Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the Abbott Lowell Cummings Prize from the Vernacular Architecture Forum, 1987. and Winner, Alice Davis Hitchcock Award, Society of Architectural Historians.
Holy Things and Profane is an innovative study of the relationship between artifacts and society. It examines the symbolism and ideology of the Anglican churches of colonial Virginia, focusing not only on the buildings but on their surviving fittings and furnishings - silver, furniture, books, decorative arts - and on the social and religious rituals that they framed. By setting these in the context of the public and domestic landscapes, Dell Upton creates a comprehensive portrait of colonial Virginia's artifactual world that will serve as a model for future studies of architecture and material culture.
Upton points out that in the first part of the eighteenth century the Anglican church in Virginia was dominated by an authoritarian gentry. Using the parish as a revealing microcosm of a particular world, he demonstrates how Virginia's ruling elite used the "holy" church to buttress their own "profane' power. Their methods included the modeling of church decorations and furnishings on the artifacts of the great plantation houses to reinforce the visual imagery of the colony's social hierarchy.
Even before the revolution, Upton notes, there was widespread dissatisfaction with the social hierarchy implied by the church, and by the end of the century the gentry either relinguished such claims or witnessed the collapse of their parishes. In this masterful and fully illustrated study, he shows the Virginia parish to have been a central institution of the colony's life, inextricably bound to its social, political, and economic dynamics.
Dell Upton is Assistant Professor of Architectural History at the University of California, Berkeley. An Architectural History Foundation Book.
Review
andldquo;A profoundly original book based on very deep scholarship. It advances a strong argument that is likely to generate serious debate.andrdquo;andmdash;Kirk Savage, author of Monument Wars: Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape
Review
andldquo;Engrossing, trenchant, and broad-minded, Dell Uptonandrsquo;s lucid analysis of both notorious and unfamiliar African-American history monuments underscores their centrality to the national conversation about race relations. Scholars, public officials, and general readers all have much to learn from it.andrdquo;andmdash;Michele H. Bogart, author of The Politics of Urban Beauty: New York and Its Art Commission
Review
andldquo;At a time when public display of the Confederate flag has generated a lively debate over race relations, Dell Upton offers fresh insights into the motives behind the construction of Civil War and Civil Rights Era monuments in the South.andrdquo;andmdash;Steven F. Lawson, author of Running for Freedom
Synopsis
Dell Upton is Assistant Professor of Architectural History at the University of California, Berkeley. An Architectural History Foundation Book.
Synopsis
Holy Things and Profane is an innovative study of the relationship between artifacts and society.
Synopsis
An original study of monuments to the civil rights movement and African American history that have been erected in the U.S. South over the past three decades, this powerful work explores how commemorative structures have been used to assert the presence of black Americans in contemporary Southern society. The author cogently argues that these public memorials, ranging from the famous to the obscure, have emerged from, and speak directly to, the regionandrsquo;s complex racial politics since monument builders have had to contend with widely varied interpretations of the African American past as well as a continuing presence of white supremacist attitudes and monuments.
About the Author
Dell Upton is professor of architectural history at the University of California, Los Angeles, and has studied the Southern landscape for four decades. He lives in Culver City, CA.