Description:
The Art + Architecture Building at Yale University is Paul Rudolph's undoubted masterpiece, and it was highly influential in its time. The structure is solid, muscular, spatially complex, and strongly textured, built in a period when simplicity, lightness, smoothness, and transparency ruled the day, and it emboldened other architects to explore similar avenues of expression. Rudolph's career peaked quickly, but he and his remarkable building for Yale are clearly undervalued. Rudolph's building is just one of the modernist icons that preeminent architectural photographer Ezra Stoller documented in a career that spanned more than half a century. Now retired, Stoller has been reassembling his work for permanent (rather than periodical) publication. The Yale Art + Architecture Building is one of a series published by Princeton Architectural Press that presents individual buildings in depth in a small-size volume. The photographs are not only stunning, they have particular documentary value in that Stoller shot them when the buildings were new--in this case, 36 years ago. The series has been designed for relative affordability, and its subjects are well chosen. Each volume includes a very brief preface by Stoller setting out his relationship to the building and a fairly short critical, historical, analytical essay. Buttressed by about a dozen endnotes, the essays occupy a middle ground between informal and scholarly writing. They are followed by 50 to 60 duotone photos and a few plan drawings. This is an expert look at an extraordinary building and well worth readers' serious attention. --John Pastier
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