Search engine for discovering works of Art, research articles, and books related to Art and Culture
Javascript must be enabled to continue!
The Skyscraper’s Unseeing Eyes: Louis Sullivan, Nella Larsen, and Racial Formalism
View through CrossRef
AbstractSince its inception, the skyscraper has served as an icon of American innovation, modernity, and freedom. Upholding this image has erased the racial thinking and racist practices foundational to this born-and-bred American architectural form. This essay restores the import of race to the skyscraper by reading formalist theories by the father of modern architecture, Louis Sullivan, alongside a work of African American modernist fiction, Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929). Reading Sullivan alongside Larsen explains how skyscrapers and blackness together have defined what gets seen as modern. The unexpected pairing reveals the visual racial logics built into skyscraper aesthetics and adds an architectural thread to the well-established scholarship on Larsen’s novel.
Title: The Skyscraper’s Unseeing Eyes: Louis Sullivan, Nella Larsen, and Racial Formalism
Description:
AbstractSince its inception, the skyscraper has served as an icon of American innovation, modernity, and freedom.
Upholding this image has erased the racial thinking and racist practices foundational to this born-and-bred American architectural form.
This essay restores the import of race to the skyscraper by reading formalist theories by the father of modern architecture, Louis Sullivan, alongside a work of African American modernist fiction, Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929).
Reading Sullivan alongside Larsen explains how skyscrapers and blackness together have defined what gets seen as modern.
The unexpected pairing reveals the visual racial logics built into skyscraper aesthetics and adds an architectural thread to the well-established scholarship on Larsen’s novel.
Related Results
Louis Sullivan
Louis Sullivan
Louis Henry Sullivan (b. 1856–d. 1924) was the first internationally recognized architect in the United States to pursue the idea of a modern architecture independent of historic s...
Nella Larsen
Nella Larsen
Nella Larsen (b. 1891–d. 1963) was born in Chicago to a white, Danish immigrant mother and a Black Virgin Islander father. Her father’s early death, and her mother’s remarriage to ...
Features of the Choroidal Structure in Children With Anisometropic Amblyopia
Features of the Choroidal Structure in Children With Anisometropic Amblyopia
Purpose:
To examine the choroidal structure in children with anisometropic amblyopia using the binarization method.
Methods:
...
Changes in axial length in anisometropic children wearing orthokeratology lenses
Changes in axial length in anisometropic children wearing orthokeratology lenses
PurposeThere is a particular anisometropia occurring in one eye with myopia, while the other eye has very low myopia, emmetropia, or very low hyperopia. It is unclear how the binoc...
Assessment of pupillary light reflex using dynamic pupillometry in laser-treated eyes with retinal vein occlusion
Assessment of pupillary light reflex using dynamic pupillometry in laser-treated eyes with retinal vein occlusion
Purpose: This study aims to evaluate the pupillary light reflex measured with dynamic pupillometry in patients who underwent retinal laser photocoagulation due to unilateral retina...
The Lekhnitskii Formalism
The Lekhnitskii Formalism
A two-dimensional deformation means that the displacements ui, (i= 1,2,3) or the stresses σij depend on x1 and x2 only. Among several formalisms for two-dimensional deformations o...
The Stroh Formalism
The Stroh Formalism
In this chapter we study Stroh's sextic formalism for two-dimensional deformations of an anisotropic elastic body. The Stroh formalism can be traced to the work of Eshelby, Read, a...
Language and White Supremacy
Language and White Supremacy
White supremacy is a racial order that relies on a presumed “natural” superiority of whiteness and assigns to all groups racialized as non-white biological or cultural characterist...