Picturesque Architecture, Disgust and Other Irregularities

The term picturesque once meant a radical blurring of art and life - a reordering of hierarchies of taste and of relations between the arts of architecture, painting and landscaping. Today, the idea of understanding experience through images is so ubiquitous and the technology for doing this so sophisticated, that the word picturesque is frequently used to describe aesthetic failure, trivial cultural products and naave tastes. In this fresh and authoritative account of the picturesque John Macarthur presents the 18th century idea in the light of its reception and effects in modern culture. The series of essays explain the theory of the picturesque thematically, drawing on its history and present issues as much as on its original formulation. Macarthur offers a major overview of the picturesque: what the concept of the 'picture' does in the picturesque and how this relates to modern theories of the ℑ and where visual values such as 'irregularity' become the basis of modern architectural planning. The picturesque is a matter of cultural history, yet there is little understanding of how its concepts and techniques remain at work in contemporary culture. This is an important new account, which will make engaging reading for all those studying architecture, art history, cultural history or visual studies.MacArthur, John is the author of 'Picturesque Architecture, Disgust and Other Irregularities', published 2007 under ISBN 9781844721412 and ISBN 1844721418.