About this Event
Join us for a conversation with Gabriele Neri to celebrate his book, an in-depth account of American artist Alan Dunn, whose complex cartoons expanded the field of architectural criticism. He will be in conversation with Leopoldo Villardi, followed by a signing.
PLEASE NOTE: RSVPs are encouraged but not required. Seating is limited and will be first come, first served. Doors open at 5:30 pm.
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The first in-depth study of American artist Alan Dunn (1900–1974), whose incisive cartoons mocked twentieth-century architecture and urban environments, expanding the field of architectural criticism.
Drawing on his pioneering expertise in the relationship between graphic satire and architecture, Gabriele Neri retraces Alan Dunn’s path from painter to renowned cartoonist, offering an unconventional perspective on architectural and urban transformations — and on their perception within society.
Featuring 200 carefully selected images, including Dunn’s correspondence, preliminary sketches, unpublished cartoons, watercolors, and rare photographs, this book demonstrates the critical potential of caricature and cartoons for architectural history. It also reveals the complex intersections of architecture with media, publishing, commerce, society, art, and politics.
Among the thousands of cartoons and illustrations Dunn created for The New Yorker, Architectural Record, and other periodicals, many addressed key themes such as the evolving skyline of American metropolis; the appearance of controversial buildings; housing models; technological innovations; the relationship between architects, clients, and other figures in the construction industry; the protection of built heritage; and the obsessions, oddities, foibles, and even misdeeds of the architectural world.
As Lewis Mumford once wrote of Dunn: “Shall I say that he is obviously a better architect than the architects whose fashionable clichés and grim follies he exposes? Or shall I say that his urbane satiric style, deft but merciless, puts him in a class by himself; for this is what has been missing from contemporary criticism in all the arts. All this is true; but it is not enough.”
Gabriele Neri is Associate Professor of Architectural History at the Politecnico di Torino, Italy. He was a Weinberg Fellow at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University in New York, and teaches at the Accademia di architettura in Mendrisio, Switzerland.
Leopoldo Villardi is a Brooklyn-based writer and the managing editor at Architectural Record, where he stewards the magazine’s residential coverage, including the annual issue of Record Houses; administers the Design Vanguard award program, a showcase of emerging talent that first began in 2000; and keeps Record’s monthly print issues organized. He has contributed to several books on architecture and coauthored Robert A.M. Stern’s autobiography Between Memory and Invention. Leo is a New York State Council on the Arts grant recipient for his research on modernist Kenneth Warriner. Trained as an architect, Leo holds a master’s degree in Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices in Architecture (MS.CCCP) from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation and a bachelor of architecture (B.Arch.) from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s School of Architecture.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Rizzoli Bookstore, 1133 Broadway, New York, United States
USD 0.00
