Byzantium Rediscovered - Softcover

Bullen, JB

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0714846384 ISBN 13: 9780714846385

Publisher: Phaidon Press, 2006

This book is the first to investigate a fascinating and important yet relatively unfamiliar subject: the revival of interest in the Byzantine style of architecture and decoration in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Byzantine Revival was always a minority cult that attracted outsiders, visionaries and extremists, and Barrie Bullen's original and scholarly narrative tells a vivid and entertaining story of the colourful figures in Germany, Austria, France, Britain and America who rediscovered Byzantium and reinterpreted its style to promote widely differing aims.

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Review:

"An explosive, luscious book, with sparkling gold walls on almost every page; and it is also an extremely useful one, making sense of the work of, say, Klimt and Tiffany by placing in a fresh historical context."―Timothy Brittain-Catlin, World of Interiors

"Enjoyable... Bullen’s thesis triggers new reactions to buildings and connections that you thought you understood, or perhaps had never considered... Written in a lively and accessible style... Handsomely designed, with opulent photography."―The Victorian (Magazine of the Victorian Society

"Brilliant... The range is amazingly wide: we meet Yeats and Ruskin, Morris and Tiffany; touch on Ingres, C�zanne, Moreau and Klimt... This book is a model of how history should be written."―The Good Book Guide

"A fascinating survey."―Notes & Queries (bulletin of ASTENE, Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East

"A landmark work... The production values of this spectacular book deserve high praise: lavish is the only appropriate word for the illustrations, with more than two hundred wonderfully sharp colour plates. For a work which has full scholarly paraphernalia, including footnotes and bibliography, it will also delight and impress a wider audience. If there is a whiff of the coffee table, it is straight from the shores of the Bosphorus."―Stephen Wildman, Ruskin University, University of Lancaster, Art History

"Marvellously wide-ranging... Bullen writes elegantly and deploys his scholarship without pedantry. To state that Richard Wagner, Gustav Klimt and William Morris all emerge from this book is to give only a glimpse of its interest... Physically, the book is an object to be prized: the illustrations are uniformly excellent, and perfectly integrated with the text... A book which combines beauty with intelligence, and sophistication with grace. It deserves a wide readership."―Gervase Rosser, St Catherine’s College, Oxford, The Art Book

"Any number of texts outline the Classical and Gothic influences in 19th Century art, but this is the first in-depth survey of the impact of Byzantium... In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, Germany, Austria, France, Britain and America all looked to the East for inspiration that turned up in architecture, painting and decorative arts. For artists, think Gustave Moreau, Gustav Klimt and Louis Comfort Tiffany to start. There are many more, persuasively explicated and beautifully illustrated, in this pioneering volume."―Chicago Tribune, Sunday

"Manifestations of the exotic and theatrical complexities of neo-Byzantine influences on the 19th- and 20th-century architecture and art are the focus of this studious interdisciplinary survey... The author excels in interweaving Byzantine-inspired architecture and art with writings by Goethe, Yeats, and other authors... [T]he most comprehensive survey currently available in English."―Library Journal

Synopsis:

For more than a thousand years, until its fall in 1453, the Byzantine Empire, the Christian successor to the Roman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean, stretched across large areas of Europe, North Africa and the Near East. Under successive emperors, the artists, architects and craftsmen of Byzantium (Constantinople, modern Istanbul) worked within a long-established tradition to produce superb buildings and art works of great expressive power. Churches were planned around a central, domed space, and their walls were covered in mosaics showing mysterious, stylized figures set against a shimmering gold background. Subsequent centuries tended to view Byzantine art as stagnant and corrupt, and the style was all but forgotten. From the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, the Eastern city once more began to inspire artists, architects and writers to produce not only palaces and churches, but also paintings, jewellery, interiors and art criticism. Byzantium was revitalized as a new source of inspiration, free from the associations of the other, ubiquitous styles of the nineteenth century: the Gothic and the Classical.

Professor Bullen's original and pioneering interdisciplinary study presents the first coherent account of the varied manifestations of the revival of Byzantinism in Germany, Austria, France, Britain and America. The book is richly illustrated not only with original Byzantine models and the works that they inspired, but also with reproductions from the finely illustrated publications that played an important role in their own right by promoting Byzantium as an ideal. Covering the themes of politics, religion and literature as well as the arts, this book serves as an exemplary study in cultural history, providing real insight into the interplay of ideas and forms, in addition to being a fascinating account of an influential but little-known artistic movement.

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