Read the text and translate it into Ukrainian. 2. Answer the following questions:

2. Answer the following questions:

1. When did English Neoclassicism begin to exert an influence on the Continent?

2. What are Inigo Jones, Palladio and Elias Holl famous for?

3. What is the most remarkable masterpiece of Christopher Wren?

4. Who was the best German Neoclassical architect?

5. What are the most famous buildings designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel?

6. In what building Greek and Hellenistic architectural concepts are applied under northern sky?

7. When did Neoclassicism decline?

8. How is the style of Indigo Jones known in England?

9. What did Neoclassicism come to express in Germany?

10. What new material appeared on the scene in the period of Neoclassicism?

3. Give Ukrainian equivalents of the following words and phrases:

сontroversy

to anticipate certain elements of design

to put an end to the confusion of styles

to achieve the prodigious feat of building

far-reaching

at any rate

fancy masonry

profound changes

essential difference

florid superabundance

to express reserve and modesty

in a random way

pompous solemnity

cast iron

4. Give English equivalents of the following words and phrases:

здійснювати вплив

численні ескізи

виявляти різновиди стилю

владнати внутрішні проблеми

вихідний пункт

досконалий опис

виявляти повагу до античності

суттєва різниця

запропонувати архітектору свободу вибору

Make up the sentences of your own with the given words and phrases.

Match a line in A with a line in B.

Summarize the text in English.

Unit 18

Text

ART NOUVEAU

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, a new movement was making itself felt. The creators of this fresh spirit were painters, book illustrators and craftsmen. No exact birthplace for the movement can be pinpointed — perhaps it was Germany, perhaps England, perhaps France. Artists in various countries retreated to the country, away from the stucco and plush of the metropolises, which they found ennervating and stifling. Groups of artists here and there founded periodicals and reviews: in France the Revue Blanche (1891); in Britain The Studio (1893) and The Yellow Book (1894); in Germany Die Jugend (1895). No new style had yet been promulgated, but there was general condemnation of the current vogue of historicism, which threatened all that was new — and, as if of itself, the "new" emerged.

The painter Cuno Amiet (1868-1961), from Solothurn, visited the Breton artists' colony at Pont-Aven in 1893. "Everything was new," he wrote, "there were people, animals, trees, houses, and strange colours all with a luminosity I had never seen before, and lines linking bodies and surroundings in the most curious way."

The new style first appeared in painting and graphic art, in decorative border motifs and book printing, then spread to furniture, crockery, vases, staircases and finally, after a certain amount of hesitation, the façades of buildings. The basic characteristic feature of the style is the сurve — rising upwards to the left, apparently trying to turn right, continuing for a moment in its leftward movement, then eventually succumbing to the impulse to swing back to the right.

This curve has something plant-like about it. It is slightly strange, full of tension and a sort of ecstatic sensuality — and, like any "ecstatic" experience, there is also something fleeting and ephemeral about it. Indeed, as a fashion in art it lasted less than twenty years, roughly from 1890 to 1905. In Germany it was called Jugendstil ("Youth Style") after the title of the Munich periodical; in England it was referred to as New Style; in France as art nouveau or cloisonnisme (a word invented at Pont-Aven: cloison means "partition," and the Pont-Aven artists felt they had partitioned themselves off from conventional artistic tradition); and in Italy as Liberty, after the shop in London, which imported goods manufactured in the new style.

The Austrian equivalent of the French cloisonnisme, indicating the same feeling of rupture with the past, was Sezession ("Secession"). This word was adopted in Vienna in 1897.

Art Nouveau featured mainly in painting, graphic art and quality craftsmanship, and was the product of many different developments. Partly a reaction against the stuffy, heavy-handed lavishness of contemporary decorative taste, it was also an exaltation of nature; imbued with a certain ingenuous sensuality, it was at times itself a trifle oppressive; and it also undeniably contained more than a pinch of ultra-sophisticated perversity — which is perhaps why the urban grande bourgeoisie had some reservations about accepting it in a context of general decor. Many artists, especially the most prominent among them, had highly dubious reputations.

It was not widely used in architecture, as there was hardly time for it to become established. Notable examples of the style include certain theater foyers, for instance the Münchner Schauspielhaus, stair wells, doors and doorways, and garden gates. There was indeed quite a number of Art Nouveau façades, but the few that survive have on the whole been ruined by alterations and renovations. One of the most original, that of the Elvira Studio, a photographic studio in Munich (1897-98), was knocked down by Nazi town planners in 1936. The most remarkable examples of the style are to be found in Barcelona. Their architect, Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926), started his career as a convinced historicist, building in neo-Gothic style; but around the middle of his life he was brought, by purely functional considerations, to a style that in fact goes far beyond Art Nouveau, resembling in some respects aspects of present-day design.

At the age of thirty-one he designed a neo-Gothic church in one of the Barcelona suburbs. He was to work on this building until he died (absorbed in thought, he was tragically run down by a tram). Only part of the Templo Expiatorio de la Sagrada Familia had been completed at the time of this accident. However, from this single section — a main entrance with four spires, facing east, and a partial, soaring wall to the north — one gains some idea of the scale of the nave in Gaudi's own imagination. The basic inspiration and stylistic idiom are Gothic, but in the details historicism is abandoned in favour of totally original structural ideas, quite un-Gothic in feel. The pointed arch (the curve of which is essentially still only part of a circle) is replaced by hyperbolas and parabolas, curves stretching to infinity, dissolving into straight lines. These curves are at once more incisive, more free-flowing and more tense than straight lines formed out of the curve of a circle.

These new shapes of arch were based on new structural concepts, which Gaudi also incorporated on a smaller scale in buildings designed for Count Eusebio Güell. Like the Sagrada Familia, Park Güell (a planned garden city in the north of Barcelona) is only partially completed. It might be described as the brainchild of a mathematical dreamer. The static formula of an oblique pillar for a wall in Park Güell, developed from a drawing made in 1900, could equally well be a detail from Kennedy Airport in New York.

Gaudi's fervent, meditative spirit and religious piety appear in the inscriptions to the Virgin, in the austere language of Catalan, included on benches and parapets in Park Güell (although they are mostly hidden from view): "her delicate hands," "body of stars," Si conocierais ("would you but know her").

TASKS