Description
Book SynopsisThe last twenty years have seen fascinating developments in the nature of collaboration between artists and architects and in the approaches taken by artists making work intended for public spaces. These sophisticated projects go far beyond the standard 'art for architecture' remit, limited as it is to the addition of 'artworks' to already designed buildings, the work described here invites us to rethink the reputation that public art has acquired over the years amongst both the public and the artists themselves. Timely and wide-ranging, "Art and Architecture" explores the proliferation of recent pioneering work by both artists and architects that seeks to blur traditional boundaries between the two fields. Looking back to precedents in land and community art by artists from Robert Smithson and Walter de Maria to Mierle Laderman Ukeles and Joseph Beuys, Rendell discusses international projects by artists including Tacita Dean, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Paul Pfeiffer and Rachel Whiteread and architects as varied as Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, Diller + Scofidio and Shigeru Ban. She visits 'site-specific' artworks, interventions into existing buildings, galleries operating outside their physical limits and the best of collaborations between the fields. More than a survey, however, "Art and Architecture" also draws on the work of thinkers from Walter Benjamin to Michel de Certeau to probe the meanings of place, space and site.
Trade ReviewCONTEMPORARY 'Rendell attends to the task with excellent clarity and the diligence characteristic of a historian and a critic set on grouping together phenomena and teasing out from these groupings common ground and distinctions from which new conceptual frameworks can begin to emerge...her argument is well structured and presented eloquently in a way that at once reframes the debate for the weathered reader while remaining accessible to those who are fresh for it' ARCHITECTURE TODAY Nothing quotable. BD (BUILDING DESIGN) Nothing quotable.
