Memory and Modernity: Viollet-Le-Duc at Vezelay [Hardcover]

Kevin D. Murphy (Author), Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-Le-Duc (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 027101850X | ISBN-13: 978-0271018508 | Publication Date: December 1, 1999

Memory and Modernity focuses on the first project of the reknowned nineteenth-century French architect and theorist Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, the restoration of the Romanesque church of the Madeleine at Vézelay 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 Vézelay restoration project within the government architectural bureacracy 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 Vézelay.

Editorial Reviews

Review

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

About the Author

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 (Old York Historical Society, 1992), which won the Ruth Emery Award for Nineteenth-Century Studies.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: Pennsylvania State Univ Pr (Txt) (December 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 027101850X
• ISBN-13: 978-0271018508
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,462,308 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kevin D. Murphy is Professor of Art History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He has been a fellow at the Metropolitan Musuem of Art and the National Gallery of Art, among other institutions. Murphy has contributed to such publications as The Magazine Antiques and Art New England, as well as a variety of professional journals.