Defines and depicts the arts and architecture of the rococo period in France and examines its relation to society

Architecture in France in the Eighteenth Century Wend von Kalnein French architecture of the eighteenth century - which exhibited great technical ability and refined taste - influenced architectural style throughout Europe. This handsome book is a survey of the French architecture of the period. It begins with the origins of the 'style moderne' under the last years of Louis XIV, discusses the end of Rococo and the return to antiquity, and concludes with the Revolutionary architecture and the house of Madame Récamier. Kalnein describes the development of palace and hôtel architecture by the two great architects de Cotte and Boffrand, discussing such large urban projects as the reconstruction of Rennes and the Places Royales. He traces the return to antiquity (which began when the scholars of the Académie d'Architecture were sent to Rome), the revolutionary architecture with its grand, but never executed, projects, and the shift from neoclassicism to early romanticism. Kalnein also examines the decorative arts of the period, which became even more important than architecture in the Rococo period. Focusing on such architects as Boffrand, Gabriel, and Redoux, he shows how a study of their building decoration illuminates the evolution of 'style moderne,' the battle between Rococo and Neoclassicism, and the dissemination of French styles throughout Europe.

"The Art Through the Century series introduces readers to important visual vocabulary of Western art."--Back cover.

Architectural Space in Eighteenth-Century Europe: Constructing Identities and Interiors explores how a diverse, pan-European group of eighteenth-century patrons - among them bankers, bishops, bluestockings, and courtesans - used architectural space and décor to shape and express identity. Eighteenth-century European architects understood the client's instrumental role in giving form and meaning to architectural space. In a treatise published in 1745, the French architect Germain Boffrand determined that a visitor could "judge the character of the master for whom the house was built by the way in which it is planned, decorated and distributed." This interdisciplinary volume addresses two key interests of contemporary historians working in a range of disciplines: one, the broad question of identity formation, most notably as it relates to ideas of gender, class, and ethnicity; and two, the role played by different spatial environments in the production - not merely the reflection - of identity at defining historical and cultural moments. By combining contemporary critical analysis with a historically specific approach, the book's contributors situate ideas of space and the self within the visual and material remains of interiors in eighteenth-century Europe. In doing so, they offer compelling new insight not only into this historical period, but also into our own.

Whoever said "Everything old is new again" could have been talking about French Pompadour Style. The flamboyant, opulent, refined aesthetic -- so characteristic of the eighteenth century -- has enjoyed a spectacular revival in recent years. In "The New Eighteenth-Century Style," journalist Michhle Lalande and photographer Gilles Trillard, both experts in the field of interior dicor, survey 30 examples of this quintessential blending of exquisite detail and ostentatious affluence. From lush velvet upholstery to the emblematic use of turquoise with gold accents, these perfectly captured interiors beguile the reader with well-worn extravagance. In an era of "shabby chic" the more refined, more pristine accents of Pompadour may be just what the world of interior dicor needs -- and this beautiful book provides an indispensable guide.