Ramírez, Juan Antonio 1948-

views updated

RAMÍREZ, Juan Antonio 1948-

PERSONAL:

Born 1948.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Ctra. Colmenar, Km. 15, 28049, Madrid, Spain. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Reaktion Books Ltd., 79 Farrington Rd., London EC1M 3JU, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain, professor of art history.

WRITINGS:

El comic femenino en España: arte sub y anulación, Editorial Cuadernos para el Diálogo (Madrid, Spain), 1975.

La historieta cómica de postguerra, Editorial Cuadernos para el Diálogo (Madrid, Spain), 1975.

Medios de masas e historia del arte, Cátedra, D.L. (Madrid, Spain), 1976.

Edificios y sueños: ensayos sobre arquitectura y utopía, Universidad de Málaga (Málaga, Spain), 1983.

Oxidos mezclados: América, fragmentos epidérmicos, Ediciones Libertarias (Madrid, Spain), 1984.

Arte y arquitectura en la época del capitalismo triunfante, Visor (Madrid, Spain), 1992.

Papel marmolado: 33 soñetos, Ediciones Libertarias (Madrid, Spain), 1992.

Duchamp: el amor y la muerte, incluso, Ediciones Siruela (Madrid, Spain), 1993, translation by Alexander R. Tulloch published as Duchamp: Love and Death, Even, Reaktion Books Ltd. (London, England), 1998.

Arte, resquemor y pavesas errantes del 92, Publicaciones de Estética y Pensamiento (Madrid, Spain), 1994.

Ecosistema y explosión de las artes: condiciones de la historia, segundo milenio, Editorial Anagrama (Barcelona, Spain), 1994.

Historia y crítica del arte: fallas (y fallos) = Art History and Critique: Faults (and Failures), Fundación César Manrique (Lanzarote, Canary Islands), 1998.

La metáfora de la colmena: de Gaudí a Le Corbusier, Siruela (Madrid, Spain), 1998, translation by Alexander R. Tulloch published as The Beehive Metaphor: From Gaudi to Le Corbusier, Reaktion Books Ltd. (London, England), 2000.

Dalí: lo crudo y lo podrido, Antonio Machado Libros (Madrid, Spain), 2002.

Author of additional Spanish-language books on art, architecture, and film.

SIDELIGHTS:

Juan Antonio Ramírez is a professor of art history and the author of many Spanish-language books. A very limited selection of his writing has been translated into English. One such book is The Beehive Metaphor: From Gaudi to Le Corbusier, a study of how the architecture of the honeycomb has been incorporated into the architecture of man, particularly through the works of Gaudi, Wright, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Beuys. After the Spanish Civil War, Ramírez's father became obsessed with making his fortune in beekeeping, intent on doubling his output each year. Unfortunately, his dream never came to fruition, and his investment was lost and the hives sold. Some were used in the filming of The Spiritof the Beehive (1973). In being exposed to the business of beekeeping, Ramírez became aware of how bees influenced the architectural designs he observed. Ramírez suggests that his book is, perhaps, a product of his own paranoia. Gail Vines wrote in New Scientist, "Read this book, and you'll never look at a tall building in quite the same way again." Andrew Ballantyne commented in the Times Literary Supplement that Ramírez "has given us an evocative work, full of detailed observation, which no one else could have written, or would have thought to write."

Building Design contributor Alan Powers wrote that "on the bee-in-bonnet rating, Le Corbusier has the highest score, since his housing schemes resemble a wide variety of hives, while the layout of the Ville Contemporaine with its central airport, turns the aeroplanes into bees, with regularly spaced hives on a grid all around. Nor does it end there. The drum-shaped building at the entrance to the Cit&eeacute; de Refuge appears to be based on a Swiss centrifugal honey extractor." Ramírez also notes how the social life of bees has been used as a symbol of strongly regulated, industrious communities and that honey has been pursued by man over history, not only for its sweetness, but for medicinal and spiritual uses.