The first in-depth study of American artist Alan Dunn (1900-1974), whose incisive cartoons mocked twentieth-century architecture and urban environments, expanding the field of architectural criticism. Drawing on his pioneering expertise in the relationship between graphic satire and architecture, Gabriele Neri retraces Alan Dunn's path from painter to renowned cartoonist, offering an unconventional perspective on architectural and urban transformations--and on their perception within society.
Featuring 200 carefully selected images, including Dunn's correspondence, preliminary sketches, unpublished cartoons, watercolors, and rare photographs, this book demonstrates the critical potential of caricature and cartoons for architectural history. It also reveals the complex intersections of architecture with media, publishing, commerce, society, art, and politics.
Among the thousands of cartoons and illustrations Dunn created for
The New Yorker, Architectural Record, and other periodicals, many addressed key themes such as the evolving skyline of American metropolis; the appearance of controversial buildings; housing models; technological innovations; the relationship between architects, clients, and other figures in the construction industry; the protection of built heritage; and the obsessions, oddities, foibles, and even misdeeds of the architectural world.
As Lewis Mumford once wrote of Dunn: "Shall I say that he is obviously a better architect than the architects whose fashionable clichés and grim follies he exposes? Or shall I say that his urbane satiric style, deft but merciless, puts him in a class by himself; for this is what has been missing from contemporary criticism in all the arts. All this is true; but it is not enough."
《美國藝術家艾倫·鄧恩（Alan Dunn，1900-1974）的首次深入研究，他的尖銳漫畫諷刺了二十世紀的建築和城市環境，擴展了建築批評的領域。》
基於他在圖形諷刺與建築之間關係的開創性專業知識，嘉布里埃爾·內里（Gabriele Neri）回顧了艾倫·鄧恩從畫家到知名漫畫家的歷程，提供了對建築和城市變遷的非傳統視角，以及它們在社會中的感知。
本書包含200幅精心挑選的圖像，包括鄧恩的信件、初步草圖、未發表的漫畫、水彩畫和珍貴照片，展示了漫畫和諷刺畫對建築歷史的批判潛力。它還揭示了建築與媒體、出版、商業、社會、藝術和政治之間的複雜交集。
在鄧恩為《紐約客》（The New Yorker）、《建築紀錄》（Architectural Record）及其他期刊創作的數千幅漫畫和插圖中，許多作品探討了美國大都市不斷演變的天際線、爭議性建築的出現、住房模型、技術創新、建築師、客戶及建築行業其他人物之間的關係、對建築遺產的保護，以及建築界的癖好、怪癖、缺陷甚至不當行為。
正如路易斯·芒福德（Lewis Mumford）曾經對鄧恩所寫的：“我是否應該說，他顯然是一位比那些他揭露的時尚陳詞濫調和可怕愚行的建築師更好的建築師？還是我應該說，他那優雅的諷刺風格，靈巧卻無情，使他獨樹一幟；因為這正是當代所有藝術批評中所缺失的。這一切都是事實；但這還不夠。”
Gabriele Neri is Associate Professor of Architectural History at the Politecnico di Torino, Italy. He was a Weinberg Fellow at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University, NY, and has been teaching at the Accademia di architettura in Mendrisio, Switzerland since 2012. He currently serves on the Scientific Committee of the MAXXI Foundation in Rome.
