Steel Shadows: Murals and Drawings of Pittsburgh (Art, Architecture, Regional) (Paperback)

by Douglas Cooper (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Having encountered Douglas Cooper’s stunning murals of Pittsburgh in their original grand scale, I imagined it would be difficult to capture their sweeping sense of place within the confines of a book. .. Yet the University of Pittsburgh Press has done just that in a handsome volume entitled Steel Shadows . . . Mr. Cooper has set a very high standard in capturing the drama of Pittsburgh geography, using only the subtle gradiations of black and white and a keen eye for detail.  Perhaps improbably, Mr. Cooper not only manages to portray the natural curves of the city’s rivers and hills, but also the manic attempt to impose order on them with mills and bridges, sjyscrapers and row houses.  Infused with a string sense of the past, Mr. Cooper’s trick is to provide every necessary detail for convincing realism while creating an overall effect that seems nothing short of fantasy. “
--Pittsburgh Business Times

Product Description
Imagine walking along the two-hundred foot expanse of a charcoal and paper mural, the cityscape of Pittsburghs past and present unfolding before your eyes. You stop intermittently, spotting a particul Steel Shadows, you dont have to visit exhibition halls at Carnegie Mellon University or the John Heinz History Center to enjoy Douglas Coopers unique, realistic and highly personal images of Pittsburgh. Steel Shadows brings his large charcoal and paper art home to you. This unique collection of imagery and prose combines the personal with Coopers highly technical and intricate craft. Through narrative and illustration, Douglas Cooper will show you a Pittsburgh you know and love, but have never seen in quite this way before.

Cooper details the inspiration for his artistic vision, as well as the formal properties of his art and how it relates to architecture. The book features double-page spreads and excerpts from Pittsburg) panoramic murals in Frankfurt, Germany, and in New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. A central theme of his work has been the overlay of the multiple meanings people attach to their surroundings. In three of his murals, Cooper has worked with the elderly and incorporated their stories into his art. Cooper has received grants for his work from the National Endowment for the Arts and has been honored by the American Institute of Architects for the contribution his murals have made to architecture.

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press; 1 edition (October 19, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822957485
• ISBN-13: 978-0822957485
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 8.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,984,949 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pittsburgh and Cooper: A 360 Degree Panorama, November 12, 2000

By	Joanna Schultz (Pittsburgh, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Steel Shadows: Murals and Drawings of Pittsburgh (Art, Architecture, Regional) (Hardcover)

Imagine you are standing at the top of a cliff in a hilly city or on top of a skyscraper in a flatter one. Slowly rotate 360 degrees, taking in all that you can see as you turn. Then imagine doing the same thing 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago and work older landscapes into your contemporary ones. Then imagine wrapping all that you see and imagine onto a flat surface. I don't think I could actually do that - but Douglas Cooper can and has. Cooper's new book, STEEL SHADOWS, does three distinct tasks. It offers an insightful autobiographical sketch on how Cooper, an architect/professor at Carnegie Mellon University, came to draw the way he draws. Writing in a naive style, he recounts 2nd grade experiments on perspective, his education at Carnegie Tech, his sojourn to Europe to study buildings, and the evolving style which puts myriad angles continuously onto a flat piece of paper in a way which makes sense - to the viewers as well as to Cooper. The second task is to help the reader fall in love with the landscape of Pittsburgh as Cooper did, first as a 6-year-old enamoured of trains. Cooper's drawings in STEEL SHADOWS, excellent reproductions of the massive murals installed permanently in a variety of sites in Pittsburgh, give one the feel of the steep mountainsides, winding streets, and crumbling industrial landscape of the city. Cooper seems to love it all, and his amazing drawings draw us into his love affair. The third element of STEEL SHADOWS is an illustrated collection of writings on Pittburgh including excerpts from architectural historian Franklin Toker, poet Peter Blair, writer Annie Dillard, historian William Serrin, and novelist Marcia Davenport. My favorite excerpt in the last section is actually by Cooper, himself. "Living with Meg across from Forbes Field" allows him to indulge in his second passion after Pittsburgh: baseball. Along with stunning drawings of the old ball park, Cooper tells us of the neighborhood of South Oakland, life in the bleachers in Forbes Field, and his life as a young married man sitting on his porch directly across the street from Forbes Field waiting for foul balls to be hit out of the stadium and to him. One might question whether this book would be interesting to those who are neither artists nor Pittsburghers. I am not an artist, but as a longtime fan of Cooper's work, was intrigued with his thoughts about how he came to draw the way he does. His writing is simple but not simplistic; even technical sections were clear to me, a layman. I am a Pittsburgher, so cannot state how one from another city will enjoy STEEL SHADOWS. Cooper's drawings, though, transcend the specific place he portrays. His urban landscape and his vision of the ways in which places and times come together have universal appeal. It is Pittsburgh that he draws, but it is Cooper himself as well as his city that we see.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cooper Breaks New Ground, November 27, 2001

By	D Robb (Falmouth, MA) - See all my reviews

Douglas Cooper's Steel Shadows is a gem. Although it is specifically about Pittsburgh, it is really about how we see, portray, and interact with the landscape around us, urban or rural. Cooper is first a wonderful visual artist, and has allowed us a rare glimpse into his methods here. Rather than look far afield for his subject matter, he has taken on the challenge of visioning his native city, in immense and powerful murals, which are remarkably well re-produced in the book. Cooper can also write, and illustrates with his words the process of producing the murals and the logic behind them. Together, his drawings and text serve to usher us into the world of Pittsburgh, that singularly muscular and angular American city, and to cast some light on what it is to be an artist at the top of one's game, working hard to make that art - in this case drawing - relevant and useful in a changing world. A very pleasing, entertaining, and thought-provoking book.