La vitalité du décor: Fiske Kimball, du rococo au "Colonial Revival"

• Jean-François Bédard ^[1]
  1. [1] Syracuse University

     Syracuse University

     City of Syracuse, Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, ISSN 0044-2992, Vol. 80, Nº. 4, 2017, págs. 515-527
• Idioma: francés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • In 1943, the American historian of architecture Fiske Kimball (1888-1955) published "The Creation of the Rococo", a milestone in the study of this movement. Thanks to a close examination of archival documents and drawings, Kimball sought to trace 'objectively' the evolution of the "rocaille". Despite his claims to scholarly neutrality, however, Kimball multiplied value judgments in his writings. For Kimball, the rococo exhibited "vitality", a quality he also found in the classical-inspired buildings of colonial America. Like other memebers of the conservative establishment, Kimball promoted these -and, more generally, the work of American Renaissance architects- as the only legitimate forms of contemporary architecture. The 'vitality' of Kimball's rococo thus matched the one Aglo-Protestant elites celebrated in the Colonial Revival, a style they espoused to combat the 'impurity' of cosmopolitan Modernism.