Enfilade

Coming this fall from Thames & Hudson:

Martin Gayford, Venice: City of Pictures (London: Thames & Hudson, 2023), 384 pages, ISBN: 978-0500022665, $40.

A visual journey through five centuries of the city known for centuries as, ‘La Serenissima’—a unique and compelling story for both lovers of Venice and lovers of its art.

Enchanting, captivating, precious—Venice is one of the most cherished cities in the world. For centuries it was the heart of a global maritime power and a crossroads for diverse cultures. Today the city attracts millions of visitors each year, enticed by its irresistible beauty. Art lovers are drawn here by the paintings, prints, drawings, and films made by generations of artists who have captured its magical allure. It is through images—both of the city and the art created there—that Venice’s identity has been forged and spread so powerfully. Venice was a major center of art in the Renaissance: the city where the medium of oil on canvas became the norm. The achievements of the Bellini brothers, Vittore Carpaccio, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, and Paolo Veronese are a key part of this story. Nowhere else has been depicted by so many great painters in so many diverse styles and moods. Venetian views were a specialty of native artists such as Canaletto and Francesco Guardi, but the city has also been represented by outsiders: William Turner, Claude Monet, John Singer Sargent, Howard Hodgkin, and many more. Then there are those who came to look at and write about art. The reactions of Henry James, George Eliot, Richard Wagner, and others enrich this tale. Nor is the story over. Since the advent of the Venice Biennale in the 1890s, the city has become a shop window for the contemporary art of the whole world. In this elegant volume, Martin Gayford takes us on a visual journey through the past five centuries of the city known as “La Serenissima,” the ‘Most Serene’.

Martin Gayford is art critic for The Spectator. His books include Man with a Blue Scarf; Modernists and Mavericks; Spring Cannot Be Cancelled, with David Hockney; A History of Pictures, with David Hockney; Shaping the World, with Antony Gormley; and Love Lucian: The Letters of Lucian Freud, 1939–1954, with David Dawson.

From Strandberg Publishing:

Peter Thule Kristensen, ed., with contributions by Thomas Lyngby, Else Marie Bukdahl, Martin Søberg, Sanne Maekelberg, Natalie Körner, and Nina Ventzel Riis, Lauritz de Thurah: Architecture and Worldviews in 18th-Century Denmark (Copenhagen: Strandberg Publishing, 2023), 432 pages, ISBN: 978-8794102704, £70.

Lauritz de Thurah (1706–1759) was one of Denmark’s most significant architects of the Baroque period. He created several important buildings—including the Hermitage Hunting Lodge, the Royal Palace in Roskilde, Gammel Holtegaard, and the famous spire of the Church of Our Saviour in Copenhagen—and masterminded conversions and extensions of properties such as Ledreborg, Frederiksberg Castle, Børglum Kloster, and the now demolished summer residence Hirschholm Palace (widely known as the ‘Versailles of the North’). The mainstay of this monograph is Peter Thule Kristensen’s presentation of Thurah’s rich and complex architecture. The other chapters—written by experts Else Marie Bukdahl, Martin Søberg, Thomas Lyngby, Natalie Patricia Körner, Sanne Maekelberg, and Nina Ventzel Riis—describe Thurah’s roles as a leading architectural historian, topographer, grand tour traveller, civil servant, military man, and trailblazer within the new social structure in Denmark under absolute rule. The book also sheds light on the Baroque period in a broader sense, delving into the era’s court culture, garden design, and church architecture. Finally, the afterlife of Thurah’s works is addressed: how do his buildings function in our present day, having been adapted to the needs and users of a new era?

Peter Thule Kristensen is Professor, Head of the Master Programme Spatial Design at the Royal Danish Academy – Institute of Architecture and Design and a Core Scholar at the Centre for Privacy Studies at University of Copenhagen. He is M.Arch. from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture (1994), Ph.D. in architectural history from the same institution (2014), and dr.phil. in art history from Aarhus University (2014).

From McGill-Queen’s University Press:

Gauvin Alexander Bailey, The Architecture of Empire: France in India and Southeast Asia, 1664–1962 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022), 488 pages, ISBN: ‎978-0228011422, $74.

Most monumental buildings of France’s global empire—such as the famous Saigon and Hanoi Opera Houses—were built in South and Southeast Asia. Much of this architecture, and the history of who built it and how, has been overlooked. The Architecture of Empire considers the large-scale public architecture associated with French imperialism in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century India, Siam, and Vietnam, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century Indochina, the largest colony France ever administered in Asia. Offering a sweeping panorama of the buildings of France’s colonial project, this is the first study to encompass the architecture of both the ancien régime and modern empires, from the founding of the French trading company in the seventeenth century to the independence and nationalist movements of the mid-twentieth century.

Gauvin Bailey places particular emphasis on the human factor: the people who commissioned, built, and lived in these buildings. Almost all of these architects, both Europeans and non-Europeans, have remained unknown beyond—at best—their surnames. Through extensive archival research, this book reconstructs their lives, providing vital background for the buildings themselves. Much more than in the French empire of the Western Hemisphere, the buildings in this book adapt to indigenous styles, regardless of whether they were designed and built by European or non-European architects. The Architecture of Empire provides a unique, comprehensive study of structures that rank among the most fascinating examples of intercultural exchange in the history of global empires.

Gauvin Alexander Bailey is professor and Alfred and Isabel Bader Chair in Southern Baroque Art at Queen’s University and the author of Architecture and Urbanism in the French Atlantic Empire.

c o n t e n t s

Acknowledgments

1  Introduction: Architecture, Empire, and Hubris
2  Origins: Fort Dauphin, Surat, Pondicherry, ca 1672
3  DipLomacy: Ayutthaya, ca 1688
4  Grandeur: Pondicherry, ca 1752
5  Interregnum: Diên Khánh, ca 1793
6  Semblance: Saigon and Hanoi, ca 1900
7  Appropriation: Phnom Penh, ca 1917
8  Association: Saigon and Hanoi, ca 1925
9  Hybridity: India and Southeast Asia, 1738–1962

Notes
Bibliography
Index

This collection of essays from Oxford University Press was first published in 2019; it’s just out in paperback.

Dennis Duncan and Adam Smyth, eds., Book Parts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), 352 pages, ISBN: 978-0198885443 (paperback), $25.

What would an anatomy of the book look like? There is the main text, of course, the file that the author proudly submits to their publisher. But around this, hemming it in on the page or enclosing it at the front and back of the book, there are dozens of other texts—page numbers and running heads, copyright statements and errata lists—each possessed of particular conventions, each with their own lively histories. To consider these paratexts—recalling them from the margins, letting them take centre stage—is to be reminded that no book is the sole work of the author whose name appears on the cover; rather, every book is the sum of a series of collaborations. It is to be reminded, also, that not everything is intended for us, the readers. There are sections that are solely directed at others—binders, librarians, lawyers parts of the book that, if they are working well, are working discreetly, like a theatrical prompt, whispering out of the audience’s ear-shot

Book Parts is a bold and imaginative intervention in the fast growing field of book history: it pulls the book apart. Over twenty-two chapters, Book Parts tells the story of the components of the book: from title pages to endleaves; from dust jackets to indexes—and just about everything in between. Book Parts covers a broad historical range that runs from the pre-print era to the digital, bringing together the expertise of some of the most exciting scholars working on book history today in order to shine a new light on these elements hiding in plain sight in the books we all read.

Dennis Duncan is writer, translator, and lecturer in English at University College, London, and was formerly a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, then Munby Fellow in Bibliography at Cambridge. His research interests include book history, translation, and avant-garde literature, particularly French groups like the Oulipo and the Collège de ‘Pataphysique. His most recent books include Index, A History of the (Penguin, 2021) and The Oulipo and Modern Thought (Oxford University Press, 2019).

Adam Smyth is Professor of English Literature and the History of the Book at Balliol College, Oxford. His most recent books include Material Texts in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Autobiography in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2010), A History of English Autobiography (edited, Cambridge University Press, 2016), and Book Destruction from the Medieval to the Contemporary (edited with Gill Partington, Palgrave, 2014). He is the co-editor of Routledge’s book series Material Readings in Early Modern Culture. He also enjoys discussing his work beyond the academy: he writes regularly for the London Review of Books and has appeared on TV and radio in the UK and abroad. Smyth is the co-host of the literary discussion podcast and radio show, Litbits.

c o n t e n t s

List of Figures
List of Plates
Contributors
A Note on the Type

1  Introductions — Adam Smyth and Dennis Duncan
2  Dust-jackets — Gill Partington
3  Frontispieces — Luisa Calè
4  Title Pages — Whitney Trettien
5  Imprints, Imprimaturs, and Copyright Pages — Shef Rogers
6  Tables of Contents — Joseph Howley
7  Addresses to the Reader — Meaghan J. Brown
8  Acknowledgements and Dedications — Helen Smith
9  Printer’s Ornaments and Flowers — Hazel Wilkinson
10  Character Lists — Tamara Atkin
11  Page Numbers, Signatures, and Catchwords — Daniel Sawyer
12  Chapter Heads — Nicholas Dames
13  Epigraphs — Rachel Sagner Buurma
14  Stage Directions — Tiffany Stern
15  Running Titles — Claire M. L. Bourne
16  Woodcuts — Alexandra Franklin
17  Engravings — Sean Roberts
18  Footnotes — Jenny Davidson
19  Errata Lists — Adam Smyth
20  Indexes — Dennis Duncan
21  Endleaves — Sidney Berger
22  Blurbs — Abigail Williams

Select Bibliography
Index