"Modern Gardens And The Landscape" 1964 KASLER, Elizabeth B.

KASLER, Elizabeth B.

[96] pp.

MOMA/ Doubleday & Co., Inc.

1964

9 1/2" x 8 1/4"

VG

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MODERN GARDENS AND THE LANDSCAPE by Elizabeth B, Kassler, the first book to discuss the relationship between the modern garden and the natural landscape in terms of contemporary aesthetics, was published by The Museum of Modern Art. 
While exploring these interrelationships between man, land and plants, between 
artifacts and natural facts, Mrs. Kassler presents a view of modern water gardens, 
flower gardens, sculpture gardens, outdoor rooms, plazas, parks, playgrounds and 
urban squares illustrated in 115 annotated photographs, six of them in color. 
Among the works illustrated are the daring Mexican lava-landscapes of Luis 
Barragan, the boldly artificial gardens of Roberto Burle Marx in Brazil, the symbolically formal Mughal Gardens in New Delhi by Sir Edwin Lutyens, the delightful parks 
and serene Forest Cemetery in Stockholm, Sweden; the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright, 
Isamu Noguchi, Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto, Charles Eames, the men who have formed our 
modern landscape. 
The contemporary landscape designer, heir to the anti-architectural style of 
18th century England — the pastoral parks and picturesque hunting grounds romanticized in poetry and painting — also inherits the classical Western concept of landscape design as architecture as well as the influences of Chinese landscape painting, 
Japanese gardens and Moslem waterworks. From this heritage, Mrs. Kassler concludes 
that the contemporary designer must create in terms of his own place and time, his 
own faith and vision. 
"Should less be demanded of landscape design as an art than as a science?" she 
asks. "Isn't it possible that a garden or plaza or park or boulevard must finally 
be judged as an essay in the tenancy of the earth? If it is to pass such a test ... 
it must appear to be of its place, not on its place, and its natural materials must 
seem to belong together with a more than formal relationship.