Christo & Jeanne-Claude: Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin, 1971-1995 (Jumbo Series)

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Christo & Jeanne-Claude: Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin, 1971-1995 (Jumbo Series)
Christo , David Bourdon , and Jeanne-Claude
Manufacturer: Benedikt Taschen Verlag
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 3822886378

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The Most Important "Coffee Table" Book You'll Ever Own
Earth From Above
Political overtones

The New Earth From Above: 365 Days
Yann Arthus-Bertrand
Manufacturer: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0810992914

Virginia Beahan and Laura McPhee explore the ways people interact with the landscapes in which they live. For more than ten years they have traveled the world--from Iceland to Costa Rica, Sri Lanka to New York--uncovering in their photographs a complex weave of human attitudes, both humble and arrogant, in the face of natural elements. As Rebecca Solnit writes in her introduction, "Their images show us a world in metamorphosis, where categories melt and mutate. . . . This is a world where natural sites become shrines and shrines become works of art that represent the landscape; where stone is carved into both sculptures of bodies and homes for bodies; where water is sometimes holy water and sometimes for irrigating crops."

In Costa Rica, for example, healing waters are enshrined in frescoed concrete; in a Hawaiian garden, mangoes and oranges are protected against the cold in brown, paper bag jackets; in Iceland, children play in hot springs created by the runoff of a power plant; in Las Vegas, an artificial volcano erupts on cue. Each of Beahan and McPhee's extraordinary images captures a point of intersection where natural and constructed worlds collide. Their work creates a powerful visual map of the forces of mythology and culture at work in the landscape.

In 1987, Laura McPhee and Virginia Beahan began their photographic work together. Through the use of a large-format camera they are able to jointly participate in this unique collaboration—a process discussed with humor and warmth in John McPhee's afterword, "Laura and Virginia." They have received support for their photography from numerous sources including the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Polaroid Corporation, and the Turner Foundation, Inc.

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986)—a German sculptor and performance artist--became one of the most influential figures in modern and contemporary art. His charismatic presence, extraordinary life, and unconventional artistic style (incorporating ritualized movement and sound, and materials such as fat, felt, earth, honey, blood, and even dead animals) gained him international notoriety during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Beuys’s innovative influence is particularly felt in the field of sculpture, whose definition he expanded to encompass performance art, vitrine cases, and site-specific environments.
This beautifully illustrated book investigates Beuys’s sculpture, arguably the most fundamental portion of his artistic work, as well as his extraordinary influence. Featured objects include a stunning selection of Beuys’s remarkable vitrines—sly cousins of standard museum presentations, featuring both hand-made and found objects serving as “exhibitions” on Beuys’s own topics; blackboards on which he recorded his lectures and performances; room-sized environments; and many other sculptural projects that frequently served as physical documentation for Beuys’s performances.
With a comprehensive chronology of Beuys’s activities as an artist and activist, this book is essential for those interested in the life, work, and legacy of one of the art world’s most intriguing figures.

The authors include many original diagrams, rare archival material, and some 200 photographs, many never published before. WRIGHTSCAPES also chronicles how and way Wright's famous ecological sensabilities were established and how his design aspirations went far beyond accepted definitions of architecture.

WRIGHTSCAPES is ideal for required or supplemental reading within many curriculums of architecture, landscape architecture, and city planning or urban design.

Aguar suggests that Wright was a far better architect than landscaper, that he was strongly influenced at specific points in his career by anti-realistic Japanese landscape design, that he became an "organic" (integrated) designer only with the development of his Taliesin estate, and that he was at his best designing and siting buildings on flat land where his geometries were least constrained by the siting analysis, soil studies, and grading plans he never made.

Text and illustrations complement each other well, but some corners have unfortunately been cut when the co-author had to reduce the text to one volume. Charles Aguar's lifelong devotion to studying Wright is poorly served by the tiny photos and maps, many his own. Despite taking thousands of color slides during their visits to 189 Wright sites, and publishing on heavy glossy paper, the authors include not a single color picture (the dust cover excepted). Gardeners will be immensely disappointed in this book, designers somewhat less so. There are no color schemes and hardly a decent planting scheme (at miniscule scale), but you can compile from the 13 appendices a short list of "Wrightian" species (while recognizing that most of them actually derive from the work of Griffith or Jensen, early collaborators of Wright in Chicago).

For an "environmental" appreciation of Wright's buildings themselves, you might like Grant Hildenbrand's The Wright Space, with its exciting visualizations of shelter, prospect, and procession within his buildings.