| Search Antiqbook |
Ask a question or
Order this book
Browse our books
Search our books
Book dealer info
BRAGDON, CLAUDE FAYETTE Man the Square : A Higher Space Parable. OFFERED WITH Self Education; an Address Given Before the Boston Architecture Club, April the Third, 1909.
Rochester, N.Y. Manas Press, 1912, First Edition. Soft Cover, 34 p. : ill. ; 19 cm.;16 Pp. 19 cm. Ill.: Author. Fine/Fine/No Jacket.ΒΆ 1912, 1909: In the First: Many B & W geometrical cuts within. OCLC has this listed as Theosophy and occultism. But it is the manner of the metaphor which is most important. For Bragdon human beings in their normal and undeveloped state are squares, essentially living in flatland. By the development of their psyches they attain not only to cube form but to the form of the tesseract. The covers show a man measuring out a square, and apparently only as design elements two different versions of graphic representations of tesseracts, or hypercubes, thus a cube in the fourth dimension. This mixture of theosophy and more than three dimensional geometry was used by Bragdon as religious metaphor and for the design of new ornament in building design, because he was by profession an architect. But this pamphlet and other of his productions were seen by Malevitch and El Lissitzky [Madam Blavatsdky brought them to Russia].and were a major force in propelling them into their radical modernist geometric simplifications. Only Bragdon possessed these two elements together before the Russians: theosophy and four dimensional geometry. The metaphor of the soul's development through abstraction formed the basis for the development of Russian modernist abstraction. A good copy, partly uncut and unopened, short split at hinge, tiny pieces of front and back wraps at the edges torn but still there. WITH : Bragdon, Claude Fayette : Self Education; an Address Given Before the Boston Architecture Club, April the Third, 1909. Manas Press, Rochester, 1910. 16 Pp. 19 cm. First Edition. Original gray printed wraps. Front wrap with typographic design and the symbol of a Jewish star surrounding an Ankh, the two surrounded by a circle which is super-inscribed with the slogan: "There is no religion higher than truth." In this unillustrated address, a lecture to his colleagues, he refers to Louis Sullivan and the future of architecture but recommends a course of self study in mystical discipline to develop the mind, using meditation, so that the new architecture should be equal to the grandeur of ancient architecture of Egypt, India and China. He goes on to say "We are all of us participators in a world of concrete music, geometry and number - a world that is so mathematically constituted and coordinated that our pigmy bodies, equally with the farthest star throb to the music of the spheres. The blood flows rhythmically, the heart its metronome; the voice stirs into radiant sound-waves that pool of silence which we call the air." While Bragdon is generally recognized by specialists to be a major influence on Malevitch, this American input to Russian radical art of the beginning of the last century, is not generally known. These two rare pamphlets are examples of his work Madame Blavatsky brought to Russia which influenced its artistic radicals. Prof. E.Washton-Long, Personal communication. First Editions: OCLC: 3186975, 5 Locs in the USA. The Second : OCLC: 21203463, 3 Locs.[YQR, RRR, VA@]~ Fine, uncut and unopened..
Offered for US$ 750.00 by: Zita Books - Book number: 000060
See more books from our catalog: Catalog 5. Science and Technology