which an absorption of technology and mass production created a radical aesthetic that broke decisively with the past, Payne argues for a more gradual shift, as the eloquence of architectural ornamentation was taken on by objects of daily use. As she demonstrates, the work of Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier should be seen as the culmination of a conversation about ornament dating as far back as the Renaissance. Payne looks beyond the usual suspects of philosophy and science to establish theoretical catalysts for the shift from ornament to object in the varied fields of anthropology and ethnology; art history and the museum; and archaeology and psychology.
This lavishly illustrated volume is the first major global history of ornament from the Middle Ages to today. Crossing historical and geographical boundaries in unprecedented ways and considering the role of ornament in both art and architecture, Histories of Ornament offers a nuanced examination that integrates medieval, Renaissance, baroque, and modern Euroamerican traditions with their Islamic, Indian, Chinese, and Mesoamerican counterparts. At a time when ornament has re-emerged in architectural practice and is a topic of growing interest to art and architectural historians, the book reveals how the long history of ornament illuminates its global resurgence today. Organized by thematic s...
Delivered at the turn of the twentieth century, Riegl's groundbreaking lectures called for the Baroque period to be judged by its own rules and not merely as a period of decline.
Vitruvius' Ten Books of Architecture was the fountainhead of architectural theory in the Italian Renaissance. Offering theoretical and practical solutions to a wide variety of architectural issues, this treatise did not, however, address all of the questions that were of concern to early modern architects. This study examines the Italian Renaissance architect's efforts to negotiate between imitation and reinvention of classicism. Through a close reading of Vitruvius and texts written during the period 1400-1600, Alina Payne identifies ornament as the central issue around which much of this debate focused.
Using the Braudelian concept of the Mediterranean this volume focuses on the condition of “coastal exchanges” involving the Dalmatian littoral and its Adriatic and more distant maritime network. Spalato and Ragusa intersect with Constantinople, Cairo and Spanish Naples just as Sinan, Palladio and Robert Adam cross paths in this liquid expanse. Concentrating on materiality and on the arts, architecture in particular, the authors identify portability and hybridity as characteristic of these exchanges, and tease out expected and unexpected serendipitous moments when they occurred. Focusing on translation and its instruments these essays expand the traditional concept of influence by thrusti...
A collection of essays investigating the early modern debates on the nature of sight and its epistemic value.
Vitruvius' Ten Books of Architecture was the fountainhead of architectural theory in the Italian Renaissance. Offering theoretical and practical solutions to a wide variety of architectural issues, this treatise did not, however, address all of the questions that were of concern to early modern architects. This study examines the Italian Renaissance architect's efforts to negotiate between imitation and reinvention of classicism. Through a close reading of Vitruvius and texts written during the period 1400-1600, Alina Payne identifies ornament as the central issue around which much of this debate focused.
Unprecedented in its in-depth coverage, and with over 500 illustrations, photographs, and architectural drawings the multi-volume Companion to the History of Architecture offers an indispensable resource on architectural thought and practice ranging from the 15th century to the present day. AUTHORITATIVE: Brings together an international team of over one hundred eminent historians, academics and practising architects USER-FRIENDLY: Accessibly structured into volumes organized both chronologically and thematically, spanning the architecture of the Medieval, Renaissance, and Enlightenment periods, through to the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries INCLUSIVE: Spans a broad and global range of issues...
This volume engages with notions of lateness and modernity in medieval architecture, broadly conceived geographically, temporally, methodologically, and theoretically. It aims to (re)situate secular and religious buildings from the 14th through the 16th centuries that are indebted to medieval building practices and designs, within the more established narratives of art and architectural history.
A Heretical History of Architecture challenges the conventional understanding of significant developments in Western architecture as a series of alignments among dominant ideologies and artistic programs, arguing instead that the most consequential changes in the evolution of artistic and design practices across Europe between the fifth and seventeenth centuries were motivated by tensions between local religious or cultural traditions and centralized power. This groundbreaking study richly demonstrates the processes through which heterodox beliefs that persisted within numerous diverse communities resulted in design experimentation so syncretic that it has heretofore eluded scholars employing conventional Euro-centric taxonomies of architectural styles.