David Simon is the Jette Professor of Art at Colby College, and an editor of Janson's History of Art: Western Tradition. More notably, he's Esther's brother... and a generous contributor to LM's holiday Books for Giving... for the Architecturally Astute
At
a time of economic recession the social need for economical buildings is
evident to all except to those who design and build. The parallels between our
own time and the first half of the twentieth century, when modernism developed
as a discipline and as a style, are probably largely superficial, but there are
still many lessons we can learn from the study of modernist achievements.
Le Cobusier Le Grand (the title refers as
much to the heft of the volume as to Le Corbusier’s significance) by Jean-Louis
Cohen, Tim Benton, et al is a masterful collection of archival photographs,
drawings, letters, etc. that contextualize the life of the important modernist
architect, who was as well a painter, furniture designer, and all-around
visionary. The book barely fits on a coffee table, though it could easily
substitute for one (published by Phaidon, 2008).
Le Corbusier: A Life by Nicholas Fox Weber is a fascinating account
and is the best biography of an architect I have ever read (published by Knopf,
2008).
Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for
Modernity accompanies the Museum of Modern Art’s eponymous exhibition,
which runs through most of next January. The volume includes essays by Barry
Bergdoll and Leah Dickerman, curators of the exhibition. It is difficult to
imagine a gathering of more stellar modernists than those who drew together at
the Bauhuas, the utopian vision of art and craft education. These artists
included Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Lyonel Feininger, Anni and Josef
Albers, Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Oskar Schlemmer, and Gunta
Stolzl. The Bauhaus’s early (and premature) demise was caused by pressure from
German National Socialism, yet its impact was substantial, both in Europe as
well as in the United States, where many Bauhaus practitioners established
themselves as leading art educators, virtually founding the curricula of the
art or architecture programs at Harvard, Yale, and the Illinois Institute of
Technology, among other schools (published by the Museum of Modern Art, 2009).
Bauhaus Women: Art, Handicraft, Design by Ulrike Muller recognizes the significant contribution made by women to the Bauhaus, but also establishes the opportunities provided to women by the Bauhaus at a time when women generally filled the art schools, but men did the teaching and made the art. Not so at the Bauhaus. In fact, the early inroads made by women in this country, particularly in architectural collaboratives, reflect directly on those Bauhaus masters who emigrated here (published by Flammarion, 2009).
