The Beautiful Necessity, Seven Essays on Theosophy and Architecture

Claude Bragdon

Nov. 2005 · Project Gutenberg Boek 1 · Cosimo, Inc.

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More and more science is coming to recognize, what theosophy affirms, that the spiral vortex... both in its time and its space aspects is the universal archetype... -from "Changeless Change" First published in 1910 and updated in 1922-this is a reproduction of that second edition-this is architect and theosophist Claude Bragdon's exploration of art as an "expression of the cosmic life." And what a glorious exploration is it. The essay titles hint at the lyricism of Bragdon's prose: "The Art of Architecture" "Unity and Polarity" "Changeless Change" "The Bodily Temple" "Latent Geometry" "The Arithmetic of Beauty" "Frozen Music" Accompanied by lovely and informative line drawings, these essays constitute a master class in the philosophy of art, beauty, science, and the intersection of all three. Other works by Bragdon available from Cosimo Classics: More Lives Than One, Architecture and Democracy, Episodes from An Unwritten History, and A Primer of Higher Space (The Fourth Dimension). American architect, stage designer, and writer CLAUDE FAYETTE BRAGDON (1866-1946) helped found the Rochester Architectural Club, in the city where he made his greatest mark as a building designer with structures including Rochester Central Station, Rochester Institute of Technology, and the First Universalist Church; he also designed Peterborough Bridge in Ontario. In later life, Bragdon worked on Broadway as scenic designer for 1930s productions of Cyrano de Bergerac and Hamlet, among others.