Worlds Away

by Blauvelt, Andrew

• ISBN13: 9780935640908
• ISBN10: 0935640908
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-02-16
• Publisher: Walker Art Center

Summary

The suburbs have always been a fertile space for imagining both the best and the worst of modern social life. Portrayed alternately as a middle-class domestic utopia and a dystopic world of homogeneity and conformity--with manicured suburban lawns and the inchoate darkness that lurks just beneath the surface--these stereotypes belie a more realistic understanding of contemporary suburbia and its dynamic transformations. Organized by the Walker Art Center in association with the Heinz Architectural Center at Carnegie Museum of Art, Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapesis the first major museum exhibition to examine both the art and architecture of the contemporary American suburb. Featuring paintings, photographs, prints, architectural models, sculptures and video from more than 30 artists and architects, including Christopher Ballantyne, Center for Land Use Interpretation, Gregory Crewdson, Estudio Teddy Cruz, Dan Graham and Larry Sultan, Worlds Awaydemonstrates the catalytic role of the American suburb in the creation of new art and prospective architecture. Conceived as a revisionist and even contrarian take on the conventional wisdom surrounding suburban life, the catalogue features new essays and seminal writings by John Archer, Robert Beuka, Robert Breugmann, David Brooks, Beatriz Colomina, Malcolm Gladwell and others, as well as a lexicon of suburban neologisms.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. 6
Worlds Away and the World Next Door	p. 10
A conversation with Andrew Blauvelt and Tracy Myers	p. 17
Our Sprawling, Supersize Utopia	p. 26
Learning from Levittown: A Conversation with Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown	p. 49
In Praise of Chain Stores: They aren't destroying local flavor, they're providing variety and comfort	p. 70
The View through the Picture Window: Surveillance and Entrapment Motifs In Suburban Film	p. 89
Intermediate Landscapes: Constructing Suburbia In Postwar American Photography	p. 101
Suburban Aesthetics Is Not an Oxymoron	p. 129
New Urbanism's Subversive Marketing	p. 111
Campus, Estate,and Park: Lawn Culture Comes to the Corporation	p. 177
The Afterlife of Big Boxes: Aconversation with Julia Christensen	p. 209
The Terrazzo Jungle: Fifty years ago, the mall was born. America would never be the same	p. 216
Learning from Sprawl	p. 257
A Lexicon of Suburban Neologisms	p. 270
Artist Biographies	p. 305
Exhibition Checklist	p. 317
Index	p. 324
Lenders to the Exhibition	p. 331
Reproduction Credits	p. 332
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