How do countries acquire their distinctive features and appearance, their look or style? In this stimulating book, Jules Lubbock answers this question by focusing on Britain, with its characteristic terraced houses, Georgian squares, postwar slab blocks, and Victorian floral ornamentation. Lubbock traces the fierce debates over consumerism, good design, and town planning that have raged in Britain since the Elizabethan period, investigating how the design of buildings and possessions―domestic as well as official―becomes an issue of public policy and controversy.Lubbock discusses the ideas, policies, and motivations of designers and commentators from 1550 to the present, including such figures as Charles I, Inigo Jones, Joseph Addison, Pope, Hogarth, Pugin, Dickens, Ruskin, and Le Corbusier. He describes the growing public awareness that taste and beauty are related to economic growth, that there is what he calls a political economy of design. He shows, for example, that London was shaped by a desire to control its expansion in order to maintain social stability in the face of the developing industrial and commercial revolution; that Puritans believed that the high consumption of luxury goods essential to prosperity could be made morally acceptable through good design; and that the court of James I consciously adopted classicism as the appropriate style for the newly joined kingdoms of England and Scotland. Lubbock shows the different ways in which architecture, design, planning, and style were believed to contribute to a "Good Society." He suggests that the political economy of design was not only viable in the past but can also provide an essential framework for the future.

The Tyranny of Taste: The Politics of Architecture and Design in Britain, 1550-1960

Arts & Photography

Lubbock, Jules

Architecture

Paul Mellon Centre

<p>Recounting the biblical stories through visual images was the most prestigious form of commission for a Renaissance artist. In this book, Jules Lubbock examines some of the most famous of these pictorial narratives by artists of the caliber of Giovanni Pisano, Duccio, Giotto, Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masaccio. He explains how these artists portrayed the major biblical events, such as: the Sacrifice of Isaac, the Annunciation, the Feast of Herod and the Trial and Passion of Jesus, so as to be easily recognizable and, at the same time, to capture our attention and imagination for long enough to enable us to search for deeper meanings. He provides evidence showing that the Church favoured the production of images that lent themselves to being read and interpreted in this way, and he describes the works themselves to demonstrate how the pleasurable activity of deciphering these meanings can work in practice.<br>This book is richly illustrated, and many of its photographs have been specially taken to show how the paintings and relief sculptures appear in the settings, for which they were originally designed. Seen from these viewpoints, they become more readily intelligible. Likewise, the starting point and the originality of Lubbock's interpretations lies in his accepting that these works of art were primarily designed to help people to reflect upon the ethical and religious significance of the biblical stories. The early Renaissance artists developed their highly innovative techniques to further these objectives, not as ends in themselves. Thus, the book aims to appeal to students, scholars and the general public, who are interested in Renaissance art and to those with a religious interest in biblical imagery.</p>

Storytelling in Christian Art from Giotto to Donatello

History & Criticism

Art Inst of Chicago

Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Good and Bad Government Reconsidered: Painting the Politics of Renaissance Siena

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Books by Lubbock, Jules