Volume 31, Number 17 · November 8, 1984
Mod Gothic
By Willibald Sauerländer
French Gothic Architecture of the 12th and 13th Centuries
by Jean Bony
University of California Press, 625 pp., $115.00
Jean Bony's French Gothic Architecture of the 12th and 13th Centuries is the most ambitious book on a major aspect of medieval architectural history to appear in the last fifty years. Bony's vigorous study has none of the dutiful classifications—with a separate discussion for towers, vaults, pillars, capitals, bases, and so on—of the old-fashioned architectural treatise. His view of Gothic architecture is imbued with the twentieth century's enthusiasm for the modern and its conviction that the avant-garde must make a break with the past. This view revives and transforms the eight-hundred-year-old cathedrals and abbey churches into the spacious structures of a distinctively modern aesthetic experience.
Review, 2991 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |