Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand (1760–1834) regarded the Précis of the Lectures on Architecture (1802–5) and its companion volume, the Graphic Portion (1821), as both a basic course for future civil engineers and a treatise. Focusing the practice of architecture on utilitarian and economic values, he assailed the rationale behind classical architectural training: beauty, proportionality, and symbolism. His formal systematization of plans, elevations, and sections transformed architectural design into a selective modular typology in which symmetry and simple geometrical forms prevailed. His emphasis on pragmatic values, to the exclusion of metaphysical concerns, represented architecture as a closed system that subjected its own formal language to logical processes. Now published in English for the first time, the Précis and the Graphic Portion are classics of architectural education.

Meyer Schapiro (1904-96), renowned for his critical essays on 19th and 20th century painting, also played a decisive role as a young scholar in defining the style of art and architecture known as Romanesque. This is a transcribed and edited version of his Charles Eliot Norton Lectures.

This book brings together the surviving texts of the 113 talks on art and architecture that we know of, given by the art historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner on radio and television between 1945--1977. It includes the seven texts of the 1955 Reith Lectures in their original broadcast form, as well as lectures that Pevsner gave in German (for the BBC in London and RIAS in Berlin) and on the radio in New Zealand. These talks are important as an example of the attempt by the BBC in particular to provide intellectual programming for the mass population. The talks are important for what they reveal about changing tastes in the treatment of the arts as a broadcast topic, as well as offering a case study of the development of one particular historian's approach to a subject that was gaining ground in universities as a direct result of his popularisation of it. They show what topics were thought to be central to the artistic agenda in the mid-years of the last century, whether from an academic or journalistic perspective, and reveal the mode and manner of academic engagement with the public over the period. Forty-six of these talks were published in 2002, on the centenary of Pevsner's birth, in a trade edition. At the time, his reputation as an active force in architectural thinking had long been eclipsed and interest in him had waned. Since then, there has been a turn-around in tastes and Pevsner's role within his chosen field is now being actively studied and discussed by a new generation for whom he is central to an understanding of the 20th century. There is therefore a real need for this book. In addition to containing twice the number of talks as the previous volume, it is supplemented with explanatory introductions, footnotes and citations. It also reveals, as far as this is possible, alternative versions of Pevsner’s texts, as they appeared at different stages in the original production process. As such, this edition can be relied on by academics as scholarly and

Originally published in 1897, this early works is a fascinating novel of the period and still an interesting read today. Contents include; The function of Latin, Chansons De Geste, The Matter of Britain, Antiquity in Romance, The making of English and the settlement of European Prosody, Middle High German Poetry, The 'Fox, ' The 'Rose, ' and the minor Contributions of France, Icelandic and Provencal, The Literature of the Peninsulas, and Conclusion..... Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900's and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwor

For the first time, a critical selection of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture’s highly influential conférences is available in English. Between 1667 and 1792, the artists and amateurs of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris lectured on the Académie’s conférences, foundational documents in the theory and practice of art. These texts and the principles they embody guided artistic practice and art theory in France and throughout Europe for two centuries. In the 1800s, the Académie’s influence waned, and few of the 388 Académie lectures were translated into English. Eminent scholars Christian Michel and Jacqueline Lichtenstein have selected and annotated forty-two of the most representative lectures, creating the first authoritative collection of the conférences for readers of English. Essential to understanding French art of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these lectures reveal what leading French artists looked for in a painting or sculpture, the problems they sought to resolve in their works, and how they viewed their own and others’ artistic practice.

Scully is a pioneer of 20th century architecture. This volume is the grand sum of his career. It is not only the history of great edifices, but also a book that explores the unique dialogue between human beings and their buildings and the natural world. 500 color/bandw photos.

Looks at the parallels between works of art that are often separated by long periods of time or spatial context.

The description for this book, The Art of Sculpture, will be forthcoming.

This series offers a range of heretofore unavailable writings in English translation on the subjects of art, architecture, and aesthetics. Camus's description of the French hotel argues that architecture should please the senses and the mind.

A sweeping history of premodern architecture told through the material of stone Spanning almost five millennia, Painting in Stone tells a new history of premodern architecture through the material of precious stone. Lavishly illustrated examples include the synthetic gems used to simulate Sumerian and Egyptian heavens; the marble temples and mansions of Greece and Rome; the painted palaces and polychrome marble chapels of early modern Italy; and the multimedia revival in 19th-century England. Poetry, the lens for understanding costly marbles as an artistic medium, summoned a spectrum of imaginative associations and responses, from princes and patriarchs to the populace. Three salient themes sustained this “lithic imagination”: marbles as images of their own elemental substance according to premodern concepts of matter and geology; the perceived indwelling of astral light in earthly stones; and the enduring belief that colored marbles exhibited a form of natural—or divine—painting, thanks to their vivacious veining, rainbow palette, and chance images.