The Canadian artist and architect Melvin Charney has produced a complex body of work that lies on the cutting edge between art and architecture. His site-related installations, drawings, collages, and texts have stimulated discussion on such topics as the nature of the city and the connections between the built environment and the world of ideas. The city as metaphor is the foundation of Charney’s work, which is a constant commentary on the city, an acute, attentive, and subtle reading of society, and a reflection on the environment in its physical and cultural expressions. To Charney, the city is not only the leitmotif of his artistic production, but also the main referent of his individual projects, vindicating once more the idea that the city itself it the object of architectural discourse.

Parables and Other Allegories: The Work of Melvin Charney, 1975–1990 offers a comprehensive historical record of Charney’s works of art, all placed in context and seen in their formal evolution through time.

Essays by Alessandra Latour, Patricia C. Phillips, and Robert-Jan van Pelt
Interview with Melvin Charney by Phyllis Lambert
Graphic design by Glenn Goluska

Published in 1991, in French as Melvin Charney : Paraboles et d’autres allégories, 1975–1990
Softcover, 215 pages