A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture

 

The two-volume Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture bridges the gap between monograph and survey text by providing a new level of access and interpretation to Islamic art. The more than 50 newly commissioned essays revisit canonical topics, and include original approaches and scholarship on neglected aspects of the field.

• This two-volume Companion showcases more than 50  specially commissioned essays and an introduction that survey Islamic art and architecture in all its traditional grandeur
• Essays are organized according to a new chronological-geographical paradigm that remaps the unprecedented expansion of the field and reflects the nuances of major artistic and political developments during the 1400-year span
• The Companion represents recent developments in the field, and encourages future horizons by commissioning innovative essays that provide fresh perspectives on canonical subjects, such as early Islamic art, sacred spaces, palaces, urbanism, ornament, arts of the book, and the portable arts while introducing others that have been previously neglected, including unexplored geographies and periods, transregional connectivities, talismans and magic, consumption and networks of portability, museums and collecting, and contemporary art worlds; the essays entail strong comparative and historiographic dimensions 
• The volumes are accompanied by a map, and each subsection is preceded by a brief outline of the main cultural and historical developments during the period in question
• The volumes include periods and regions typically excluded from survey books including modern and contemporary art-architecture; China, Indonesia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Sicily, the New World (Americas)

 

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Gaudi • Una Introduccion a su Arquitectura, pdf / español

pdf / Idioma: Español / 190 págs.

 

 

Rococo • Victoria Charles

pdf  / 200 pages

The Cloisters Medieval Art and Architecture • MET

The Cloisters, a branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, is home to an extraordinary collection of art and architecture from medieval Europe. Praised after it opened in 1938 as "the crowning achievement of American museology," The Cloisters remains a triumph of design innovation. Incorporated into the very fabric of the building are portions of five medieval French cloisters and many other monuments arranged in an environment that thoughtfully evokes the grand religious spaces and domestic interiors of the Middle Ages.

Many of the galleries at The Cloisters reflect the original functions of the architectural fragments they include, such as the Fuentidueño apse, a massive half-dome transported block by block from a church in northern Spain. Others provide a harmonious setting for the works of art on display, which to date number more than five thousand objects from the Romanesque and Gothic periods. Three of the reconstructed cloisters also enclose beautiful gardens planted with species known from medieval herbals, tapestries, and other historical sources. Of the thousands of visitors who make pilgrimages to The Cloisters each year, many come not only to experience its incomparable artistic treasures but also to enjoy its seasonal flowerings and its majestic setting in Manhattan's Fort Tryon Park, with breathtaking views of the Hudson River and the Palisades.

More than 125 highlights of The Cloisters are presented here, beginning with some of the earliest pieces in the collection, from about A.D. 800, and finishing with later works that foretell the arrival of the Renaissance in western Europe. By surveying these elaborate tapestries, delicate carvings, and other objects in roughly the historical sequence in which they were created, we glimpse the evolving styles and artistic traditions of the Middle Ages and gain a more meaningful understanding of the contexts in which many of them appeared. Among the masterpieces on display at The Cloisters are the famed Unicorn Tapestries, the richly carved twelfth-century ivory cross associated with the abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, known as the "Cloisters Cross," the exquisite triptych by the Netherlandish painter Robert Campin, and many fine examples of manuscript illumination, enameling, metalwork, and stained glass.

Complete with digital color photography, map, floor plan, and glossary, The Cloisters: Medieval Art and Architecture is a contemporary guide that will reward students and enthusiasts of the Middle Ages as well as visitors seeing the Museum for the first time.

Art Deco Architecture Design, Decoration and Detail from the Twenties and Thirties

 

Art Deco's sheer exuberance ensured its success across the globe and it adapted to the most diverse situations, as shown by examples ranging from offices in Europe and gas stations in America to maharajahs' palaces in India and imperial dwellings in Japan. Public buildings of all kinds-whether fountain or state capitol, skyscraper or bus terminal-bear witness to its decades of popularity. Sumptuously illustrated, this unrivaled study provides a comprehensive guide to the best loved of all 20th-century architectural styles. 376 illustrations, 146 in color

 

Eastern Medieval Architecture The Building Traditions of Byzantium and Neighboring Lands

 

Aside from Hagia Sophia, the monuments of the Byzantine East are poorly understood today. This is in sharp contrast to the well-known architectural marvels of Western Europeâs Middle Ages. In this landmark survey, distinguished art historian Robert Ousterhout introduces readers to the rich and
diverse architectural traditions of the medieval Eastern Mediterranean.

The focus of the book is the Byzantine (or East Roman) Empire (324-1453 CE), with its capital in Constantinople, although the framework expands chronologically to include the foundations of Christian architecture in Late Antiquity and the legacy of Byzantine culture after the fall of Constantinople
in 1453. Geographically broad as well, this study includes architectural developments in areas of Italy, the Caucasus, the Near East, the Balkans, and Russia, as well as related developments in early Islamic architecture. Alternating chapters that address chronological or regionally-based
developments with thematic studies that focus on the larger cultural concerns, the book presents the architectural developments in a way that makes them accessible, interesting, and intellectually stimulating. In doing so, it also explains why medieval architecture in the East followed such a
different trajectory from that of the West.

Lavishly illustrated with hundreds of color photographs, maps, and line drawings, Eastern Medieval Architecture will establish Byzantine traditions to be as significant and admirable as those more familiar examples in Western Europe, and serve as an invaluable resource for anyone interested in
architectural history, Byzantium, and the Middle Ages.

 

Liechtenstein Palaces in Vienna from the Age of the Baroque

It is astonishing that the impressive artistic development of the imperial city of Vienna after its liberation from the Turkish menace in 1683 was stimulated and supported more vigorously by the leading families of the aristocracy that it was by the Hapsburg rulers. Although the military success of the Hapsburgs provides the historical and economic as well as the psychological background for the flowering of "Vienna gloriosa," the imperial court did not function as an important patron of the arts until relatively late, during the reign of Charles VI (1711–40). Until then it was the great aristocratic families of the empire who, in the years around 1700, turned Vienna into a Baroque city and a European art center.

Because of its high social standing, the House of Liechtenstein was obliged to play a leading role in this process; not only were the Liechtensteins one of the most ancient noble families in the realm, but they had been richly rewarded, after the Catholic victory in the Battle of the White Mountain (1620), with extensive properties in Austria, Bohemia, and Moravia in recompense for their fidelity to the Emperor. Prince Johann Adam Andreas (1657–1712) became regent of the house of Liechtenstein in 1684, improving the economic management of his debt-encumbered estates. Because of the resulting fiscal prosperity of the house of Liechtenstein, Johann Adam may have been the only one of his contemporaries who was in a position to patronize the arts purely on the basis of personal taste and rigorous artistics standards. He gleaned broad first-hand artistic knowledge from his grand "gentlemen's tour" of Europe, focusing particularly on Italian art, and his continual contact with the great art dealers of Europe and any great artist that visited Vienna. This book illustrates and analyzes in detail the art, architecture, and sculpture of the Garden Palace and the City Palace, both monuments in Vienna of which Johann Adam of the house of Liechtenstein was patron.