Author: Fiona MacCarthy File Type: pdf The impact of Walter Gropius can be measured in his buildingsFagus Factory, Bauhaus Dessau, Pan Ambut no less in his students. I. M. Pei, Paul Rudolph, Anni Albers, Philip Johnson, Fumihiko Maki countless masters were once disciples at the Bauhaus in Berlin and at Harvard. Between 1910 and 1930, Gropius was at the center of European modernism and avant-garde society glamor, only to be exiled to the antimodernist United Kingdom during the Nazi years. Later, under the democratizing influence of American universities, Gropius became an advocate of public art and cemented a starring role in twentieth-century architecture and design. Fiona MacCarthy challenges the image of Gropius as a doctrinaire architectural rationalist, bringing out the visionary philosophy and courage that carried him through a politically hostile age. Pilloried by Tom Wolfe as inventor of the monolithic high-rise, Gropius is better remembered as inventor of a form of art education that influenced schools worldwide. He viewed argument as intrinsic to creativity. Unusually for one in his position, Gropius encouraged womens artistic endeavors and sought equal romantic partners. Though a traveler in elite circles, he objected to the cloistering of beauty as a special privilege for the aesthetically initiated. Gropius offers a poignant and personal storyand a fascinating reexamination of the urges that drove European and American modernism. Review A riveting book about a man who nurtured a vastly ambitious project through extraordinary times.bbbThe Economistb A comprehensive biography of the figure whom the painter Paul Klee, a teacher at the Bauhaus, called the silver prince.bbbDan Chiassonbb,b bNew Yorkerb MacCarthy transforms [Gropius] from a dull institutionalisthead of the Bauhaus and, later, prominent professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Designinto a stylistic rebel who lived and loved in an exuberant community of artist outcasts that would be scattered across the world after Weimar Germany became the Third Reich. Whereas critics of the Bauhaus have seen it as the harbinger of giant faceless office towers and superhighways slicing through cities, MacCarthy presents the school as a fount of idealism both an artistic collective, surging with creative energy, and a political project briefly filled with the angst and elan of a lost generation soon to be crushed by Hitler. Most of all, MacCarthy shows that Gropiuss true legacy was the talent he nurtured in othersI. M. Pei, Philip Johnson, Paul Klee, Marcel Breuer, and Wassily Kandinsky, to name but a few.bbbNew Republicb MacCarthys book doesnt claim to offer deep analysis of all of Gropiuss or the Bauhauss artistic output. But, as a way of bringing the human stories of this extraordinary phenomenon to life, its hard to beat.bbbThe Guardianb MacCarthys enjoyable biography is an impressive achievement, finally giving us not just Gropius the architect in black and white, but the human being in full color.bbbEvening Standardb MacCarthy makes a compelling case for the architect as an impassioned idealist and romanticAn incredibly readable and rounded biography and gives credit where its due to the formidable women who shaped him.bbbLiterary Reviewb [A] revelatory biographyStrikingly readableGropius emerges here as a kind of obsessive, passionate geniusTransforms our understanding of the history and significance not only of Gropius but of the group of 1930s innovators who comprised the movement.bbbThe Arts Deskb [A] meticulously researched, balanced and brilliantly written biographyMacCarthy refuses the often ill-researched reductionist characterizations of Gropius as the arrogant, dour modernist. Instead, she passionately weaves a gripping and powerful narrative deserving of a wide audience while also making for essential reading for anyone studying architecture and design.bbbIrish Timesb A complex narrative about a complex man. Fiona MacCarthys richly detailed biography of Walter Gropius, one of the twentieth centurys most influential architects, reads like a detective story.bbbMoshe Safdie, founding principal of Moshe Safdie Architectsb Saint or sinner? Visionary or myopic? In the century since the Bauhaus opened, its founder Walter Gropius has been lionised and demonised. Did Gropius inspire the worlds most influential and humane art school, or was he the evil genius of miserable industrial culture? Fiona MacCarthy is Britains first and best writer on design. She rescues Gropiuss reputation in a book full of learning, insight, dry wit, and belief. Just like the man himself.bbbStephen Bayley, cofounder of the Design Museum, London, and author of Tasteb bb About the Author Fiona MacCarthy is the author of William Morris A Life for Our Time, winner of the Wolfson History Prize and the Writers Guild Nonfiction Award and the well-received Byron Life and Legend. A former design correspondent for The Guardian and architecture critic for The Observer, she has curated exhibits at the Victoria & Albert Museum and the National Portrait Gallery in London. MacCarthy is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Senior Fellow at the Royal College of Art.

Author: Bridget Garnham File Type: pdf Through its themes of subjectivity, surgery, and self-stylization this book critically examines the cultural constraints and incitements that shape the practice of cosmetic surgery by older people. The book problematizes anti-ageing discourses to provide a nuanced descriptive, ethical, and political reading of older identity politics nested within the contemporary ethico-political terrain of self-care. ul l*l ul A New Ethic of Older aims to de-territorialize the older subject from normative discourses of ageing and theorize becoming older. Evidence of an active cultural politics of older emerges from the critically reflexive engagement of older people with cosmetic surgery. This engagement constitutes a cutting critique of ageing discourses enmeshed in an aesthetic mode of subjectivation that underpins a new ethics of old age. The book will appeal to those in the fields of Cultural Gerontology, Ageing Studies, Critical Psychology, Sociology, and Cultural Geography. The methodological approach will be of interest to academics and students exploring the application of Foucaults work on care of the self to contemporary contexts and practices. **About the Author Bridget Garnham is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Social Change within the School of Psychology, Social Work, and Social Policy at the University of South Australia, Australia.