This book proposes that the only meeting of art and architecture needn’t be an abstract sculpture in a building forecourt or a polite artwork on a boardroom wall. Christian Bjone uses the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris as an example of the ideal yet imperfect meeting of the two forms, where the Henry Moore sculpture in the forecourt humanizes the brutalist buildings.
Art and Architecture looks at the influence of the Bauhaus and how this institution unified art with industrial production. The idea of incorporating art into the architecture of a building has been in and out of favour during the twentieth century and Bjone uses many specific projects from around the world to discuss the difficulties of such undertakings. His analysis is plentifully illustrated by plans and photographs of buildings, models and sculpture.
While the title of this book suggests a wide-ranging exploration, Bjone has kept his focus tight. A chapter on father and son Finnish architects Eliel and Eero Saarinen is followed by one on postwar French church design and another on artists making environments without architects or against architecture. It is perhaps Raymond Hood, architect of the Rockefeller Center, who precisely captured the desire for art in architecturally designed spaces when he spoke of the crisis of the vertical surface and the “horror of emptiness” that is the cost-efficient modern blank wall. Art and Architecture is an engaging and cautionary book about the import of what can often seem incidental.
Christian Bjone, Birkhauser, 2009, 192 pp, $165.
