BELLAS ARTES

Resultado de una larga conversación de cincuenta horas preparada sobre un cuestionario de quinientas preguntas, El cine según Hitchcock -aciaraba Francois Truffaut- es «un libro del que no me considero autor, sino tan sólo iniciador o, mejor aún, provocador». A lo largo de sus páginas, las circunstancias que rodearon el nacimiento de cada film, la elaboración de los guiones, los problemas de la puesta en escena y la valoración del resultado comercial de las películas son los ejes que articulan el apasionante diálogo que sostienen en él ambos realizadores.

¿Cuándo un edificio es solo una construcción y cuándo es arte? ¿Qué hace que nos emocionemos con la magnificencia del Taj Mahal, las pirámides de Giza o un rascacielos de Nueva York? ¿Qué secretos ocultan la cuidada sobriedad de Le Corbusier, la trascendencia espiritual de Miguel Ángel o la racionalidad clásica de Calícrates? Con un lenguaje alejado de tecnicismos, en esta guía encontrarás lo esencial de la arquitectura de todo el mundo para que puedas disfrutar todavía más esa apasionante faceta de la actividad humana.

Zaha Hadid was a revolutionary architect, who for many years built almost nothing, despite winning critical acclaim. Some even said her audacious, futuristic designs were unbuildable. During the latter years of her life, Hadid’s daring visions became a reality, bringing a unique new architectural language to cities and structures as varied as the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, hailed by The New York Times as “the most important new building in America since the Cold War”; the MAXXI Museum in Rome; the Guangzhou Opera House in China; and the London 2012 Olympics Aquatics Centre. At the time of her unexpected death in 2016, Hadid was firmly established among the elite of world architecture, recognized as the first woman to win both the Pritzker Prize for architecture and the RIBA Royal Gold Medal, but above all as a giver of new forms, the first great architect of the noughties. From her early sharply angled buildings to later more fluid architecture that made floors, ceilings, walls, and furniture part of an overall design, this essential introduction presents key examples of Hadid’s pioneering practice. She was an artist, as much as an architect, who fought to break the old rules and crafted her own 21st-century universe.

In 1956, TIME magazine called him one of the defining “form-givers of the 20th century.” Today, Marcel Breuer (1902–1981) remains a locus classicus of modernism for architects and designers alike. As a Bauhaus pioneer, even his earliest work was marked by a material restraint; the balance of texture, color, and shape; and a symbiosis of local and global, big and small, rough and smooth.In this essential introductory monograph, we survey Breuer’s complete career through some of his most influential projects and ideas, from his landmark tubular furniture to the MoMA Research House to his innovation of “binuclear” housing, splitting living and sleeping areas into separate wings. Along the way, we follow Hungarian-born Breuer’s journey to international acclaim, with featured projects from Germany, France, England, Switzerland, and across the United States contributing to his global status as a modernist maestro.

The creator of the ubiquitous Knoll “Tulip” chairs and tables, Eero Saarinen (1910–1961) was one of the 20th century’s most prominent space shapers, merging dynamic forms with a modernist sensibility across architecture and design.Among Saarinen’s greatest accomplishments are Washington D.C.’s Dulles International Airport, the very sculptural and fluid TWA terminal at JFK Airport in New York, and the 630 ft. (192 m) high Gateway Arch of St. Louis, Missouri, each of them defining structures of postwar America. Catenary curves were present in many of his structural designs. During his long association with Knoll, Saarinen’s other famous furniture pieces included the “Grasshopper” lounge chair and the “Womb” settee.

Los reportajes de moda que realizó Joana Biarnés, la primera fotoperiodista española, que muestran la evolución de la moda y de la sociedad en una época de cambios trascendentales, desde el final de la década de 1950 hasta principios de la de 1970. Pionera en la fotografía de moda, contó con la colaboración destacada de la periodista Rosana Ferrero. Joana se ocupaba del estilismo, de elegir a las modelos y las temáticas de muchos de sus reportajes y editoriales, y consiguió a menudo marcar tendencia. De esta forma, se convirtió en la cronista regular y sistemática de la evolución radical que se produjo en la indumentaria, del clasicismo de la alta costura a la informalidad del prêt-à-porter. Biarnés trató la moda con la misma proximidad y sinceridad con que abordaba el resto de los temas que documentaba. En un ámbito dado a la fantasía y la sofisticación, Joana situó a menudo las modelos en la calle, con naturalidad, sin buscar escenarios fastuosos o extravagantes y captó como nadie en cada imagen la esencia de su tiempo.