Harbison, Robert, author.

Ruins and fragments : tales of loss and rediscovery / Robert Harbison.

London : Reaktion Books, 2015.

272 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

For many of us, ruins are alluring, puzzling and endlessly fascinating: this elegant book seeks to explore why. What is it that makes us suspicious of works or histories that are too smooth, too continuous? Is it that urban experience is inherently discontinuous and fragmented, or that the only truths we can believe are partial ones? This book guides us through ancient and modern worlds, sharing tales of loss, recovery and rediscovery. Beginning with ancient fragments, this book recounts how later history has recuperated, restored and exhibited them, and even how ruins have been found in unlikely places - such as a Hellenistic fragment from Pergamon located in remote Nottinghamshire. It considers modernist architecture's fragmentary effects, and how concrete made some buildings look prematurely ruined. It also explores architecture that has worked with ruins, from the Castelvecchio in Verona to the reconstruction of the Neues Museum in Berlin. In literature, from T.S. Eliot to Laurence Sterne, writers revel in fragments and create anew from literary rubble. Some people deliberately construct or destroy to create ruin, Gordon Matta-Clark attacking buildings, for example, or dispossessed youth scribbling graffiti.

9781780234472 (hardcover)
1780234473 (hardcover)

Antiquities.
Ruined buildings.
Ruins in art.
Ruins in literature.
Ruins in motion pictures.
Classical antiquities in art.
Classical antiquities in literature.
Ruines.
Ruines dans l'art.
Ruines dans la littérature.
Ruines au cinéma.
Antiquités gréco-romaines dans l'art.
Antiquités gréco-romaines dans la littérature.
ruins.
Architecture and Planning.
Fragment
Ruine
Kunst
Literatur
Matta-Clark, Gordon, 1943-1978

Location: Library main 290594
Call No.: BIB 233679
Status: Available