Is architecture art? This vexed question has been posed since the 1700s, when—breaking from earlier centuries in which there were no divisions between visual artist, architect, and engineer—architects and laypeople alike began to see these vocations as distinct. Exploring how this separation of roles occurred, and how in the twentieth century arts and architecture started to come together again, The Judicious Eye is the definitive history of the relationships between painting, sculpture, and architecture as they have shifted over the past three centuries.
            Joseph Rykwert locates the first major shift during the Enlightenment, when key philosophers drew implied and explicit distinctions between the visual arts and architecture. As time progressed, architects came to see themselves as part of an established profession, while visual artists increasingly moved toward society’s margins, deepening the chasm between them. Detailing the eventual attempts to heal this breach, Rykwert concludes in the mid-twentieth century, when the artistic avant-garde turned to architects in its battle against a stagnant society. The Judicious Eye, then, provides a necessary foundation for understanding architecture and visual art in the twenty-first century, as they continue to break new ground by growing closer to their intertwined roots.
 

Joseph Rykwert is the Paul Philippe Cret Professor of Architecture Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania. His many books include The Idea of a Town, The Necessity of Artifice, and The First Moderns.

“Rykwert [chronicles] the history of architecture as a partner of other arts, from the Adam brothers in the mid-18th century, to the end of the 20th. He tells this story superbly and with gusto, and I am grateful for the ease with which he puts to work his immense knowledge, the way he can move between people and events. He knows all the names, who was there and who wasn’t, and on the way there is plenty to surprise.”—BD: The Architects’ Website

“A strident mix of academic insight, wit and polemic, Rykwert's latest book, The Judicious Eye, makes a graceful contribution to his life's work.”

"[The author] writes for readers with a wide previous knowledge of the period, enriching their knowledge with a vast cast of characters and unexpected aspects of familiar material. Typically, the author draws on a prodigious range of sources, here presented in a highly engrossing and readable form, making the story intelligible for the less informed."