Modernism Rediscovered

by Pierluigi Serraino and Julius Shulman

Taschen, 576 pp., $40 (paper)

The buildings featured in Modernism Rediscovered were once considered examples of progressive architecture, which is a little surprising given the endearingly tacky status that retro kitsch has now conferred on such structures. These typically austere buildings — with their exposed rafters and blatant abundance of sterile concrete, their roofs that awkwardly jut beyond the thing they cover — were all photographed by Julius Shulman from the early Forties on. Modernism Rediscovered is from Taschen, a premier publisher of coffeetable and art books; as a thorough document of an architectural movement and an invitation for readers to consider the permanence of architectural modernism, the book more than succeeds. It’s also fun to look at the pictures.

Magician of the Modern: Chick Austin and the Transformation of the Arts in America

by Eugene R. Gaddis

Knopf, 494 pp., $35

Chick Austin was the young and daring impresario responsible for bringing Four Saints in Three Acts to Hartford, Conn., thus transforming the insurance capital of the world into a cultural hotbed. “Chick was a whole cultural movement in one man,” Four Saints composer Virgil Thomson declared, and Gaddis’ biography is particularly intriguing when it features Austin’s battles with and manipulations of the conservative board of trustees of the Wadsworth Atheneum museum in Hartford, which he directed from 1927 to 1944.

This article appears in April 13 • 2001.

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