The ancient world nurtures us with histories and myths, and two recent books offer this spiritual food in easily digestible bites. David Hernández de la Fuente, professor of Greek philology at Madrid’s Complutense, whose Pequeña historia mítica de Es
During his long career Le Corbusier (1887-1965) worked in several distinct architectural styles: - vernacular and classical, from 1910;- nautical, 1920 onwards;- steel and glass, 1930 onwards;- béton brut, 1944 onwards. The specific nautical style w
“Mexican Modernist architecture came into its own during the twentieth century… [and] effectively prevailed thereafter. Indeed, the influence of Mexican Modernist architecture… is still alive and well today, shaping the production of current architec
Ever alert as we are to what is said about us abroad, any article printed in the foreign press causes a stir in Spain. In the same way, books by Hispanists spark special curiosity. So it is surprising that the elegant volume by J.B. Trend, The Civili
These two histories of history give narratives an influence on architecture, so we could perhaps call them operative historiographies. The book by Crison and Williams, which calls for a reencounter between architectural history and art history, claim
Let’s return to that precise moment that Estrella de Diego evokes in her discourse; to the Salon Carré in the Louvre and Christopher Newman lying on the divan, exhausted, having seen everything, every painting marked with an asterisk in the Baedeker
“Occasionally, though, you’ll see young girls. For there are lots of young girls in the museums, girls from somewhere or other who have left homes that no longer hold on to anything; they find themselves in front of these tapestries and for a short w
The historian Pedro García Martín culminates his tetralogy on images at the same time that Annie Leibovitz’s portraits of the King and Queen of Spain are on display, and this happy autumnal coincidence triggers commentary on depictions of power. In S
Victor Hugo estableció en Nuestra Señora de París una sugerente tensión entre la arquitectura y el texto. Escrita en el siglo XIX, la novela se ubica en el XV, que asiste a la invención de la imprenta. Hugo compara esta transformación cultural con el
Distanced from any kind of essentialism, both the Greek scholar David Hernández de la Fuente and the journalist Pedro García Cuartango explore Spain’s mythical roots from the lenses of history and the territory. Although both pay homage to the pionee
As Pier Paolo Tamburelli says in his introduction, the monumental Entwurff of Fischer von Erlach is not architectural history, but historical architecture. The Italian professor and architect, whose books On Bramante and his Grundkurs at TU Wien were
One way in which those fragments of cosmic dust we call humans have left traces of their time in the world has been by asking questions about the world: why we are here, what this all is, how it works. The first question has resulted in a trunk of kn
The avant-gardes got us used to thinking of history as made of revolutions: catastrophes forming tabulae rasae for new things. This culmination of the recently deceased Jacques Lucan’s trajectory is based on quite a different idea: more than radical
Every generation rewrites history. And ours, under the intellectual and emotional impact of the decline of the West, builds narratives of a shared past with more shadows than lights. Josephine Quinn, archaeologist and Professor of Ancient History at
Madrid celebrates the 150th birth anniversary of the architect who built many of the projects that gave the city its image as a modern metropolis.
The Bank of Spain has through an exhibition honored the architect who built its main office, a fine Madrid example of turn-of-the-century academicism…
Lumpen people wander the streets of the Quartiere Tuscolano; bicycles wheel from the borgate to the new working-class districts; a helicopter flies over the empty grounds of the Aqua Claudia transporting a Christ statue to St. Peter’s… Such scenes fr
Xenophon came to be highly popular among students of classical Greece because the simplicity of his language was perfect for translation exercises, perhaps in the same way that Julius Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic wars helped many of us learn t
The more famous a building is, the more it is wrapped in myths and clichés, and the more we gain from those who take pains to delve into its history. The Centre Pompidou (1971-1977) is one of the iconic constructions of the 20th century. It helped re
New readings inject sap into revered trunks. The British Academy and the Getty Research Institute have revisited two classics of art history, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, no doubt the masterwork of Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897), and T
Characterized by a heavy historical-artistic baggage, the career of the Burgos-born master was closely tied to the flourishing of the modern capital.
With his multifaceted work, which went far beyond the confines of construction, the eminent architect became one of the leading figures of the Renaixença.
Ptolemy, the Greek pharaoh of Egypt, ordered the building of the Mouseion of Alexandria in the year 280 BC, and in doing this, what he was inventing was not so much a place where erudites could come to study under the sponsorship of the State, but ra
Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach Illustrating the most Noted Buildings...
David Escudero Aesthetics of Dwelling in Postwar Italy
Auguste Choisy
Madrid 1999
Instituto Juan de Herrera - 295 Pages
Juan Antonio Ramírez Historia del Arte
Juan Antonio Ramírez Historia del Arte
Juan Antonio Ramírez Historia del Arte
Juan Antonio Ramírez Historia del Arte
