"Pre-Columbian revival": Defining and exploring a United States architectural style, 1910--1940.
Item
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Title
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"Pre-Columbian revival": Defining and exploring a United States architectural style, 1910--1940.
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Identifier
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AAI3283183
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identifier
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3283183
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Creator
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Phillips, Ruth Anne.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Judy Sund
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Date
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2007
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Art History | Anthropology, Archaeology | American Studies
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Abstract
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During the first decades of the twentieth century, a number of U.S. architects, designers and patrons looked to the art and architecture of the pre-Columbian Americas for inspiration. Beginning with the Pan-American Union complex of 1910 (now Organization of American States, Paul P. Cret and Albert Kelsey, Washington, D.C.), the first significant instance of pre-Columbian appropriation in a U.S. building, my dissertation tracks the development of the style that peaked in the 1920s in Southern California before spreading, in the 1930s, throughout much of the United States. My dissertation's terminus date, 1940, reflects waning interest in pre-Columbian aesthetics as Modernism and abstract expressionism took hold and as U.S. focus turned to the events of World War II.;Expanding on previous scholarship, my study provides the first thorough analysis of pre-Columbian appropriation in U.S. architecture---including the description and sourcing of its previously unrecognized Andean components. Through an analysis of data derived from a newly compiled list of pre-Columbian appropriations, the dissertation elucidates chronological, geographical and typological factors that underpin the style. It examines not just the pre-Columbian elements in the more "high brow" works of its foremost practitioners---Robert B. Stacy-Judd, Alfred C. Bossom, Francisco Mujica and Frank Lloyd Wright---but recognizes a sliding scale in the style's application with over-the-top exploitations of the exotic, such as in "themed" theaters and hotels, occupying the opposite end. This sliding scale concept considers intertwined notions of types of use, design motivations, intended audience, building typology and regional attitudes.;Pan-American sentiments that began in the early decades of the nineteenth century and laid claim in the United States to a pre-Hispanic past, as well as increasing visibility of pre-Columbian aesthetics, helped promote the appropriation of pre-Hispanic forms for an innovative American aesthetic. At the same time, the art forms of "exotic" American indigenes excited a U.S. public, especially when applied in escapist and commercial venues. U.S. buildings that allude---directly or more subtly---to pre-Columbian aesthetics are compared, in this dissertation, to other manifestations of "exoticism" in U.S. architecture, such as Egyptian Revival buildings, since all reflect a particular strain of innovation that challenged traditionalism by embracing and promoting non-European alterity.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
