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LEARNING FROM MILAN: DESIGN AND THE SECOND MODERNITY by Andrea Branzi Review by: James H. Carmin Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Fall 1989), p. 164 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Art Libraries Society of North America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27948117 . Accessed: 14/06/2014 14:03 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . The University of Chicago Press and Art Libraries Society of North America are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 91.229.229.44 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 14:03:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

LEARNING FROM MILAN: DESIGN AND THE SECOND MODERNITYby Andrea Branzi

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Page 1: LEARNING FROM MILAN: DESIGN AND THE SECOND MODERNITYby Andrea Branzi

LEARNING FROM MILAN: DESIGN AND THE SECOND MODERNITY by Andrea BranziReview by: James H. CarminArt Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Fall1989), p. 164Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Art Libraries Society of NorthAmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27948117 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 14:03

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The University of Chicago Press and Art Libraries Society of North America are collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of NorthAmerica.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.44 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 14:03:28 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: LEARNING FROM MILAN: DESIGN AND THE SECOND MODERNITYby Andrea Branzi

164 Art Documentation, Fall, 1989

dents and Professor MacAdam from her spring 1988 seminar. Other recent publications to which the Hood catalogue re

lates are Catherine H. Campbell's New Hampshire Scenery: a Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Artists of New Hampshire Mountain Landscapes (Canaan, NH: Published for The New Hampshire Historical Society by Phoenix Pub., 1985) and an excellent catalogue which covers much of the same mate rial, though more historical and topographical in focus, The

White Mountains: Place and Perceptions (Hanover, NH: Pub lished for the University Art Galleries, University of New

Hampshire, Durham, by the University Press of New England, 1980). About half of the artists represented in A Sweet Foretaste... "appearalso in Place and Perceptions. While the 13 high-quality color reproductions in the most recent catalogue are welcome, shortcomings include the absence of any work by Winslow Homer and some redundancy in en tries, as in those for Edward Hill's works.

KatheChipman Columbia University

LEARNING FROM MILAN: DESIGN AND THE SECOND MODERNITY/Andrea Branzi.-Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1988.-79 p.: ill.-ISBN 0-262-52136-9 (pa); LC 88-9356: $9.95 (pa).

This provocative little book is a translation of Pomeriggi alla media industria: Design e Seconda Modernit? (Milan: Idea Books Edizioni, 1988). Branzi, whose other recent MIT Press titles (The Hot House: Italian New Wave Design, 1984, and Domestic Animals: The Neoprimitive Style, 1987) have further informed us of new developments of design in a broad sense, provides less imagery in Learning From Milan than in his earlier books, but provides more serious discussion on the changes of design in the late 1980s and beyond. These changes are based, as he sees it, on the transition from a political economy to a market economy in the mid-20th cen tury, and the present-day merging of cultural differences, especially in Europe. His 11 essays include thoughts on the design of cities, houses, the distinctiveness of the Japanese system of design, and the differences and similarities of design industries in developed and developing countries. Despite the lack of an index and disconcerting, yet distinctive typog raphy (designed by Studio Branzi), this well-constructed paperback is an important treatise on why design today is no longer striving for universality.

James H. Carmin

University of Oregon

BROODTHAERS: WRITINGS, INTERVIEWS, PHOTOGRAPHS /Edited by Benjamin H. D. Buchloh.-Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1988.-210 p.:ill.-ISBN 0-262-02281-8 (cl); 0-262 52135-0 (pa); LC 88-9463: $30.00 (cl); $12.50 (pa).

Originally published as an issue of October, no. 42 (Fall 1987), this is an important addition to the literature on the Belgian poet/artist Marcel Broodthaers (1924-1976). Al though his complex visual art, which examines institutional and cultural conditions of art consumption and production, has been well known for at least two decades in Europe, it has only recently received attention in the United States, largely due to an impressive exhibition which opened at the

Walker Art Center in April 1989, with continuing venues in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and Brussels. This book contains numerous poems by Broodthaers (in French, and translated English), several critical essays on the artist, and the most comprehensive bibliography available (which excludes books published by Broodthaers because they are covered in Marcel Broodthaers: Catalogue des Livres/Catalogue of Books/Katalog der B?cher 1957-1975 (Cologne: Galerie

Michael Werner; New York: Marian Goodman Gallery; Paris: Galerie Gillespie, Laage, Salomon, 1982). While the quality of the 90 black-and-white reproductions doesn't equal those in the Walker's catalogue, libraries which collect mate rial on artists' books or contemporary art should acquire Broodthaers: Writings, Interviews, Photographs for its distinct essays and outstanding bibliography.

James H. Carmin University of Oregon

THE CRAFT OF GARDENS / Ji Cheng, translated by Alison Hardie. - New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.- 144 p.: ill. - ISBN 0-300-04182-9; LC88-5607: $35.00.

Ji Cheng's Yuan Yeh or The Craft of Gardens, first pub lished about 1631, has influenced countless landscape de signers and gardeners. This first complete English translation of the earliest manual of landscape gardening in the Chinese tradition rescues the text after centuries of obscurity and makes Ji Cheng's theories on garden design and construction accessible to the Western world. Due to the preponderance of structures found in Chinese gardens and the important role they play, this book is as much about architecture as it is about landscape; it says little about specific plants. Like most Ming dynasty gardeners, Ji Cheng was also a painter. His painterly abilities are obvious in the text as he uses evocative descriptions of landscape, teaching by suggestion rather than by specific example. Black-and-white and color photographs have been thoughtfully selected to illustrate concepts. Numerous line drawings illustrate structural fram ing and details such as lattice and paving patterns. Hardie's translation is supported by extensive notes. An introduction by Maggie Keswick (The Chinese Garden: History, Art & Archi tecture, Rizzoli, 1978) places Ji Cheng's writing in the context of Chinese garden history. An exhaustive index completes the volume. An essential purchase for libraries supporting programs in architecture and landscape architecture.

Sheila Klos University of Oregon

THE MALE JOURNEY IN JAPANESE PRINTS / Roger S. Keyes.?Berkeley: University of California Press, in assoc. with The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1989.- 189 p.: ill.-ISBN 0-520-06512-3 (cl., alk. paper); 0-520-06513-1 (pa., alk. paper); LC 88-22736: $45.00 (cl).

Mothers and sons, sibling rivalry, dignity and pathos, sex ual obsession, devotion and madness are not the chapters of a new psychology text but among those of Roger Keyes' latest book on Japanese prints. Keyes' stated purpose is to explore the meaning of being male. The woodblock prints selected for this book all form visual documentation of the way men of Tokugawa Japan (1603-1867) viewed them selves and their world. The prints deal with the emotions and experiences of a man's life and are grouped according to theme, progressing from childhood through death. The writ ten passages accompanying each theme occasionally de scribe the epic tales depicted, but often contain poetic obser vations on the stages of life or pose philosophical questions on its meaning. Devoid of bibliography, subject index, notes, Japanese characters, or stylistic, historical, or technical analysis, the book is not meant to be a contribution to the scholarly literature on ukiyo-e. What Keyes has endeavored to do is provide a fresh context for seeing, feeling, and un derstanding something about ourselves communicated di rectly by the prints.

NancyS. Allen Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

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