It is a well-worn cliche that architecture is the most optimistic of cultural activities. It's not hard to see why, when the very intensity of activity required to erect a building demands the most solid commitment. But this is also one of the many reasons why ruined buildings are so fascinating to us; the most strenuous reaching to heaven produces the richest melancholy when we are faced with its decline. The last great period of ruinenlust in the romantic age between the late 18th and early 19th centuries, saw poets and painters lustily clambering over the fragments of Rome, while aristocrats built themselves ruined monasteries for lugubrious gratification. Recently, we have been living through another blossoming of ruin culture, although one whose gaze is turned upon the recent past and the physical remnants of the 20th century. A rich vein of artistic production has been taking Modernist architecture as a means to pose questions of history, ideology and Utopian belief. The latest book in the Documents of Contemporary Art series on artistic concepts, is Ruins, which draws together a number of significant texts on the theme.
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