Transforming Vision: Writers on Art

by Karl Friedrich Schinkel

Neoclassicism’s most prominent exponent in Prussia, Karl Friedrich Schinkel is revered today for his reshaping of Berlin as Prussia’s capital, and for catalyzing the Greek Revival in Germany. Most of Berlin’s most famous Neoclassical structures are his doing--the Neue Wache, the Schauspielhaus, the Gendarmenmarkt and the Altes Museum, for example. His Bauakademie of 1836 is even considered by many to foreshadow the austerity and clean lines of German Modernist architecture. But Schinkel is equally revered for his legacy of architectural drawing and unbuilt works, gathered (from the Schinkel archives) herein, making this book the definitive Schinkel primer.

Genres: Art, Poetry, Nonfiction, Writing, Criticism

196 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1994

Reviews

[Eric Byrd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Guy Davenport with his geography of American Gothic puts the others in the shade.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book of art and writing about it.

The quality of the art collection at the art institute is as good as it gets here in the states. The book contains everybody from Grant Wood to Picasso to Degas to Rodin and on and on.

And the writing is also terrific. There are writers you recognize immediately like Joyce Carol Oates and John Updike and writers you don't necessarily recognize but are glad you've met at last.

Right now the book is selling for a couple bucks, and it's a bargain you'll not see again in this lifetime.

[Sherry (sethurner) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This a beautiful book, with around fifty paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago is a hundred miles from here, but it's an easy train ride, so I visit the Art Institute two or three times a year. Familiarity with the paintings makes the book seem like a new look at old friends. In it authors including Saul Bellow, Delmore Schwartz, Francine Prose, Rita Dove, Willa Cather and Stanley Kunitz write essays, stories, poems about the the artworks - including Matisse's Woman Before an Aquarium. This book should appeal to both fans of art and of literature.

[Ruta · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are many reasons to love this book: for the range of literary pieces, for beautiful reproductions, for Edward Hirsch's elegant introduction. I discovered Ivan Albright's art. A painter, on his death bed he wrote:

Things most important to me are lost
And in their place rises colossal
terror and fear and nights of eternal length
Bring uncalled for colors and sounds
And mirrors appear that were not
there before and half alive
They slip about the room waist high

This is the quiet harrowing truth that I understand.

[michael reid rubenstein · Rating 2 out of 5]

rather topical but nice reproductions of paintings. the joyce carol oates piece about hopper's "nighthawks" painting is terrific.