From the sex-free paradise of the Shakers to the worker's paradise of Marx, utopian ideas seem to have two things in common--they all are wonderfully plausible at the start and they all end up as disasters. In Visions of Utopia, three leading cultural critics--Edward Rothstein, Martin Marty, and Herbert Muschamp--look at the history of utopian thinking, exploring why they fail and why they are still worth pursuing. Edward Rothstein, New York Times cultural critic, contends that every utopia is really a dystopia--a disaster in the making--one that overlooks the nature of humanity and the impossibilities of paradise. He traces the ideal in politics and technology and suggests that only in art--and especially in music--does the desire for utopia find satisfaction. Martin Marty examines several models of utopia--from Thomas More's to a 1960s experimental city that he helped to plan--to show that, even though utopias can never be realized, we should not be too quick to condemn them. They can express dimensions of the human spirit that might otherwise be stifled and can plant ideas that may germinate in more realistic and practical soil. And Herbert Muschamp, the New York Times architectural critic, looks at Utopianism as exemplified in two different ways: the Buddhist tradition and the work of visionary Viennese architect Adolph Loos. Utopian thinking embodies humanity's noblest impulses, yet it can lead to horrors such as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Regime. In Visions of Utopia, these leading thinkers offer an intriguing look at the paradoxes of paradise.

Visions of Utopia (New York Public Library Lectures in Humanities)

History

Rothstein, Edward

Marty, Martin

Muschamp, Herbert

World

Oxford University Press

From the sex-free paradise of the Shakers to the worker's paradise of Marx, utopian ideas seem to have two things in common-they all are wonderfully plausible at the start and they all end up as disasters. In Visions of Utopia, three leading cultural critics-Edward Rothstein, Martin Marty, and Herbert Muschamp-look at the history of utopian thinking, exploring why they fail and why they are still worth pursuing. Rothstein contends that every utopia is really a dystopia- one that overlooks the nature of humanity and the impossibilities of paradise. He traces the ideal in politics and technology and suggests that only in art-and especially in music-does the desire for utopia find satisfaction. Marty examines several models of utopia-from Thomas More's to a 1960s experimental city that he helped to plan-to show that, even though utopias can never be realized, we should not be too quick to condemn them. They can express dimensions of the human spirit that might otherwise be stifled and can plant ideas that may germinate in more realistic and practical soil. Muschamp looks at Utopianism as exemplified in two different ways: the Buddhist tradition and the work of visionary Viennese architect Adolph Loos. Utopian thinking embodies humanity's noblest impulses, yet it can lead to horrors such as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Regime. In Visions of Utopia, these leading thinkers of Feran intriguing look at the paradoxes of paradise.

Frank Lloyd Wright often expressed a passionate contempt for America's great cities, reserving a special wrath for New York. And yet, as Herbert Muschamp argues with verve and conviction in this book, Gotham played a vital part in shaping Wright's "second career" galvanizing the architect's energies after the scandal-ridden decades during which he built almost nothing. Man About Town describes Wright's Broadacre City proposals and includes photographs of his drawings for such major unbuilt New York projects as the Steel Cathedral for a Million People, the St. Mark's Apartment Towers, the Manhattan Sports Pavilion, and the Ellis Island "Key Project," in addition to previously unpublished photographs of "Taliesin the Third."

Man About Town

Arts & Photography

Architecture

MIT Press]

From the late Herbert Muschamp, the former architecture critic of The New York Times and one of the most outspoken and influential voices in architectural criticism, a collection of his best work. The pieces here—from The New Republic, Artforum, and The New York Times—reveal how Muschamp’s views were both ahead of their time and timeless. He often wrote about how the right architecture could be inspiring and uplifting, and he uniquely drew on film, literature, and popular culture to write pieces that were passionate and often personal, changing the landscape of architectural criticism in the process. These columns made architecture a subject accessible to everyone at a moment when, because of the heated debate between modernists and postmodernists, architecture had become part of a larger public dialogue. One of the most courageous and engaged voices in his field, he devoted many columns at the Times to the lack of serious new architecture in this country, and particularly in New York, and spoke out against the agenda of developers. He departed from the usual dry, didactic style of much architectural writing to playfully, for example, compare Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao to the body of Marilyn Monroe or to wax poetic about a new design for Manhattan’s manhole covers. One sees in this collection that Muschamp championed early on the work of Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, Thom Payne, Frank Israel, Jean Nouvel, and Santiago Calatrava, among others, and was drawn to the theoretical writings of such architects as Peter Eisenman. Published here for the first time is the uncut version of his brilliant and poignant essay about gay culture and Edward Durrell Stone’s museum at 2 Columbus Circle. Fragments from the book he left unfinished, whose title we took for this collection—“A Dozen Years,” “Metroscope,” and “Atomic Secrets”—are also included. Hearts of the City is dazzling writing from a humanistic thinker whose work changed forever the way we think about our cities—and the buildings in them.

Hearts of the City: The Selected Writings of Herbert Muschamp

Humor & Entertainment

KNOPF

Provides examples of Italian designer Ettore Sottsass's projects in architecture, interior, industrial and graphic design from 1980 to the present.

The Work of Ettore Sottsass and Associates

Branzi, A.

Universe

Styles and lifestyles are fast becoming uniform under labels and definitions of fashion, and as an industry and a cultural form. Total Living is the point of no return in a project which, step-by-step, develops strategies whose goal it is to offer an even more sophisticated and targeted lifestyle. It is a place where there are definitions for clothes, behavior modes, and even the atmoshpheres and spaces in which one moves. Assuming the contours of a landscape of the future, this scenario raises topical themes and problems connected with the overwhelming power of consumerism. Accompanying scholarly essays consider the thematic universes of fashion designers and brands; models of total living in 20th century history; references to total living in mass culture; living and eating; arty fashion and fashionable art; the world of fashion design; the languages of shopping; urban fashion districts; and advertising as a narrative. A fabulously rich and interconnected iconographic passage visually narrates the various forms and ramifications of total living today and in the recent past through a succession of utopias, life-projects, urban visions, architecture, special homes, stores, art galleries, museums, and editorial pages and ads from fashion and lifestyle magazines. Total Living shows life for the show that it is--or has become. Published in collaboration with Pitti Immagine.

Total Living: Art, Fashion, Design, Architecture, Communication

GURSKY, ANDREAS

Steiner, Dietmar

Pearlman, Chee

Flavin, Dan

Miyake, Issey

Beecroft, Vanessa

Ciavarella, Michele

De Cecco, Emanuela

Dirindin, Ricardo

Monelli, Roberto

Serenini, Michelle

Sudjic, Dejan

Bardi, Lina Bo

Mollino, Alberto

Ponti, Gio

Decorative Arts & Design

Charta

Throughout his career, Francesco Vezzoli has focused on people's fascination with celebrity. At the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on October 27, 2007, he restaged Right You Are (If You Think You Are), the renowned play by Italian Nobel Laureate Luigi Pirandello that examines the fundamental ambiguity of truth. Vezzoli assembled an extraordinary cast of top-billed actors, implicating his audience in an investigation of rumor and celebrity mongering as substitutes for a deeper understanding of the individual. Pirandello, like Vezzoli in his own art, points to these empty distractions as a means of drawing attention to existential and humanist concerns. Vezzoli's visionary approach to Pirandello's jewel of a work playfully exposes the relativity of truth, the necessity of illusion, and the instability of the human persona. Co-produced by the Gagosian Gallery of New York, the staging is fully documented in this book in which you can literally be reflected as in a mirror, thanks to the inside of the cover.

Francesco Vezzoli: Right You Are (If You Think You Are)

Goldberg, RoseLee

Vezzoli, Francesco

Individual Artists

Charta/ Gagosian Gallery

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