The first book on American architect Marshall Brown and his
collages, which sit at the intersection of architecture and art.
Despite its consistent presence in architectural practice throughout the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries, collage has never been considered
a standard form of architectural representation like drafting, model
making, or sketching. The work of Marshall Brown, an architect and
artist, demonstrates the power of collage as an architectural medium. In
Brown's view, collage changes the terms of architectural authorship and
challenges outdated definitions of originality.
Published in conjunction with the exhibition The Architecture of
Collage: Marshall Brown at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the book
features some forty collages by Marshall Brown. These works come from
four of his collage series, including Chimera, Je est un autre, as
well as the previously unpublished Prisons of Invention and
Piranesian Maps of Berlin. Additionally, there are photographs of
Ziggurat, an outdoor sculpture with a design based on a collage from
Chimera. The full-color plates are supplemented with essays by critic
and curator Aaron Betsky, scholar of art history and archaeology Anna
Arabindan-Kesson, Santa Barbara Museum of Art's curator James Glisson,
and Marshall Brown that outline the conceptual foundations of Brown's
intriguing exploration of an intersection of architecture and art.
