European Styles Research Articles

Review: The Architecture of the Sun: Los Angeles Modernism 1900–1970, by Thomas S. Hines

Thomas S. Hines The Architecture of the Sun: Los Angeles Modernism 1900–1970 New York: Rizzoli, 2010, 756 pp. $95.00, ISBN 9780847833207 Reyner Banham once suggested that historians have the advantage of looking at the world through “the rear-view mirror.” This is a privilege that can be abused—or not. What counters the advantage of hindsight is the hope that the historian will lay out the evidence in such a way that the implicit realities of history become vivid. Thomas S. Hines, in his introduction to Dione Neutra’s book Richard Neutra: Promise and Fulfillment, 1919–1932 (1986), writes, “History at its best is an analytical narrative, where ‘methodology’ pervades but never engulfs the story.” In The Architecture of the Sun , Hines materializes this sentiment in a way that approaches cultural anthropology. Indeed, for the most part Hines manages to convey a sense of frailty, a sense of being “in the moment” that in other hands might come across as inevitability, the smugness of “being right after the events” that Banham’s statement implies. The early section of the book recounts the formative period of modern California architecture that began with the work of Charles and Henry Greene. Most readers will recognize Hines’s story of the influences behind the Greenes’ iconic houses along the Arroyo Seco in Los Angeles County. Hines reminds us of the unique blend of midwestern sentiment, Spanish colonialism, Gustav Stickley, Japonism, and so on, that informed their work. His description of the ways in which these elements were adapted to the context of California, however, is what makes this such a compelling chapter. Hines reminds us how the Greenes’ lifestyle was embodied in their architecture and how their lives established a pattern their clients could use to imagine their own lives in this new landscape. He explains how the Greenes’ early training and career were defined by a rejection of European styles in favor of a search for an American identity. …

Spatial and historic characteristics of Phnom Penh central area: Railway Station Garden

Phnom Penh was subject to westernisation during colonisation. Constructions of European styles and great public works sequentially proceeded to transform the city. Ancient canal dating to 1413 was restored enclosing French city for flood prevention and leaving locals outside. Not until 1899 did then urbanism orient to localisation and the canal was developed for a green-space. Semantically, this paper showed a long vista of the green terrace likely featured a main gate into Phnom Penh, through which its characters could be recognised as a commercial, peaceful and modern city. Spatial structure persists, but socio-economic changes gradually transform its face as a centre of infrastructure for commerce to be a tourist spot, where urban memories from the events are layered. No sooner have restrictions been imposed than the developments. The area is now a site of Cambodia’s first skyscrapers, so the study suggested historic district preservation system into the current practices to protect desired image of this small historic site.

LIVERPOOL @ SHANGHAI Il waterfront come un brandscape nel caso studio di Liverpool Waters

Liverpool was an important maritime since the 18 th century. In the 20 th century this economic model declined and the waterfront started shrinking, eroding the core centre of the city. Since then Liverpool administration started stimulating new investments: the symbolic marine backgrounds, central places for the city of productio n , were turned into city of consumption benchmarks . Transforming into a brandscape the old waterscape perspective, Liverpool creates a twin-city relationship with Shanghai (China), trying to attract new investors from China to accelerate the regeneration. With the One city, Nine towns plan (2001), Shanghai provided itself of a branding strategy and of an efficacious urban planning perspective all at one time, using well-known European styles to realize its expansion areas along the waterfront. Working on this model, Liverpool Waters proposal re-designs the waterfront skyline in a Shanghai style, with disproportionate towers, refusing the city waterscape heritage, listed as World Heritage Site by UNESCO. The main landmark of the area, a skyscraper called Shanghai Tower, is not an attempt to embody Shanghai culture or urban environment, but rather to line up to its lifestyle and social-economic conditions, to put the city onto the global market with a positive etiquette. The overall proposal establishes a generic relation with water, neglecting Liverpool marine heritage, moving the attention from the old waterscape (with its core in the historic Pier Head) to a new town brandscape. The entire city dematerializes itself on the back of the proposed new picture. The paper tries to evaluate the parallelism in this approach to branding strategies and related regeneration actions, according also to an analytical verification through a project: the proposal for a new tower in Shanghai waterfront to create a balance between the proposition of a successful, vibrant brandscape and the respect of geographical and historical factors.

Exhibiting Englishness: John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery and the formation of a national aesthetic

In the late 18th century, as a wave of English nationalism swept the country, the printseller John Boydell set out to create an ambitious exhibition space, one devoted to promoting and fostering a distinctly English style of history painting. With its very name, the Shakespeare Gallery signaled to Londoners that the artworks on display shared an undisputed quality and a national spirit. Exhibiting Englishness explores the responses of key artists of the period to Boydell's venture and sheds new light on the gallery's role in the larger context of British art. Tracking the shift away from academic and Continental European styles of history painting, the book analyzes the works of such artists as Joshua Reynolds, Henry Fuseli, James Northcote, Robert Smirke, Thomas Banks, and William Hamilton, laying out their diverse ways of expressing notions of individualism, humor, eccentricity, and naturalism. Exhibiting Englishness also argues that Boydell's gallery radically redefined the dynamics of display and cultural aesthetics at that time, shaping both an English school of painting and modern exhibition practices.

Comparison of the Acoustical Behaviour of Colonial Churches of Three Architectural Styles in Peru

The paper presents a comparison of the acoustic behavior of churches built under three architectural styles during the Spanish colonial domination in representative cities of Peru. European architectural styles of the Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassical were adapted to the geography, geology and construction process of the current Peruvian territory. Through some acoustical parameters characterize the acoustic behavior of each church analyzed. Then, it is performed a comparative analysis of these acoustic conditions by grouping the architectural style churches.

Mughal India: art, culture and empire: manuscripts and paintings in the British Library

One of the most powerful and exotic of all the world's great dynasties, the Mughals ruled India from 1526 to 1858. During this time they produced an astonishing number of rulers of outstanding ability, who operated in a hugely diverse and complex religious, linguistic and social environment. The Mughals were great patrons of the arts, using them to underpin their political position and leaving behind a particularly rich legacy of visual art. This book showcases the British Library's extensive collection of illustrated manuscripts and paintings that were commissioned by Mughal emperors and other officials and depict the splendour and vibrant colour of Mughal life. The exquisitely decorated works span four centuries, from the foundation of the Mughal dynasty by Babur in the sixteenth century, through the heights of the empire and the 'Great' Mughal emperors of the seventeenth century, into the decline and eventual collapse in the nineteenth century. The lavish artworks cover a variety of subject matter, from scenes of courtly life including lively hunting parties and formal portraits of emperors to illustrations of works of literature which manage to convey complex storylines in a single image, and dramatic panoramas of Indian landscapes. The development of a Mughal style of art can be traced through the illustrations and paintings, as can the influence of European styles, originally as imported exotica. Many of these works have never before been published, and combined here with the engaging narrative of two subject experts who place each image within its historical and art historical context they serve to provide us with a beautiful and illuminating view of the art and culture of Mughal India.

Art Identity of Sino-Portuguese Shop Houses in Phuket Town: Problems and Guidelines for Conservation and Tourism Development

The conservation of Sino-Portuguese shop houses, which attractively show art identity in tourism, is a principle that most people agree with, but there are problems in practice. The aims of this study were to investigate how art identity of Sino-Portuguese buildings could create a tourist atmosphere, and to highlight the problems surrounding the transformation of these buildings into tourist attractions. Data were collected via observation, interviews with 20 building owners and 25 tourists, using descriptive and content analysis. The results showed that the Sino-Portuguese buildings enhance tourism due to several factors. First, they reflect a Chinese style, since the buildings are elaborately decorated with auspicious symbols. Second, a mixture of Chinese and European styles result in unique architecture; classical orders as well as archways are integrated perfectly with the Chinese style. Furthermore, people of the new generation frequently seek reminiscences of the old days. Many Sino-Portuguese shop houses have been renovated to reflect this nostalgia. The problems are a lack of interest from state agencies, a delay in maintenance after being requested, and building owners’ refusal to cooperate. The conservation guidelines should distribute local historical and traditional awareness among the young, set in place a conservation learning process for building owners, and guide the design of new buildings imitating the old style. Additionally, there should be a museum, an art gallery, and a learning center along a pedestrian street, all of which should reflect a certain local identity.

Transculturation in Art: Sculpture in the Posa Chapels at the Monastery of Calpan, Mexico

Transculturation in Art: Sculpture in the Posa Chapels at the Monastery of Calpan, Mexico

European Architecture in Asia

In this article I draw attention to the galaxy of European buildings built over the last five centuries in Asia. I show how quickly and accurately European styles of the day were adopted in Asia, whether that style was Renaissance, Neoclassical, Gothic, Idiosyncratic Revivalist, or Modern. I argue that recent attention in Asia to architectural and urban preservation is itself of European origin. Although I suggest in conclusion that this architectural galaxy is part of an overwhelmingly one‐sided process of globalization, my primary focus remains on the buildings themselves as the residue of one culture diffusing across distant domains.

Firstborn

Firstborn Melissa Yancy (bio) The trip had been postponed for seventeen years. That was how Laurie always thought of it—as merely a postponement, never a cancellation. Matters of life kept springing up like nasty carnival moles demanding to be whacked: there were protracted deaths, seasonal colds, trips to the veterinarian for the Russian Blues. The trip to Paris was meant as an eighth-grade graduation gift for her niece, Paulette, who at the time had been a slight girl in braces with feathered hair and high-waist jeans. Now Paulette was thirty, although she lived at home and had never traveled, so the trip would still be an orientation of sorts. Laurie had imagined it differently with a young girl, of course: she would dress her, selecting scarves and showing her how to tie them in European styles. She would teach her basic French, and introduce her to her first tastes of Burgundy. The thirty-year-old Paulette was scheduled to arrive at Laurie's apartment in San Francisco within the hour and Laurie had not quite put things in order. There had been other priorities preparing for the trip. This was Paris, after all. She had needed at least two new silk blouses and had decided to invest in a fresh pair of black pants, as she'd suddenly noticed her favorite pair were threadbare in the rear. Normally, Laurie preferred polyester blouses to silk for the ease of maintenance, but this occasion called for something finer. Silk proved to be considerably more expensive than she recalled, but she managed to find a couple suitable options at the resale shop down the street. They were not exactly the Kenzo prints she had envisioned, but they would do. Her niece was spending only one night in the apartment before they departed the next morning for Paris. Laurie had never been much of a cleaning lady—mistresses didn't generally need to be— but she had managed to straighten up. Now, she was rushing through the apartment, from bathroom to kitchen to living room, wiping every surface she could find with a rag that had been [End Page 32] soaked in Pine Sol and water. If nothing else, the place would smell clean. She had recovered her large suitcase from the back of the closet the night before, and had found it smoke stained, the lining brittle and ripped. She had spritzed the interior with Shalimar before putting her clothes inside. The carry-on was in decent shape, but the cats—Lola and Neko—were nesting nose-to-tail inside. They had come running when they heard the enticing sound of a zipper. If only she could pack them and bring them aboard. If only they were the kind of cats who would tolerate a leash. Of course, she probably wouldn't have liked them very much if they were that sort, but it would have been charming to walk through the streets of the 18th arrondissement flanked on each side by a royal silver-blue feline. That would make a fetching book cover for her autobiography, she thought. She would be wearing a polka-dot blouse and white slacks, and perhaps a little hat with just an inch of hair peeking out under the brim. She had not yet titled the autobiography. The final name would reveal itself to her, she thought, when she had finally written it. Most recently she had been considering The Paris of the Perfect Feeling, a line from the aids memoir Borrowed Time. The author had been a Francophile, like Laurie, and had nursed a dying lover. Of course, with aids it had been considerably more dreadful than what she'd had to endure. Yet she'd always believed she would have made an excellent gay man. She was envious of her brother in that way. They'd been mixed up at birth. Oh she, she would have had fun: the parties, the men, the forbidden loves. She was the one who had settled in San Francisco, after all, the most European of American cities. Her brother, on the other hand, was meant to be the cat lady. She didn't know Paulette well...

Historic Buildings at Chitpur in Kolkata: Problems and Prospects Through Urban Conservation and Planning

Kolkata (historically Calcutta) is a linear city that has grown along the eastern bank of the river Hugli (also spelled Hooghly, and traditionally called the Ganges, in the West Bengal State of India. It served as the capital city of British India from 1773–1910. The British developed colonial architecture mostly in the central business district and the residential area designated for them. In the Chitpur area of north Kolkata, the Indians constructed buildings following European styles, but modifying parts according to their own social customs, individual choices and dictation – thus introducing a new style which was termed “Bengal Baroque” by some and generally called the “indigenous style”. Other old buildings also follow certain architectural typology and bear the history of eminent personalities of the society, thus constituting an overall cultural setting. However, many old buildings are in bad physical condition and have legal litigation. Meanwhile, tremendous real estate development and uncontrolled traffic circulation within this historic district are destroying the buildings, the historic cultural patina and the essence of the place. An urban design and planning solution is to be sought which would encompass the conservation of historic and old buildings and elements of the area as well as control over development for cultural compatibility and environmental sustainability.

The city of Qayrawan in the works of Salih Suwaysi: a place of memory

Writing midway during the complex social and political circumstances of the French Protectorate, Tunisian Salih Suwaysi al-Qayrawani wrote about his birth city of Qayrawan as a means to resist and critique colonial rule. Examination of two of his writings here demonstrates intellectual continuity from early Muslim writers, highlights his participation in cross-regional trends in the Arab world, and reflects the borrowing of European styles. Suwaysi's words convey his view about French actions in Qayrawan: they diminished the historical and religious significance of the city and the values and traditions of the people of the city. This article analyses Suwaysi's urban identification in his Dalil Qayrawan, a description of monuments, biographical sketches of historical figures, their tombs, etc., and Khasumah bayna madina wa-idara, a short story. The former reminds the reader of the khitat, a long-standing Arab-Islamic genre used by Suwaysi's nineteenth- and twentieth-century Arab world contemporaries to convey urban space and urban history; the latter reveals both a European inspiration and aspects of the millennium-old Arabic genre of maqama. Analysis of these two particular writings of Suwaysi highlights the ways in which he grappled with contemporary ideological trends, namely nationalism and anti-colonialism, while focusing on the principles of Islamic reformers.

Restating Tort Law: The American and European Styles

Restating Tort Law: The American and European Styles

The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Ottoman Attempts to Catch Up with Europe

The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Ottoman Attempts to Catch Up with Europe

Influencing and adjusting in daily emotional situations: A comparison of European and Asian American action styles

Emotions are for action, but action styles in emotional episodes may vary across cultural contexts. Based on culturally different models of agency, we expected that those who engage in European-American contexts will use more influence in emotional situations, while those who engage in East-Asian contexts will use more adjustment. European-American (N=60) and Asian-American (N=44) college students reported their action style during emotional episodes four times a day during a week. Asian Americans adjusted more than European Americans, whereas both used influence to a similar extent. These cultural differences in action style varied across types of emotion experienced. Moreover, influencing was associated with life satisfaction for European Americans, but not for Asian Americans.

Capital affairs: London and the making of the permissive society

How did sexuality transform post-war Britain? Countering the dominant myth of the sexual revolution, Capital Affairs shows how a new phase of post-Victorian morality was forged by the dramatic cultures of austerity and affluence that marked London life. During the 1950s a series of spectacular scandals profoundly disturbed the capital city in ways that had major consequences. High and low society collided in a world of social and sexual extremes. Patrician men-about-town, young independent women, Westminster politicians, queer men, and West-Indian newcomers were centre stage in encounters that reshaped public and private behaviour. These transgressive urban dramas were played out not just in the glamorous and shade entertainment spaces of the West End, but also in Whitehall and in the decaying twilight zones close by. The exotic districts of Soho and Notting Hill became flashpoints for anxieties about the changing character of sex in the city and the impact of decolonization. European styles of cosmopolitanism and the growing Caribbean presence in the capital redefined sex within the collective social imagination.

Acoustical behavior of colonial churches in Cusco, Peru.

The paper searches for characterizing the acoustical behavior of more than ten colonial churches in Cusco, a southern city of Peru. Cusco was an important city through the Spaniard Colonial Era in Peru; several religious orders established in the area and fix the European styles and building process to the geography, geology and building materials. Through five typical acoustical objective parameters the acoustical environment in each church is defined. A comparison between several positions in each church analyzed and among churches will be presented.

Pictures for use and pleasure: vernacular painting in high Qing China

In this groundbreaking book, James Cahill expands the field of Chinese pictorial art history, opening both scholarly studies and popular appreciation to vernacular paintings, 'pictures for use and pleasure'. These were works commissioned and appreciated during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by the non-elites of Chinese society, including women. Traditional Chinese collectors, like present-day scholars of Chinese painting, have favored the 'literati' paintings of the Chinese male elite, disparaging vernacular works, often intended as decorations or produced to mark a special occasion. Cahill challenges the dominant dogma and doctrine of the literati, showing how the vernacular images, both beautiful and appealing, strengthen our understanding of High Qing culture. They bring to light the Qing or Manchu emperors' fascination with erotic culture in the thriving cities of the Yangtze Delta and demonstrate the growth of figure painting in and around Beijing's imperial court. They also revise our understanding of gender roles and show how Chinese artists made use of European styles. By introducing a large, rich body of works, Pictures for Use and Pleasure opens new windows on later Chinese life and society.

Illustrated history of landscape design

Introduction. Prehistory-6th Century. Cosmological Landscapes. Ancient Gardens. Landscape and Architecture. Genius Loci. 6th-15th Centures. Western Europe: Walled Minds, Walled Gardens. Moorish Spain: An Indelible Influence. China: Nature's Splendor in a Garden. Japan: In the Spirit of Nature. 15th Century. Japan: Muromachi Era. China: Ming Dynasty. Central Asia: Timurid Garden Cities. Italy: Curious Minds, Broadened Vistas. 16th Century. Italy: The Rebirth of Rome. Renaissance Gardens in France and England. The Early Botanic Garden: An Encyclopedia of Plants. Early Mughal Gardens: Persian Art Forms Travel East. Japan: The Momoyama Era. 17th Century. Japan: Edo Period. The Mughal Empire: Sacred Symmetries. Persian Gardens of Paradise. Italian Baroque Styles. The flowering of the Dutch Landscape. English Gardens: A Restrained Mix of European Styles. French Classical Gardens: The Control of Nature. 18th Century. England: The Development of the Landscape Garden. The Landscape Garden in France. China: Qianlong's Imprint. Early American Gardens: Homeland Traditions. 19th Century. England: The Victorians and Their Plants. France: Republics and Empires. Landscape Architecture in America. 20th Century. The Glided Age: Extremes of Wealth and Poverty. The New Aesthetic of Modernism. Environmental Art: Nature as Medium. Artistic Trends in Landscape Design. Environmental and Ecological Design. Postmodern Landscapes. 21st Century. A Sustainable Earth: Ten Ideas. Endnotes. Bibliography. Index.

What is “Australian” Fashion Photography?—A Dilemma

Can we point to anything distinctive about Australian fashion photographs during the mid-twentieth century? This article traces discourses of both similarity and difference from European styles that permeated discussion of fashionable dress and comportment in Australia at the time. It shows there is little to gain from unraveling what characterizes “overseas” and what characterizes “local,” especially in image making. Indeed, we can scarcely find stylistic distinctiveness in photographs. What emerges is a seemingly contradictory network of opinions, texts, images, and related practices, complicating our understanding of local fashion photography and its relationship to the magazine industry. In the period under consideration, a coherent or identifiable style does not constitute fashionable attire and its representation in Australia other than at times a sense of the understated. It is in the ebb and flow of ideas, motifs, and references, even subtle urban variations, that we can situate the essence of Australian photography and perhaps that of Australian style as well.