The Anti-Rationalists

262 MARCIA ALLBNTUCK elaborate works written at the time of his death or shortly afterwards. For obvious reasons the easily accessible works of better known writers like Hesther Piozzi, John Hawkins, and James Boswell were not included, though why the collection was cut off at 1786 is not clear. Each item is provided with a good bibliographical headnote, and there are numerous other notes commenting on the reliability and provenance of the various bits of biographical information. These, however, may mislead any reader who unwarily assumes that every 'fact' not explicitly denied or revised may safely be accepted as true. The reader who surmounts this difficulty will be able to use the collection for tracing the growth of public knowledge about Johnson as well as of the Johnson legend. (CLARENCE TRACY) THE ANTI-RATIONALISTS' This compilation of essays affords a splendidly illustrated and suggestively documented introduction to what can only be designated as an alternative twentieth-century architectural tradition. All but four of the twenty chapters originally appeared in The Architectural Review during the years 1942-68, and may in whole or in part now be familiar to many art historians. Yet the cumulative impact of their presentation in this new context gives them an additional dimension of validity and originality, extending from local to national to international developments and influences. These sixteen essays are: Nikolaus Pevsner 's 'Nine Swallows - No Summer' (May 1942), discussing architectural rationalism in Britain in the early twentieth century; Reyner Banham's 'The Glass Paradise' (February 1959), relating Lever House to the pioneering legacy of Paul Scheerbart(1863-1915), outre member of the Futurist-Expressionist Sturm group; John Malton's'Art Nouveau in Essex' (August-September 1959), analyzing the interior and elaborate fittings of the Townsend and Reynolds Stephens church at Great Warley as inspired by the plastic forms of Art Nouveau; Edward Pond's 'Mackmurdo Gleanings' (December 1960); Elisabeth Beazley's 'Watts Chapel' (September 1¢1), connecting this structure, especially its remarkable gessowork , to William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement; Robert Melville's 'The Soft Jewellry ofArt Nouveau' (May 1962), dealing with the implication for all the arts that the primary characteristic of an expressive and evocative ornamental style is that 'its decorative devices are practically independent of medium and scale'; Shirley Bury's 'Liberty Metalwork' (February '963), uniting Cymric silver and jewellry to both the English Arts and Crafts and continental Art Nouveau movements, and explicating the problems of production; Julius Posener's 'Poelzig ' Oune 1963), adumbrating on the basis of an ambivalent personal involvement with the man as architect and teacher, Hans Poelzig's magisterial stance between architectural anti-rationalism and the rationalism to follow; Nicholas Taylor's 'The Black Friar' (November 1964), affiliating an elaborate, almost "'Nikolaus Pevsner and J.M. Richards, ed., The Anti-Rationalists. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1973. Pp 210; illus. separately numbered in each chapter. $17.50 THE ANTI-RATIONALISTS 263 kitschy public house with the decorative modes of the Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau movements; David Mackay's 'Berenguer' (December 1964), according assessment in the context of Modernisme to the Catalan architect independent of Gaudi, his friend and collaborator: Jaroslav Vokoun's 'Bohemian Cubism' (March 1966), developing Pavel Yanak's suggested tension between 'ornament' and 'plastic form' as it concerned Czech variations upon cubism; Ferenc Vamos's 'Odon Lechner' Guly 1967), introducing briefly but tantalizingly a quite fantastic 'Hungarian Gaudi'; Oriol Bohigas's 'Luis Domenech' (December 1967), furthering documentation of Catalan Modernisme; Balazs Dercsenyi's 'Aladar Arkay' (March 1¢8)I dwelling on Arkay's initial canying forward of Art Nouveau idiom and his subsequent reaction against it in the early twentieth century; and finally, two essays on Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The first, by David Walker, is concerned largely with the inventive early work and its precursors, and appeared in November 1968; the second, by Eduard Sekler, focuses on the impact both Mackintosh and his wife, Margaret Macdonald, had on the Vienna Secession, and was published in December 1968. Among the remaining four chapters, only one has before appeared in print: Sherban Cantacuzino's valuable piece on Hector Guimard, originally published in Japanese in the September1971 issue ofArchilecture and Urbanism. It is...