Charles Garnier's Paris Opera : Architectural Empathy and the Renaissance of French Classicism
New York, Cambridge, Mass. Architectural History Foundation & MIT Press, 1991. First edition. Hardcover. Quarto. [8] 343pp. Original red cloth with gilt lettering on spine, in original color-illustrated dustjacket , gilt lettering on spine. Black endpapers.
Profusely illustrated with b/w reproductions of photographs depicting the exterior and interior of the opera house, plus numerous architectural drawings and plans. Appendices at rear include data on Garnier's public career, Garnier's student travels, 1848-54, and Gernier's architectural works apart from the Paris Opera, plus an extensive bibliography and index. The publication is making use of the entire Garnier archive at the Paris Opera for the first time.
"Charles Garnier (1825-98) was as passionate as the Paris Opéra is flamboyant, and his ambitions were as grandiose as his monument to the nineteenth-century French society. In this new interpretation, the author portrays Garnier as both a typical artist of his time and a romantic dreamer whose convictions led him to review classical tradition by recovering its emphatic basis.
Appraisals of the Paris Opera have long fluctuated between the modernist critique that the building is a stylistic pastiche of historicisms and the architect's own conception of the building as the expression of a form-generating principle. Mead defends Garnier's view by locating the architect's design and theoretical writings within the intellectual context of the Second Empire." (Publisher). Minor wear. Near fine condition. Item #56188
ISBN: 0262132753
Price: $450.00