Aldo van Eyck and the 'Dogon image'

Published as part of a series of studies on architecture and travel this chapter sheds new light on the relationship between the writings, publications and travels of the influential Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck. Over the past two decades there has been intense interest in modern architecture's involvement in the colonial enterprise and in processes of globalisation. By drawing on hitherto unpublished archival materials, interviews and an extensive body of research, Jaschke explores van Eyck's simultaneous, metaphorical and literal use of the 'image' as an agile philosophical 'figure of thought'. This is examined in the sense of surrealist notions of poetics, and a mobile photographical representation that sustains a form of transnational cultural transaction specific to mid-twentieth-century humanist agendas (as in such projects as André Malraux's Museum without Walls, Edward Steichen's The Family of Man, and Bernard Rudofsky's Architecture without Architects). Published alongside contributions by leading architectural figures, such as Beatriz Colomina, Mark Wigley and Kenneth Frampton, Jaschke's chapter expands the as yet surprisingly narrow body of scholarly examinations of Aldo van Eyck's work.