Patio and Pavilion : The Place of Sculpture in Modern Architecture

by Penelope Curtis

• ISBN13: 9780892369157
• ISBN10: 0892369159
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-04-28
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Summary

This book examines the relationship between modern sculpture and architecture in the mid-twentieth century, an interplay that has laid the ground for the semi-sculptural or semi-architectural works by architects such as Frank Gehry and artists such as Dan Graham. The first half of the book looks at how the addition of sculpture enhanced several architectural projects, including Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion (1929) and Eliel Saarinen's Cranbrook Campus (1934). The second half of the book uses several additional case studies, including Philip Johnson's sculpture court for New York's Museum of Modern Art (1953), to explore what architectural spaces can add to the sculpture they are designed to contain. Curtis argues that it was in the middle of the twentieth century, before sculptural and architectural forms began to converge, that the complementary nature of--though essential difference between--the two art forms began to clearly emerge: how figurative sculpture highlighted the modernist architectural experience and how the abstract qualities of that architecture imparted to sculpture a heightened role.

Author Biography

Penelope Curtis is the author of several books on twentieth-century architecture, including Sculpture 1900-1945 (Oxford History of Art) and a co-author of Barbara Hepworth: A Retrospective.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction

The Public Place of Sculpture

The Tradition of the Monument

Direct Expression through the Material

The Private Arena: The Possibilities of Painting, Pictorialism, and the Spatial Environment

The Object: Function, Invitation, and Interaction

A Shared Ideal: Building a New Environment

The Figurative Ideal

Conclusion

List of Illustrations

Bibliographic Essay

Timeline

Index

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