Category Archives: Book/Film Reviews

Review: “Pollak’s Arm”

Posted on September 25, 2021 by David Brussat

Pollak’s Arm, a historical novel by Hans von Trotha, is not about Pollak’s arm but about the arm his protagonist, art collector Ludwig Pollak, found, which had been missing for centuries from the shoulder of Laocoön (pronounced lay-o-coo-on), the central … Continue reading →

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“The Art of Classic Planning”

Posted on December 1, 2020 by David Brussat

This comprehensive, fascinating and brilliant volume by Nir Haim Buras, who founded the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art, is subtitled “Building Beautiful and Enduring Communities.” So one might well assume that it rejects the … Continue reading →

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Bass: ‘Beauty Memory Unity’

Posted on May 25, 2020 by David Brussat

New York architect Steve Bass, long associated with the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art as a teacher of classical theory, recently wrote a book, Beauty Memory Unity, on his favorite subject of architectural proportion. Proportion has long been a … Continue reading →

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“In the Wake of the Willows”

Posted on May 17, 2020 by David Brussat

Nightly over several recent weeks – interrupted by a bout of Bell’s palsy – I read to my 11-year-old boy (and his mother) an enchanting children’s book called In the Wake of the Willows, by Frederick Gorham Thurber and lovingly … Continue reading →

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Review: “Villa of Delirium”

Posted on April 12, 2020 by David Brussat

In our reading of the novel Villa of Delirium, we last left our hero, Achilles, hanging on the ledge of beauty at Villa Kerylos. Would he fall? As a boy, Achilles was adopted by a wealthy French family and raised … Continue reading →

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Rybczynski reviews Dystopia

Posted on February 14, 2019 by David Brussat

“Witold Rybczynski on architectural PTSD and what James Stevens Curl gets wrong (and right) in his controversial new book” is the sub-headline of Rybczynski’s review of Making Dystopia, the magisterial history of modern architecture by Britain’s most accomplished architectural historian. … Continue reading →

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Review: ‘Making Dystopia’

Posted on November 2, 2018 by David Brussat

[Review by David Brussat of Making Dystopia, by James Stevens Curl. Oxford University Press. 592 pages. U.S. publication date Oct. 23, 2018.] *** Modern architecture has hoaxed the world for well over half a century. Charlatans bred the founding modernist … Continue reading →

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Bayley on Curl’s “Dystopia”

Posted on August 27, 2018 by David Brussat

Stephen Bayley, critic for The (U.K.) Spectator, has written “Modernist architecture is not barbarous – but the blinkered rejection of it is,” the second review (that I’ve seen so far) of James Stevens Curl’s Making Dystopia: The Strange Rise and … Continue reading →

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Salingaros on Millais’ Corbu

Posted on January 2, 2018 by David Brussat

What a pleasure to learn that a friend of mine has reviewed a book written by another friend of mine. Of course, that might not be so great if one friend panned the other. That is not the case here, … Continue reading →

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Give modernism a beating

Posted on June 17, 2016 by David Brussat

This list of architectural models in movies that look askance at modern architecture through the lens of film was linked from a piece in Architizer warning architects not to go see The Architect, a movie coming out soon. It mentioned … Continue reading →

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