
Memory and Modernity
Viollet-le-Duc at Vezelay
Kevin D. Murphy(Author)
Pennsylvania State University Press
Will be published approx. on 1. December 1999
Book
Hardback
216 pages
978-0-271-01850-8 (ISBN)
Description
Memory and Modernity focuses on the first project of the renowned nineteenth-century French architect and theorist Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, the restoration of the Romanesque church of the Madeleine at Vezelay in Burgundy. This is the first book-length study to approach the work of Viollet-le-Duc from the perspective of institutional and social history.
Kevin D. Murphy situates the Vezelay restoration project within the government architectural bureaucracy that emerged in the July Monarchy. Drawing on extensive archival records, he describes the controversy that arose from the restoration process, as changes in the physical form of the church, its permitted uses, and its place in history provoked heated exchanges among the Burgundy region and Paris, the Catholic clergy and government officials.
Examining in detail the architect's transformation of the church of the Madeleine, the book also draws out the implications of the project for understanding Viollet-le-Duc's theoretical development. Murphy shows how Viollet-le-Duc's rationalist interpretation of medieval architecture informed the decisions that were made about the restoration, but also how that way of thinking was influenced by the architect's experience at Vezelay.
Kevin D. Murphy situates the Vezelay restoration project within the government architectural bureaucracy that emerged in the July Monarchy. Drawing on extensive archival records, he describes the controversy that arose from the restoration process, as changes in the physical form of the church, its permitted uses, and its place in history provoked heated exchanges among the Burgundy region and Paris, the Catholic clergy and government officials.
Examining in detail the architect's transformation of the church of the Madeleine, the book also draws out the implications of the project for understanding Viollet-le-Duc's theoretical development. Murphy shows how Viollet-le-Duc's rationalist interpretation of medieval architecture informed the decisions that were made about the restoration, but also how that way of thinking was influenced by the architect's experience at Vezelay.
Reviews / Votes
"Through rigorous research Murphy reconstructs an extensive array of archival documentation, which can serve as a model for this type of research."-Craig K. Anz Journal of Preservation Technology
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Pennsylvania
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Illustrations
53 Halftones, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 12 mm
Weight
594 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-271-01850-8 (9780271018508)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Kevin D. Murphy is Associate Professor of Art History at the City University of New York Graduate Center and Brooklyn College. He is the co-editor, with Sarah L. Giffen, of A Noble and Dignified Stream: The Piscataqua Region in the Colonial Revival, 1860-1930 (1992), which won the Ruth Emery Award for Nineteenth-Century Studies.