The Architecture of Art History: A Historiography

Description

What is the place of architecture in the history of art? Why has it been at times central to the discipline, and at other times seemingly so marginal? What is its place now? Many disciplines have a stake in the history of architecture – sociology, anthropology, human geography, to name a few. This book deals with perhaps the most influential tradition of all – art history – examining how the relation between the disciplines of art history and architectural history has waxed and waned over the last one hundred and fifty years. In this highly original study, Mark Crinson and Richard J. Williams point to a decline in the importance attributed to the role of architecture in art history over the last century – which has happened without crisis or self-reflection. The book explores the problem in relation to key art historical approaches, from formalism, to feminism, to the social history of art, and in key institutions from the Museum of Modern Art, to the journal October. Among the key thinkers explored are Banham, Baxandall, Giedion, Panofsky, Pevsner, Pollock, Riegl, Rowe, Steinberg, Wittkower and Wölfflin. The book will provoke debate on the historiography and present state of the discipline of art history, and it makes a powerful case for the reconsideration of architecture. Title Page Copyright Page Contents List of illustrations Photographic credits Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1: The German tradition Wölfflin’s formalism The painterly Riegl and Kunstwollen Panofsky’s homologies Giedion – history and the present Chapter 2: The architectural unconscious – Steinberg and Baxandall Steinberg’s spatial turn Baxandall – architecture refused Chapter 3: Modernism – Institutional and phenomenal Modernism’s syntheses Greenberg – the limits of Modernism Rowe – seeing depth Chapter 4: From image to environment – Reyner Banham’s architecture The New Brutalism The architecture of the well-tempered environment Los Angeles: The architecture of four ecologies ‘The trouble with Reyner Banham is that the fashionable sonofabitch doesn’t have to live here’ Chapter 5: The New Art History Block The painting of modern life The spaces of femininity Chapter 6: October’s architecture Architecture and institutions Conclusion Notes Introduction Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Index