The picturesque: architecture, disgust and other irregularities

John Macarthur

Routledge, Nov 29, 2007 - Architecture - 295 pages

When we look at the view while out walking, or when protestors against wind farms criticise them for damaging the 'landscape', or when a 21st-century architect contrives an entrance so as to slowly reveal the space around us, are we exhibiting the same cultural behaviours as those gentlemen aesthetes of the 18th century who employed architects and gardeners to create parks and ruins within them to look at from the windows of their residences?The term picturesque at first described the aesthetical view of nature, in the 18th century when speculation about the relation of 'art' and 'nature' was popular. The idea was aligned with a certain type of painting, the 'landscape' genre, and our current use of the word landscape as an appreciation of the world as if it were a visual artefact is just one example of the way we have absorbed 'the picturesque' into our view of the world perhaps without realising it.The idea of the picturesque and its emergence is relatively well known in British cultural history. The longer history of the picturesque through to its use in the present, however, has rarely been examined. It is the way the picturesque has been developed and received in later forms that forms much of the focus of this book. Traversing the ideas of Kent, Brown, Burke, Reynolds, Gilpin, Price, Knight, Repton, Loudon, Ruskin, Wlfflin, Pevsner, Bois, de Wolfe and Koolhaas, this absorbing and accessible account provides both a useful overview of an important theme in architectural and cultural history, and a sophisticated analysis of it in the context of contemporary concerns with modernity, movement, and visual and critical theory.

Contents

• Introduction: 1
• 1795: 9
• The picturesque in modernism: 15

About the author

John MacArthur (D.D. Talbot Theological Seminary) is pastor-teacher of Grace Community Church. Following in the steps of his father, Dr. Jack MacArthur, John represents five successive generations of pastors in his family. He is also president of The Master's College and Seminary and is heard daily on "Grace to You," a nationally syndicated radio broadcast. The Grace to You ministry has distributed more than 10 million audiocassettes of his messages. John is also the author of many books, including The MacArthur New Testament Commentary series, The Gospel According to Jesus, and the newly-released The MacArthur Study Bible.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The picturesque: architecture, disgust and other irregularities; The classical tradition in architecture
• Author: John Macarthur
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Routledge, 2007
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: Nov 19, 2009
• ISBN: 1844721418, 9781844721412
• Length: 295 pages
• Subjects: Aesthetics, Modern; Architecture / Criticism; Architecture / General; Architecture / History / General; Architecture, Modern; Philosophy / Aesthetics; Picturesque, The, in architecture