Outstanding Academic Titles 2024: Architecture and Art

Posted on December 16, 2024 in Outstanding Academic Titles

Enjoy these five selections from the Choice Reviews 2024 Outstanding Academic Titles list. This week, we highlight Outstanding Academic Titles focused on art and architecture. A hearty congratulations to the winning authors, editors, and publishers!

1. Edvard Munch: magic of the north
ed. by Thomas Köhler, Stefanie Heckmann, and Janina Nentwig Hirmer, 2024

The quality of the reproductions of Munch’s art and the coupling of Munch with scenes from Henrik Ibsen’s plays make this a singular contribution to the history of art and theater. In the foreword, Koehler (Berlinische Galerie, Germany) tells the story of Munch’s fame in Berlin after the abrupt closing of his first show in November 1892. Munch reveled in the bad publicity of that closing. As he wrote home, “That is, by the way, the best that can happen / I cannot get better advertising.” In “Edvard Munch Magic of the North,” Stefanie Heckmann focuses on such an entrance into “the depths of the soul in the human themes and mystically oppressive moods in the landscapes … the specifically Northern quality of his art … the soul of the Nordic human being a language of its own.” The marriage of Ibsen’s and Munch’s art is perfect: “Munch will have had a particular connection to Ghost since ‘in no other drama by Ibsen did Munch find his own family’s fate of sickness, madness, and death as closely mirrored.'” View on Amazon

2. The making of the Doric temple: architecture, religion, and social change in Archaic Greece
Zuchtriegel, Gabriel. Cambridge, 2023

This excellent, thought-provoking book is very different from the many traditional books about Greek architecture that focus on the Doric style and its evolution in purely architectural terms. Instead, Zuchtriegel (director of the Pompeii archaeological park) takes an innovative approach to the origins of Doric architecture in the Archaic period, considering it to be a complex development conditioned by the transformation of politics, society, religion, economics, and colonization. Particularly important in the development of Doric architecture and the internationalization of its style was the political ideology of local elites and tyrannoi (“tyrants”) concerned with maintaining and promoting their power, image, prestige, and patronage. The author provides interesting discussion of how and why the Doric temple, set within a sanctuary, came to define religious space and at the same time shift the focus from traditional religious beliefs in gods as spiritual forces that dwelled in various environments in nature to anthropomorphic temple cult images in urban contexts. View on Amazon

3. Frank Lloyd Wright and Ralph Waldo Emerson: transforming the American mind
Rahmani, Ayad. Louisiana State, 2023

There is a vast literature on Frank Lloyd Wright, but this book offers a new level of insight. The approach is twofold: first, Rahmani uses psychoanalysis to explain Wright’s complex motivations, the driving forces of his imagination. More importantly, he then uses Wright’s favorite thinker, Emerson, as a lens to explore Wright’s conception of himself as a prophet whose architecture would unsettle and elevate Americans. The chapter on the concept of the sublime is specially valuable. The sublime both disturbs and exalts, effects that Wright wanted in his buildings. The chapter on furniture shows why Wrights’ buildings and their custom-made furnishings are not meant to be comfortable. His ambition is often mistaken for failure. The climax of Rahmani’s study is the chapter on Wright’s masterpiece, the Guggenheim Museum, a work of profound originality. The author uses thought experiments (car crashes, runaway wheelchairs) and allusions to the films of Alfred Hitchcock to illuminate the mysterious effects of the building. This lucidly written work is a real contribution to American studies as well as to the history of architecture. View on Amazon

4. The art of the literary poster Rudnick, Allison. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2024

In the period between 1890 and the First World War, there arose a unique form of poster, one that advertised literary magazines. Neither before nor since has colorful poster art been lavishly trained on this rather small corner of commercial enterprise. But the work produced in this period was influential: it foretold the coming of graphic design as a ubiquitous presence in technologically advanced societies. Joined by contributors Jennifer Greenhill, Rachel Mustalish, and Shannon Vittoria, Rudnick provides informative essays centering on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Leonard Lauder Collection, the most comprehensive collection of this genre. Created as a catalogue for a 2024 exhibition by the same title, this volume is the best available resource for this material. Several of these works have been reproduced before in histories of graphic design (e.g., those by Patrick Cramsie, Stephen Eskilson, and Philip Meggs and Alston Purvis), but the present volume is unexcelled in terms of depth and quality of reproduction. View on Amazon.

5. Camille Claudel Claudel, Camille. ed. by Emerson Bowyer and Anne-Lise Desmas with contributions by Chloé Ariot et al J. Paul Getty

The French sculptor Camille Claudel (1864–1943) once complained about “how much energy it takes to escape a primary and harmful influence” (qtd. in Bowyer and Desmas, p. 51). She was, of course, referring to Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), her teacher and lover, who had her produce some of the hands and feet of his sculptures. In straightforward prose and extensive full-page color reproductions, this impressive exhibition catalog recounts Claudel’s artistic journey to effect an independent, expressive art full of movement by “turning the body inward,” as artist Kiki Smith notes in her essay (p. 85). Editors Bowyer (Art Institute of Chicago) and Desmas (J. Paul Getty Museum) penned several of the essays. “Sketches from Nature,” about Claudel’s innovative tableaux and their correspondences with works by Vuillard and Gauguin, and “The Last Decade of Claudel’s Career” stand out in their interpretative analyses. Six additional authors provide further biographical and institutional contexts as well as perceptive studies on individual works that demonstrate just how radical this “female genius” sculptor was. A product of decades of new research, this catalog includes an extensive chronology with many historical photographs, a helpful glossary on sculptural terms, an appendix of correspondence and reviews, and an exhibition checklist. View on Amazon.

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