Spatial Orders, Social Forms: Art and the City in Modern Brazil (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780300254013)

A fascinating look at modernist urban planning and spatial theories in Brazilian 20th-century art and architecture

Exploring the intersections among art, architecture, and urbanism in Brazil from the 1920s through the 1960s, Adrian Anagnost shows how modernity was manifested in locally specific spatial forms linked to Brazil's colonial and imperial past. Discussing the ways artists and architects understood urban planning as a tool to reorganize the world, control human action, and remedy social problems, Anagnost offers a nuanced account of the seeming conflict between modernist aesthetics and a predominately poor and historically disenfranchised urban public, with particular attention to regionalist forms of urban development. Organized as a series of case studies of projects such as Fl vio de Carvalho's performative urbanism, the construction of the Ministry of Education and Public Health building, Lina Bo and Pietro Maria Bardi's efforts to modernize Brazilian museums, and H lio Oiticica's interstitial works, this study is full of groundbreaking insights into the ways that modernist theories of urbanism shaped the art and architecture of 20th-century Brazil.

Author: Adrian Anagnost
ISBN-10: 0300254016
ISBN-13: 9780300254013
Publisher: Yale University Press
Language: English
Published: 11/01/2022
Pages: 248
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 2.60lbs
Size: 10.24h x 8.11w x 0.87d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 02/01/2023 pg. 75