NOVEDADES

New York City, arguably the world’s Art Deco capital, is well known for its striking and still iconic towers that were early expressions of the style writ large most famously the Empire State and Chrysler buildings, both of which still speak so eloquently of the future and the machine age that continues to move us all forward. Art Deco is drawn in steel, in tile, in brass, in bronze, and in stone upon great buildings and small and in the details, as so engagingly shown here. The reader is brought, for example, into the extraordinary Fred F. French Building at 551 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, a treasure house of the form whose ornate lobby is a wonder of sparkling seduction in all directions: racing above is a fan palm and fleur de lis decorated architrave, and golden Assyrian equestrian archers on a field of onyx take aim while stunning chandeliers set with crystal feathers and bronze shoot out their own thin arrows of illumination.

Over her thirty-year career, celebrated designer Jo Thompson has become recognised for her timeless planting, well-proportioned, English-style gardens rendered modern by a staunch commitment to biodiversity to the eye this translates as a looser formality than English gardens of the past, though every bit as romantic.

Desde la antigua Mesopotamia hasta la época helenística y romana, desde la antigua India hasta el Mediterráneooriental, se crearon en la Antigüedad algunas de las composiciones más poéticas y de sentimiento religioso más profundo de la historia de la literatura y de la religión. Este libro sigue el rastro de constantes hímnicas que desde la antigua Mesopotamia dan expresión al canto a la divinidad, mezclándose entre sí y adaptándose a nuevos dioses hasta llegar en época helenística al Mediterráneo oriental. A las distintas tradiciones hímnicas que se van imbricando hasta llegar al mundo grecorromano –babilonia, acadia, egipcia, india, ugarítica, hitita y luvita– está dedicada la primera parte del libro. La segunda parte se consagra a la variedad hímnica en el Oriente heleno.