Pulse en una miniatura para ir a Google Books.
Cargando... David Gentleman's Londonpor David Gentleman
Ninguno Cargando...
Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
Pertenece a las seriesDavid Gentleman's (London)
Following the course of the Thames, David Gentleman's London explores this splendid city in delightful detail--the beauty of its buildings, its many parks, and the villages and towns that form the Capital's outer rim. The traditional sights of London--Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, and St. Paul's--appear alongside many less familiar splendors, and often in powerful contrast to the new London that continues to develop around them. To accompany his pen and watercolor drawings, the artist provides, as always, a lively and observant commentary. David Gentleman, who has lived and worked in London for 30 years, has memorably captured the city's blend of idiosyncratic detail and grand, monumental statement. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
Debates activosNingunoCubiertas populares
Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)759.2The arts Painting History, geographic treatment, biography England and British IslesClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
¿Eres tú?Conviértete en un Autor de LibraryThing. |
This book was published in 1985. I visited the capital again last week (having not returned for almost 20 years) and I cannot begin to express my horror at what has befallen this once proud city. It is, to put it plainly a second blitzkrieg. London is now as lacking in character as any other metropolis in the world, with increasingly taller skyscrapers taking the form of shards and slabs of mirrored glass, and even a horrific egg case apparently layed by a giant fly (St Mary Axe). These and other mismatching monstrosities vomited up by overpaid and pretentious architects seem to burst their way out of London's bedrock to rape the skyline like some perverse phallic hazing prank - "cocks out lads, and wave 'em at the ladies!"
One of my favourite parts of the book is when David draws comparisons between two otherwise unconnected images:
The City (from Tower Bridge), with it's tall oblong buildings sitting like dark slabs against the sky, juxtaposed on the facing page with an image of Bunhill (Bone Hill) Fields grave yard taken from a low angle with the headstones appearing like monoliths rising up to match the tower blocks on the preceeding page.
The Tricerotops skull (from the Natural History Museum) shown in silhouette, facing another dinosaur from the industrial age 'Old Bess' (Science Museum).
The chimney stacks of Battersea Power Station mirrored on the next page with the 'Frenchified' suspention towers of Hammersmith Bridge reflecting the overall proportions in a way which only an artist's eye would have ever spotted.
Even though I am fully aware that the London this book attempts to represent was already much diluted, even at the time, by weak throw-away architecture; David Gentleman did manage still to shine a photogenic light on it's best side. He'd find it very much harder to do so today. ( )