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Shortlisted for the 2014 SAHGB Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion. Certainly, ancient structures have long been treated with care and reverence in many societies, including classical Rome and Greece. But only in modern Europe and America, in the last two centuries, has this care been elaborated and energised into a forceful, dynamic ideology: a 'Conservation Movement', infused with a sense of historical destiny and loss, that paradoxically shared many of the characteristics of Enlightenment modernity. Miles Glendinning's new book authoritatively presents, for the first time, the entire history of architectural conservation, and traces its dramatic fluctuations in ideas and popularity, ending by questioning whether its recent international ascendancy can last indefinitely.
On 30 January 1933, Alfred Hugenberg's conservative German National People's Party (DNVP) formed a coalition government with the Nazi Party, thus enabling Hitler to accede to the chancellorship. This book analyzes in detail the complicated relationship between Conservatives and Nazis and offers a re-interpretation of the Nazi seizure of power - the decisive months between 30 January and 14 July 1933. The Machtergreifung is characterized here as a period of all-pervasive violence and lawlessness with incessant conflicts between Nazis and German Nationals and Nazi attacks on the conservative Bürgertum, a far cry from the traditional depiction of the takeover as a relatively bloodless, virtual...
Over the course of the twentieth century, Germans have venerated and maintained a variety of historical buildings--from medieval fortresses and cathedrals to urban districts and nineteenth-century working-class housing. But the practice of historic preservation has sometimes proven controversial, as different groups of Germans have sought to use historical architecture to represent competing versions of their nation's history. Transient Pasts is the first book to examine the role that the historic preservation movement has played in German cultural history and memory from the end of the nineteenth century to the early 1970s. Focusing on key public debates over historic preservation, Rudy Kos...
This study focuses on the attitudes Germans have towards their art from the Romantic period to the present, and discusses the ways they have tried to find their identity as a nation through this art. Belting proposes that German art criticism is divided by opposing ideologies and contradictions.
Far from being mere antiquarian or sentimental curiosities, the rebuilt or reused fortresses of the Rhine reflect major changes in Germany and Europe during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Taylor begins The Castles of the Rhine with a synopsis of the major political, social and intellectual changes that influenced castle rebuilding in the nineteenth century. He then focuses on selected castles, describing their turbulent histories from the time of their original construction, through their destruction or decay, to their rediscovery in the 1800s and their continued preservation today. Reading this book is equivalent to looking at history though a romantic-nationalist kaleidoscope. Amply illustrated with maps and photographs, The Castles of the Rhine is a wonderful companion for anyone with dreams or experience of journeying along the Rhine.
Essays looking at heritage practices and the construction of the past, along with how they can be used to build a national identity. The preservation of architectural monuments has played a key role in the formation of national identities from the nineteenth century to the present. The task of maintaining the collective memories and ideas of a shared heritage often focused on the historic built environment as the most visible sign of a link with the past. The meaning of such monuments and sites has, however, often been the subject of keen dispute: whose heritage is being commemorated, by whom and for whom? The answers to such questions are not always straightforward, particularly in Central ...
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.
This sequel to The Practice of Theory stresses the continued need for self-reflective awareness in art historical writing. Offering a series of meditations on the discipline of art history in the context of contemporary critical theory, Moxey addresses such central issues as the status of the canon, the nature of aesthetic value, and the character of historical knowledge. The chapters are linked by a common interest in, even fascination with, the paradoxical power of narrative and the identity of the authorial voice. Moxey maintains that art history is a rhetoric of persuasion rather than a discourse of truth. Each chapter in The Practice of Persuasion attempts to demonstrate the paradoxes i...
This sequel to The Practice of Theory stresses the continued need for self-reflective awareness in art historical writing. Offering a series of meditations on the discipline of art history in the context of contemporary critical theory, Moxey addresses such central issues as the status of the canon, the nature of aesthetic value, and the character of historical knowledge. The chapters are linked by a common interest in, even fascination with, the paradoxical power of narrative and the identity of the authorial voice. Moxey maintains that art history is a rhetoric of persuasion rather than a discourse of truth. Each chapter in The Practice of Persuasion attempts to demonstrate the paradoxes i...
This book offers a new perspective on Gothic architectural creativity. It shows, in a series of geometrical case studies, how Gothic design evolved over time, in two senses: in the hours of the draftsman's labour, and across the centuries of the late Middle Ages. In each case, a series of computer graphics show how a medieval designer could have developed his architectural concept step by step, using only basic geometrical operations. Taken together, these analyses demonstrate remarkable methodological continuity across the Gothic era, and the development of sophisticated permutations on venerable design themes.