Is architecture art? This vexed question has been posed since the 1700s, when – breaking from earlier centuries in which there were no divisions between visual artist, architect, and engineer – architects and laypeople alike began to see these vocations as distinct. Exploring how this separation of roles occurred, and how in the twentieth century the arts and architecture began to come together again, "The Judicious Eye" is the definitive history of the relationships between painting, sculpture and architecture as they have shifted over the past three centuries.
Joseph Rykwert locates the first major shift during the Enlightenment, when key philosophers drew implied and explicit distinctions between the visual arts and architecture. As time progressed, architects came to see themselves as part of an established profession, while visual artists increasingly moved toward society’s margins, widening the chasm between them. Detailing the eventual attempts to heal this breach, Rykwert concludes his book in the mid-twentieth century, when the artistic avant-garde turned to architects in its battle against a stagnant society. "The Judicious Eye", then, provides a necessary foundation for understanding architecture and visual art in the twenty-first century, as they continue to break new ground by growing closer to their intertwined roots.
About author
Joseph Rykwert is Paul Philippe Cret Professor of Architecture Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of many books including "The Seduction of Place: The History and Future of Cities" (2002) and "The Idea of a Town" (1988).
Reviews
"The year's most original historian is Joseph Rykwert, whose 'The Judicious Eye' balances elegance, passion and profundity in its brilliant conspectus of architecture's struggle to be taken seriously as an art form" – "Books of the Year", Seven (Sunday Telegraph Magazine)
"A heavyweight and intellectually solid examination of the way in which architecture, once inseparable from sculpture and painting, was slowly divorced from art" – Financial Times
"A strident mix of academic insight, wit and polemic, Rykwert's latest book, 'The Judicious Eye', makes a graceful contribution to his life's work" – Architects' Journal
"...a challenging work, gripping, yet sad and justly angry, on an important and little explored topic" – Art Newspaper
"Are Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid and Daniel Libeskind architects, or sculptors on a colossal scale? That is a new version of a venerable question: is architecture art? Joseph Rykwert, one of the most distinguished architectural historians, starts his answer to this long-running controversy in the Enlightenment and carries it through with great erudition to the mid-twentieth century" – RA Magazine
"Over seven dense and erudite chapters, Rykwert provides an account, beginning in the mid-eighteenth century and ending in the 1950s, of the gradual loss of a world in which the arts achieved the kind of meaningful integration that properly dignified the public sphere. Despite the invocation of that 'public sphere' in the preface and conclusion, this is far from a sociological study. Rykwert gives the reader a fairly straightforward art historical overview, focusing on specific examples of individual architects, artists, movements, and the occasional theorist or figure from outside the visual arts, wide ranging, but all securely within the canon of ‘advanced’ European and North American art and architecture..." – Oxford Art Journal
"The culminating work of one of our most distinguished architectural historians, 'The Judicious Eye' represents a lifetime of contemplation and wise insight. This is a deep, wide-ranging, and profound book" – Anthony Alofsin, author of When Buildings Speak
