Amazon.com Review
Despite the contemporary fascination with all things classical that has fueled the recent antimodern movement, this is the first book in more than half a century to explore the career of John Russell Pope (1873-1937). And it is worth the wait as it luxuriously presents the work of the architect of the National Gallery of Art, the Jefferson Memorial, the National Archives, and dozens of other buildings that are now intrinsic to the constructed environment of the U.S. capital. Pope was an architect of such harmony, balance, and effortless grandeur that he might well be ignored by current American neoclassicists, whose ill-conceived gewgaws are put to shame by Pope's stately homes, serene monuments, authoritative collegiate buildings, and regal museums.
Architect and historian Steven McLeod Bedford began his solitary, comprehensive, and difficult research for this book during the 1980s, when proponents of the high-minded cultural imperatives of the late 19th century, including the Hudson River School painters, were in vogue. Bedford admirably analyses the strengths and weaknesses of an architect whose most famous buildings "expressed the grandiloquent aspirations of private and public patrons." He also puts Pope's contributions in historical perspective, noting that a 1961 history of American architecture published by the A.I.A. found "no merit in Pope's work." Bedford himself writes with careful objectivity that "Pope seemed to adhere to the precept that a certain set of classical forms and plans existed whose inherent beauty was immutable."
Bedford writes warmly but dispassionately about buildings that many people love, and some--such as those who listened to Martin Luther King Jr. speak on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, or visited the soaring, softly sky-lit rooms of the National Gallery--have special attachments to. Beauty of this exalted type may no longer be of interest to the architectural cognoscenti, but there is a quality of calm endurance to Pope's buildings that has lasting appeal. In spite of the author's reserve, this is an inspiring, elucidating book, filled with plans, drawings, and color photographs that do some belated justice to Pope's career. --Peggy Moorman
From Publishers Weekly
The stoic, marble-clad facades of John Russell Pope's best-known buildings?the Temple of the Scottish Rite, the National Gallery of Art, the Jefferson Memorial (all in Washington, D.C.)?give no hint of the sad ending to the architect's life. Just as Pope (1874-1937) reached the peak of his career, the classical idiom that he had spent his life mastering fell out of favor, and he was savagely rejected by an American design community increasingly enamored of the International Style. Reviewing Pope's career in this lavishly illustrated (250 illustrations, 100 in color) biographical survey, architectural historian Bedford fairly contends that Pope is "the quintessential American classical architect of the first part of the century." Bedford, however, offers little response to the modernist argument that dressing 20th-century buildings like Greek and Roman temples constitutes a "tired architectural lie." More than 60 years ago, Pope too responded with silence to critics who dismissed him as part of an enervated architectural elite practicing "styles that are safely dead" and depriving others, like the older but more avant-garde Frank Lloyd Wright, of commissions. Silence, in fact, permeates these pages: Because most of Pope's papers were lost or destroyed after his death, the architect's voice is largely absent. The reader comes away from this comprehensive and luxurious-looking overview of Pope's Georgian mansions and classical monuments with admiration for this neglected architect's work, but the man behind the dignified facades remains enigmatic.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
