23 RASSEGNA
COLORE: DIVIETI, DECRETI, DISPUTE
COLOR: PROHIBITIONS, DECREES, CONTROVERSIES
Vittorio Gregotti [Direttore responsabile]
Vittorio Gregotti [Direttore responsabile]: 23 RASSEGNA: COLORE: DIVIETI, DECRETI, DISPUTE/COLOR: PROHIBITIONS, DECREES, CONTROVERSIES. Bologne: Editrice CIPIA, [Anno VII, 23/3 – settembre 1985]. Text in Italian with parallel captions in English. Quarto. Plain thick wrappers. Printed dust jacket. 80 [xxvi] pp. Illustrated articles and advertisments. Interior unmarked and very clean. Textblock lightly sun-yellowed along top of pages. Wrappers lightly worn with spine sunned. A very good copy.
9 x 12 soft cover book with 106 pages well illustrated in black adn white and color. The bulk of the journal [80 pages] is devoted to Colore: divieti, decreti, dispute aka Color: Prohibitions, Decrees, Controversies.
- Prefazione
- Vizi e virtu dei colori nella sensibilita medioevale by Michel Pastoureau
- Il vestito nell'occhio: le leggi suntuarie veneziane by Manlio Brusatin
- La "cromoclastia" della riforme protestanti by Attilio Agnoletto
- La metamorfosi dei colori by Eugenio Battisti
- Una regola per il colore della citta nella Germania del XVIII e XIX secolo by Dietrich v. Beulwitz
- Perfezione e colore: la policromia nell'archittetura francese del XVIII e XIX secolo by Robin Middleton
- Il caso Taut by Kristiana Hartmann and Franziska Bollerey: 7 pages with 19 illustrations, 8 in color
- Progettare con il colore. Antologia di testi, 1920-1930: 6 pages with 18 illustrations, 11 in color including work by Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Eugen Baltz, Theo van Doesburg, El Lissitzky, Piet Mondrian, V. F. Krinskij, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Cornelis van Eesteren and Piero Bottoni among others
- Advertising section
The painter in me subordinates itself to the architect - and that is quite in keeping with my nature. For me painting can never be an end in itself. — Bruno Taut
EIN WOHNHAUS ('A House to Live in') was published on completion of Bruno Taut's own family home at Dahlewitz in 1926-27, a culmination of the architect's use of color to examine spatial perception, light, and also environmental, energy-saving and other functional considerations.
Taut wrote "The form of the house corresponds to a crystallization of atmospheric conditions. It is supported by colour." Most striking was Taut's use of black and white --the sweeping curved east wall is painted entirely black to absorb the rays of the sun, while the westerly façades are entirely white, reflecting the heat of the afternoon. He used blue detail which delimited surfaces and increased the tension created by the curved wall surfaces.
As one of the "most unfairly neglected of Modernist architects" Taut’s colourful contribution to the course of modern architecture seems to have been unduly suppressed by the tyranny of black-and-white photography as the medium of choice for contemporaneous record. Modernist architecture of the 1920's was typified by the Purist's white facades and, since form follow function, it was standard practice to publish architectural photographs in monochrome. Popular manifestos, such as Le Corbusier's 1923 VERS UNE ARCHITECTURE, did not mention colour at all. Corbu also used his editiorial power at L’ESPIRIT NOUVEAU to reject Theo van Doesburg’s writings on the subject of color in the plastic Art of Architectue. The modernist agenda-setters believed Color had no place in the glorification of the new age of machinery, of form, and the modern spirit. Niklaus Pevsner obstinately ignored the contribution of Expressionism, or anything that deviated from the zeitgeist of the 'International Style", in his influential historical writings.
Before the war I was denounced as a glass architect; In Magdeburg they called me the apostle of colour. The one is only a consequence of the other; for delight in light is the same as delight in colour. — Bruno Taut
Under the loose directorship of Vittorio Gregotti, Rassegna was an Italian Design magazine underwritten by six Italian firms: Ariston, B&B Italia, Castelli, iGuzzini illuminazione, Molteni and co., and Sabiem. Each issue was devoted to a single designer or theme and lavishly produced, with high-quality reproduction and carefully selected and presented illustrations.