Category Archives: special collections

special collections

L’art: entretiens réunis par Paul Gsell

Rodin, Auguste. L’art: entretiens réunis par Paul Gsell. Paris: B. Grasset, 1911.

L’art: entretiens réunis par Paul Gsell is a collection of conversations between Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), the French sculptor, and Paul Gsell (1870-1947), a journalist and art critic. Edited by Gsell and written in the literary interview style, L’art contains Rodin’s views on such varied topics as the meaning of art, the relationship between sculpture and poetry, painting, and music, his philosophy of life, and his opinions on other artists. The book also includes nearly eighty black-and-white illustrations of Rodin’s sculptures, drawings, and prints. Although L’Art is considered a classic and has been translated and re-printed many times over, what really captured my attention in this book was the inscription on the flyleaf, La beaute – “c’est le caractere et l’expression.” Rodin. An autograph from Rodin, himself!

Library of Congress call number: N 7445.3 R63 1911

special collections

The Designs and Drawings of Antonio Gaudi

Collins, George R. and Juan B. Nonell. The designs and drawings of Antonio Gaudi. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.

The Designs and Drawings of Antonio Gaudi is not a rare, or even particularly old book. However, unlike many of the other popular titles on Antoni Gaudí y Cornet (1852-1926) filled with the same, postcard-worthy, but tired photography, Collins and Nonell’s book is comprised of full-size and partially reduced reproductions of the architect’s sketches, drawings, and blueprints. The large folio size and clear layout conceived by art director and designer Frank J. Mahood allow Gaudi’s whimsical style to speak for itself and culminate in a book that is a delight to flip through. The Designs and Drawings of Antonio Gaudi might seem slim, with only eighty-three pages and seventy plates, but that represents the entirety of Gaudí’s work that survives on paper. Gaudi preferred to create scale models for his designs and rarely drew detailed plans. Additionally, the bulk of the original drawings and blueprints that he did create were completely destroyed during the Spanish Civil War when Anarchists set fire to his studio.

Library of Congress call number: -Q- NA 1313 G3 C63 1983, c.2

special collections

Neue Formen: Dekorative Entwürfe für die Praxis

Eckmann, Otto. Neue formen: dekorative entwürfe für die praxis. Berlin: Max Spielmeyer Verlag, [1897?].

One of the most beautiful works I encountered when perusing the Martin S. Kermacy Collection was Neue Formen: Dekorative Entwürfe für die Praxis by Otto Eckmann. Otto Eckmann (1865-1902), a German painter and designer, was an influential member of the German branch of Art Nouveau known as Jugendstil. Although Eckmann was classically trained at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Hamburg and Nuremberg, in 1894 he abandoned landscape painting to fully focus his attention on the applied arts. He began working for publications such as Pan and Jugend, the German art magazine from which Jugendstil derives its name, while also designing tapestries, metalwork, logos, and fonts. Two of his fonts, Eckmann-Schrift and Fette Eckmann, are amongst the most prominent of the surviving Jugendstil fonts.

Neue Formen was probably published in 1897 during the period when Eckmann was teaching ornamental painting at the Unterrichtsanstalt des Kunstgewerbemuseums Berlin, the training institution affiliated with the Museum of Decorative Arts. The book, a large portfolio, consists of a brief introduction followed by 10 color plates. The illustrations, which range from floral motifs to frolicking flamingos, are inspired by Eckmann’s study of Japanese prints and printmaking techniques.

Library of Congress call number: -F- N 6888 E27 A4 1897

special collections

Treasures from the Martin S. Kermacy Collection

The Martin S. Kermacy Collection is a collection of architectural books assembled by Martin S. Kermacy (1915-2007), a distinguished professor in the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture from 1947 to 1983. The collection, which encompasses 464 volumes, was accessioned in 1998 along with the architectural drawings (prints), photographs, slides, maps, and art currently housed in the Alexander Architectural Archives. Although the primary focus of the Martin S. Kermacy Collection is the Austrian Secession, it also contains rare and important imprints on artists and architects from around the world.

I have spent the past school year continuing a project, first begun by Alana Verminski in the spring of 2011, to add provenance notes to all of the titles in the collection. This was done in order to enable greater access to the Martin S. Kermacy Collection and enhance awareness of Professor Kermacy’s generous gift to the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. Although this type of cataloging could quickly become tedious, I was never bored because the books in the collection are so remarkable. Each week this blog will spotlight one of the rare, important, beautiful, or simply interesting treasures I found in the Martin S. Kermacy Collection. Stay tuned!

special collections

Memento Pratique d’Archeologie Francaise

Flipo, Vincent. Mémento Pratique d’Archéologie Française: Illustré de 700 Gravures dans le Texte et de 18 Hors-texte, Tirés en Héliogravure. Paris: Firmin-Didot, c. 1930.

Collection: Cret

In the spirit of turn-of-the century positivism, Vincent Flipo’s French-language Mémento Pratique d’Archéologie Française represents an effort to reduce the architectural to taxonomic components. Flipo organizes his study rather conventionally, beginning with a chapter on materiality, but quickly moves on to a chronology of building type. This allows Flipo to establish the basic building blocks that organize medieval architecture, focusing large sections of text on each component. As he progresses, Flipo charts the evolution of earlier models, documenting them textually and with renderings of architectural components, plans and sections, and black and white photography occasionally overlaid with plan data. Flipo focuses his study on religious architecture evolution of building typologies and iconography as the Gothic becomes increasingly attenuated and ogival.

Library of Congress call number: NA 1041 F5

special collections

The Renaissance under the Valois

Mathews, Charles Thompson. The Renaissance under the Valois: A Sketch in French Architectural History. New York: W.T. Comstock, 1893.


Mathews’ English-language The Renaissance under the Valois documents in 41, high-quality historic photographs of some of France’s most celebrated architecture. Short chapters complement series of images, each organized chronologically to support Mathews’ central thesis–namely, that the French Renaissance was an evolutionary style emerging out of a marriage between the Gothic picturesque and Italian Renaissance practices filtered through a specifically French perception of the architectural ideal. These chapters are well organized and include marginalia to guide reading and quick reference. Clearly a product of the post-Napoleonic imperial era, the book takes on a resoundingly nationalist tone collapsing zeitgeist with historiography to create a document that not only reproduces in elegant visual detail the relationship between designed space and temporality, but also that which arises between the academic undertaking and its specific moment of execution.

Library of Congress call number: NA 533 M4

special collections

French Architecture and its Relation to Modern Practice

Blomfield, Reginald. French Architecture and its Relation to Modern Practice. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927.

Nostalgia defines this the third title in our French architecture series from the pen of Sir Reginal Blomfield. An English gentlemen, architect and scholar, Blomfield extends his considerable experience beyond the bounds of academic contribution and into the realm of criticism to celebrate purity and order in architectural design. His romanticized yearnings locate a peak in French Architectural achievement, one that slowly erodes “in the shallows and quicksands of Viollet le Duc’s medieval travesties.” This 21-page manifesto includes other such vitriolic gems extolling, by nation, the undesirable idiosyncrasies of modernist experimentation happening throughout the continent. At times, Blomfield betrays a chauvinism born not out of a natural proclivity toward racial superiority but rather emerging out of his own quintessential Englishness, a celebration of the exquisiteness of his own citizenship. And in his nationalist reverence for the past and even pastness, he recalls the Scholar Gypsy, who witnesses “this strange disease of modern life” as it “Still nurs[es] the unconquerable hope, Still clutch[es] the inviolable shade.”

Library of Congress call number: NA 1041 B5

 

special collections

Fountainebleau

Terrasse, Charles. Fountainebleau. Paris: Draeger et Verve, 1951.

Charles Terrasse’s Fountainebleau monograph celebrates this site of hunting and retreat, documenting its interior architecture, paintings and sculptures while chronicling its quotidian functions. Often ethereal black and white photographs as well as a few color images complement Terrasse’s prose, resulting in a truly romantic portrayal of the chateau’s exquisite interiors and collection of centuries of painted and sculpted masterpieces. Though devoid of any plans, Fountainebleau‘s assembly of visual material animates the day-to-day of royal life and all of its accompanying courtly duties within the spaces of this renaissance chateau.

ONE COLOR PHOTO HERE.


And the pièce de résistance.

Library of Congress call number: DC 801 F67 T4

special collections

French Provincial Architecture

2 Comments

Goodwin, Philip Lippincott and Henry Oothovt Milliken. French Provincial Architecture: As Shown in Various Examples of Town and Country Houses, Shops and Public Places Adaptable to American Conditions. London: B.T. Batsford, 1924.

American architects Philip Lippincott Goodwin and Henry Oothovt Milliken assembled this study of French provincial architecture to provide an American audience access to lesser known and vernacular French architecture. The book includes photographs, sketches and drawings of these buildings accompanied by an index to facilitate research. Though images included in the book are of middling quality, they represent a unique addition to the literature on French architecture, resurrecting the vernacular as a significant cultural object.

Library of Congress call numbers: NA 1041 G6 1924A

special collections

Architectural Studies in France

Petit, John Louis. Architectural Studies in France. New ed.; Revised Edition. London: G. Bell, 1890.

In this study of medieval French Architecture, John Petit utilizes a comparative framework to generate analyses of various buildings and building elements. The product of his travels in France, Petit celebrates his visitor status, acknowledging that the outsider who lacks cultural access notes significances that might otherwise be glossed or even neglected. It naturally follows that Petit opens with a discussion of French architecture as it relates to his experience and observation of English architecture. This comparative trope enables Petit to elegantly extend his conversation from the architectural majuscule to those bit parts which create it. Combined with engravings of significant buildings and architectural components, Petit’s Architectural Studies in France is an excellent resource for the medievalist and for those who delight in directed travel literature.

Library of Congress call number: NA 1042 P485 1890