Post-modernism

"This book is the first to describe the growing convergence during the last decade towards a new classical style - a return to painting and building within the western classical tradition. Often misread as Neo-Conservatism, this style cuts across the socio-political spectrum as a radical departure from Modernism. Like the revolutionary classicism of the 1790s and the Free-Style Classicism of the 1900s, it has social and moral roots and is variable in genre. With his customary style and originality, Jencks places this international movement in a historical context and defines the intentions which inform it, the rules which govern it, and the salient characteristics of its various manifestations. In art, five major trends are distinguished: Metaphysical Classicism, which includes Carlo Maria Mariani, Gerard Garouste and Malcolm Morley; Narrative Classicism, which embraces the work of Hockney and Kitaj; Allegorical Classical as exemplified by the work of, among others, Stone Roberts, Bruno Civitico and Lincoln Perry; Realist Classicism, including artists as diverse as John De Andrea and Ben Johnson; and Classical Sensibility, which covers, among others, Avigdor Arikha, Michael Andrews and Milet Andrejevic. Architecture is split into four major groups - the Fundamentalists, Revivalists, Urbanists and Eclectics - and the work of architects as diverse as Takefumi Aida, Leon Krier, Robert Venturi, James Stirling and Michael Graves is discussed."--BOOK JACKET.