Here's to the people who paint portraits of places not faces, the architect as artist, and great urban spaces. There are artists as archivists of fleeting moments in the city, the serial paintings of Pissaro and Monet, the ethereal river cities of Turner and Whistler, capturing and recording the passing of time. The architects and artists who imagine beautiful buildings which were not and will never be built. From the capriccios of Canaletto and Gandy to the megalomaniac visions of Corbusier and Sant Elia and the dystopian cities they begat. There is the genius of Inigo Jones and real understanding.
"It is not simply the ability to draw which is significant, but the state of mind, the sense of control of which that ability is the outward sign. It represents, indeed, a revolution in architectural vision..." (Summerson 1953)
Drawing is about looking, painting is about seeing, understanding is the essence of that which one achieves through information intentionally acquired or experience one has oneself lived through.
The Turgot plan of Paris is something that transcends mere cartography. It is the essence of a place that once was. The photographs of Marville and Atget are not merely pictures of places but ghosts , the shades of places that once were.
