Main entry:

Bentmann, Reinhard, 1939-

Title & Author:

The villa as hegemonic architecture / Reinhard Bentmann and Michael Müller ; foreword by Otto Karl Werckmeister ; translated by Tim Spence and David Craven.

Publication:

Atlantic Highlands, N.J. : Humanities Press, 1992.

Description:

xvii, 176 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Notes:
Translation of: Die Villa als Herrschaftsarchitektur.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 169-172) and index.
Foreword / Otto Karl Werckmeister -- Introduction / David Craven -- 1. The Dream of the Countryside: The Flight from Venice in the Sixteenth Century -- 2. The Economic Background of Migration from the City -- 3. The Political Basis for the Villeggiatura and the Settlement of Land in the Terraferma -- 4. The Settlement of the Countryside and the Idealization of Agriculture as the Economic and Ideological Foundation of the Villeggiatura -- 5. Alvise Cornaro as Symbolic Figure -- 6. The Relationship between the City and the Country as a Conflict of Authority: The Social and Psychological Background of the Villeggiatura -- 7. The Social and Religious Authority Principle -- 8. Andrea Palladio: The Aesthetic Rationalization of "Irrational Order" in the Countryside -- 9. "Roma qvanta fvit ipsa rvina docet." The Ideal Ruins: Landscape as a Decoration for the Villa -- 10. Architectural and Social Ideal: The Ideal State, the Ideal City, the Ideal Villa, the Villa as Social Model -- 11. The Villa as "Negative Utopia": History as Ideology in the Works of Francesco Colonna, Niccolo Machiavelli, and Tommaso Campanella -- 12. The Villa as "Earthly Paradise" in the Writings of Francesco Petrarch and Antonio Francesco Doni -- 13. A Fresco in the Villa Maser -- 14. Palladianism and Historicism -- 15. The Villa Ideal as Ideology: The Sito Commodo of the Villa as Luogo Privilegiato; the Villa as Patrician Legitimation -- 16. The Dream of the Country in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Spengler, Tonnies, Riehl, and the Grunderzeit Villa -- 17. Theodor Fontane's "Villa Treibel" -- 18. The Dream of the Countryside as a Timeless Ideology -- 19. Satellite Town and Penthouse -- 20. Further Reflections on the Villa (1971).

Summary:

Here for the first time in a complete English translation is the now classic study of 1970 by Bentmann and Muller, which was one of the earliest and is still one of the most innovative examples of New Left art history. Because of its deft use of critical theory, The Villa as Hegemonic Architecture is one of the best examples of how the thought of the Frankfurt School and the New Left relates to art history as a whole. Bentmann and Muller mount a sustained but supple ideological critique of the values leading to the construction of the sixteenth-century Venetian villa. They are able to explicate how the villa's structural logic and overall configuration embodied resolutely patriarchal values and also how it was a formative force in the consolidation of incipient Venetian capitalism. By locating the "villa ideology" in relation to the larger "city vs. country" conflict about which Marx, Raymond Williams, and others have written, Bentmann and Muller also perceptively address the Western concept of nature, with its attendant ecological consequences. In one of their most brilliant formulations, the authors compellingly show how all of the above factors led to the actual function of the Venetian villa as a "negative utopia," that is, as the ruling-class alternative to the more egalitarian "positive utopias" then being envisioned by Thomas More and Tommaso Campanella. Illustrated with 24 full-page photographs and line drawings, The Villa as Hegemonic Architecture will be of particular interest to those engaged in the study of art historical methods and of architectural history, especially of the Renaissance period.

ISBN:

0391037579 (cloth)
9780391037571 (cloth)

Subject:

Upper class Dwellings Italy.
Architecture and state Italy.
Architecture, Domestic Political aspects Italy.
Architecture Politique gouvernementale Italie.
Architecture and state.
Architecture, Domestic Political aspects.
Upper class Dwellings.
Italy.
Country houses Architecture History

Added entries:

Müller, Michael, 1946-
Werckmeister, O. K. (Otto Karl), 1934- writer of foreword.
Spence, Tim, translator.
Craven, David, translator.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 232083
Call No.: NA7594 .B44 1992
Status: Available