Books & ideas

Rhythms of Construction

2013-05-23T07:30:00Z

Almost twenty years ago, Christian de Portzamparc was the first French architect to receive the Pritzker Prize. Today his Atelier, located in Paris, is more dynamic than ever, with ambitious projects like the Cidade das Artes in Rio, or the participation in the Grand Paris project. The following interview shows an architect urbanist whose work is geared towards the city and music.

- Essays / music, Paris, architecture, urbanisme

Interweaving Eastern and Western Perspectives

2013-05-02T08:44:48Z

In Florence and Baghdad, Hans Belting writes a new history of the human gaze based on its symbolic value in relation to the image. His starting point is the cultural transfer between the East and the West, leading to the invention of perspective in the 16th century. The author examines two different forms of cultures of the gaze and lays the groundwork for a global art history.

- Reviews / islam, culture, West, global history, art history, Renaissance

Not Ruled by Time and Space

2013-03-18T07:30:00Z

Is an art historian looking at modern and contemporary art through the lens of medieval art necessarily risking anachronism? Breaking the taboo of cross-period comparison, Alexander Nagel's Medieval Modern uncovers deep similarities between two seemingly distant periods of art history, which challenge our own sense of time and space.

- Reviews / contemporary art, medieval art

The Need to Compare

2013-02-04T08:14:11Z

A highly respected figure in African studies, Jack Goody has become a distinctive voice in the torrent of academic critiques of western ethnocentrism. His work, spanning more than sixty years, has been based on a single ambition: comparison, for the sake of more accurately locating European history within Eurasian and world history.

- Essays / anthropology

The Suspension of Meaning

2013-01-28T08:40:10Z

Creating connections has been the aim of Jean Starobinski's work for more than half a century. His body of work is large and shifting, created in response to life, lying somewhere between the critical and the clinical. Books & Ideas met this citizen of the world at his house in Geneva, following the recent publication of three important books.

- Essays / picture, critique, literature, poetry, histoire des idées

How Paris Became a Museum

2013-01-24T08:00:00Z

In L'invention du vieux Paris (“The Invention of Old Paris”) Ruth Fiori chronicles the rise of preservation societies in 19th century Paris that led to the patrimonialization of the capital. What does it mean to “preserve” a monument? The author highlights the ideological differences that spurred the construction of a patrimonial perspective which we inherit today.

- Reviews / city, urbanisme, patrimoine

Debate, Democracy and the Public Sphere

2013-01-08T17:16:00Z

In our second winter selection of reviews and essays, Books & Ideas takes a look back at a few important articles published over the last year on the current developments and trends affecting public spaces for expression and debate : from the traditional media to the world wide web, these different spaces are all under pressure from ongoing changes. Rules and practices are evolving, as the traditional public space is being radically enlarged.

- Dossiers / democracy, internet, press

Artistic Beauty as a Political Weapon

2012-12-06T08:00:00Z

Can art have an impact on sociopolitical reality? What matters most? Political content or aesthetic qualities? These questions have haunted contemporary art since the late sixties. Yet some artists, such as Kara Walker and Brigitte Zieger, have avoided the pitfalls encountered in the effort to reconcile beauty and politics by choosing to heighten their work's capacity for formal seduction—only to plunge the spectator brutally and unexpectedly back into reality.

- Essays / contemporary art

Thinking in Tongues

2012-10-08T07:24:34Z

How does the language we speak affect the way we think? John A. Lucy's unique answers to this question derive from his finding a middle ground between the opposing nativist universalist point of view and empiricist relativist stand.

- Essays / linguistics

Emergency Cinema

2012-10-05T07:49:04Z

Since April 2011, a collective of Syrian filmmakers has been working on behalf of a people fighting for its freedom. Their short films invent a new cinematographic language adapted to the urgency of the situation. Abounaddara tells the story.

- Essays / revolution, contemporary art