Scholarly record
THE FABULOUS WORLD OF JOHN HEJDUK
Abstract
The universe of Hejduks, is a unitary and undivided reality of a trinitarian form, where poetry, painting, and project are interconnected and undistinguishable worlds. His is a deeply dramatic architectural universe; a sort of reliquary inhabited by angels and demons and adorned with fantasy characters, animals, machines and anthropomorphic figures. A world completely infused with a poetic soaked of a profound sense of the sacred. This tight connection between architecture and literature, in addition to marking his entire work, is also a way of relating to the teaching activity at the Cooper Union school, whose classes required the study of both architecture and literature. Its projects accurately described in all its parts and functions, and contrived as a sort of tale in which images and writing become complementary. The way Hejduk developes the project issues and elaborates its representation makes it clear this is not an occasional approach for him, in the sense that it is not aimed to a specific theme.
Publication Impact Profile
Publication details
References8
Renato Rizzi, John Hejduk Incarnatio, Venice, Marsilio, 2010, p. 20.
Ibid., p. 11.
Giuseppina Scavuzzo, ‘John Hejduk: Or the Passion to Learn’, in John Hejduk, ed. by Lamberto Amistadi and Ildebrando Clemente, Florence, Aión, 2015.
Francesco Dal Co, 10 immagini per Venezia, Rome: Officina, 1980, pp. 66-76.
‘It is in fact’, Francesco Dal Co writes, ‘the nostalgia of inhabiting a harmonious place, therefore, where life can openly be fulfilled, in the designed continuity of interior and exterior, where the most profound intimacy does not exclude a Scheerbartian luminosity, where comfort is not a synonym for a mere process of objectification. Utopia, ultimately, of a technically conceived transparency, where the harmony of inhabiting materializes by showing itself.’ Francesco Dal Co, Abitare nel Moderno, Bari, Laterza, 1982, p. 4.
‘Since 1974, Venice has been a precursor for the essence of my work. It is the forum of my inner contrasts. Thoughts refer to Europe and America; abstraction and historicism; individual and collective; freedom and totalitarianism; the colours white, black and grey; silence and speech; clear and ambiguous; narrative and poetry; observer and observed.’ Francesco Dal Co, 10 immagini per Venezia, Op. cit. p. 67.
John Hejduk, Mask of Medusa: Works 1947-1983, ed. by Kim Shkapich (New York:Rizzoli International, 1985), p. 80.
‘The central theme is the consistency of space, not that described by the literal text, but the literary space, rarefied as in Gide or dense as in Proust. It deals with, then, a consistency of t hought.’ Giuseppina Scavuzzo, Op. cit., p. 85.
View or Download full articleAccess options
SWS access login
Login as SWS Scientific CommitteeLogin as SWS Scientific PartnerLogin as SWS AuthorAuthors and approved SWS contributors will read and export their own linked papers after identity matching by SWS profile, email and SGEM GlobalID.
For librarian assistance: [email protected]
Purchase Instant Access
- Article can be downloaded after successful payment.
- Article may be used according to SWS library access terms.
- Article cannot be redistributed.
