Patio and Pavilion

Download or read book Patio and Pavilion written by Penelope Curtis and published by Getty Publications. This book was released on 2008 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the relationship between modern sculpture and architecture in the mid-twentieth century, an interplay that has laid the ground for the semi-sculptural or semi-architectural works by architects such as Frank Gehry and artists such as Dan Graham. The first half of the book looks at how the addition of sculpture enhanced several architectural projects, including Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion (1929) and Eliel Saarinen's Cranbrook Campus (1934). The second half of the book uses several additional case studies, including Philip Johnson's sculpture court for New York's Museum of Modern Art (1953), to explore what architectural spaces can add to the sculpture they are designed to contain. Curtis argues that it was in the middle of the twentieth century, before sculptural and architectural forms began to converge, that the complementary nature of--though essential difference between--the two art forms began to clearly emerge: how figurative sculpture highlighted the modernist architectural experience and how the abstract qualities of that architecture imparted to sculpture a heightened role.