For many of us; ruins are alluring; puzzling and endlessly fascinating: this elegant book seeks to explore why. What is it that makes us suspicious of works or histories that are too smooth; too continuous? Is it that urban experience is inherently discontinuous and fragmented; or that the only truths we can believe are partial ones? Ruins and Fragments guides us through ancient and modern worlds; sharing tales of loss; recovery and rediscovery. Beginning with ancient fragments; this book recounts how later history has recuperated; restored and exhibited them; and even how ruins have been found in unlikely places – such as a Hellenistic fragment from Pergamon located in remote Nottinghamshire. It considers modernist architecture’s fragmentary effects; and how concrete made some buildings look prematurely ruined. It also explores architecture that has worked with ruins; from the Castelvecchio in Verona to the reconstruction of the Neues Museum in Berlin. In literature; from T. S. Eliot to Laurence Sterne; writers revel in fragments and create anew from literary rubble. Some people deliberately construct or destroy to create ruin; Gordon Matta-Clark attacking buildings; for example; or dispossessed youth scribbling grafï¬ti. Ultimately; destruction is balanced by attempts at reconstruction. Whether focusing on ancient or modern remnants; literature or the visual arts; Ruins and Fragments is poetic without being sentimental. Far from ‘ruin lust’; this book seeks to explore fragments without fetishizing them. In doing so it offers new ways of understanding the history of modernity; while delighting in our perception of the world as a puzzle and the ways in which we can construct new forms of meaning.
2011-07-25 2011-07-25File Name: B011F5ML2S
Review
