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- On a 20th Century Footing
- the whole story
- Racy, readable, delightful.
- Flawed, like the man
- Fascinating book
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The Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship
Roger Friedland , and
Harold Zellman
Manufacturer: Harper
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Death in a Prairie House: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders
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Reflections from the Shining Brow: My Years With Frank Lloyd Wright and Olgivanna Lazovich
ASIN: 0060393882
Release Date: 2006-08-22 |
Book Description
Frank Lloyd Wright was renowned during his life not only as an architectural genius, but as a subject of controversy—from his radical design innovations to his turbulent private life, including the notorious mass murder that occurred at his Wisconsin estate, Taliesin, in 1914. Yet, as this landmark new book reveals, that estate also gave rise to one of the most fascinating and provocative experiments in American cultural history: the Taliesin Fellowship, an extraordinary architectural colony where Wright trained hundreds of devoted apprentices, while using them as the de facto architectural practice where all of his late masterpieces—Fallingwater, Johnson Wax, the Guggenheim Museum—were born.
A decade in the making, The Fellowship draws on hundreds of new and unpublished interviews, along with countless unseen documents from the Wright archives, to create a captivating portrait of Taliesin and the three mercurial figures at its center: Wright, his imperious wife Olgivanna Hinzenberg, and her spiritual master, the Greek-Armenian mystic Georgi Gurdjieff. Authors Roger Friedland and Harold Zellman reveal how the idealistic community of Taliesin became a kind of fiefdom, where young apprentices were both inspired and manipulated by the architect and his wife. They trace the decades-long war of wills between Wright and Olgivanna, in which organic architecture was pitted against esoteric spiritualism in a struggle for the soul of Taliesin. They chronicle Wright's perennial battles with clients, bankers, and the government, which suspected him of both communist and fascist sympathies. And through it all they tell the stories of Wright's devoted apprentices—many of them gay men—who found an uncertain refuge in the architect's Wisconsin and Arizona compounds, and who helped the master realize his dreamlike architectural visions, often at great personal cost.
Epic in scope yet intimate in its detail, The Fellowship is an unforgettable story of genius and ego, sex and violence, mysticism and utopianism—a magisterial work of biography that will forever change how we think about Frank Lloyd Wright and his world.
Customer Reviews:
On a 20th Century Footing.......2007-08-16
The 20th Century was to have been the era of transformation in which the human race, and indeed human nature itself was to be wholly revised and repaired. There were as many different formulas as there were thinkers and doers. From Lenin to the Ayatollahs, everyone had a plan to bring paradise back from the lost and found. It hardly needs to be said that all of the various visions found themselves at war with each other. More than 100 million people died in the ensuing competition.
Frank Lloyd Wright thought that transformation would be a natural result of living in a dwelling that conformed with his ideas of "organic architecture". The dwelling would be properly sited in a non-urban, highly programmed, planned community. He hated cities.
In the Taliesin Fellowship, Wright had the opportunity to operate his vision the way a model railroad enthusiast operates a miniature transportation network. The results are instructive. The story is a most entertaining read and well told by the authors, Roger Friedland and Harold Zellman. The writing is excellent. The narrative has everything: sex, power, ego, mysticism, a grand vision, vivid characters, tragedy and madness.
Frank Lloyd Wright has been called the greatest architect of the 20th Century. He may be. It will remain an article of debate for as long as people care about 20th Century building. There is no debate that he lived in interesting times. The Taliesin Fellowship is an excellent mirror in which to glimpse both some of the glory and some of the horror of that time.
the whole story.......2007-08-02
Like many former apprentices I learned much more about Olgivanna
than I knew from my own contact during the time I was apprenticed at
Taliesin. It never occurred to me that she was indeed cruel--I just thought she was
FLLW's means to keep himself free of the logistics of housekeeping.
He never expressed much liking for the mystic Gurjieff, and Olgivanna set up the school
following Wright's death which spelled the demise of Wright's ideas in favor of the mystic.
I am sorry that the existing remnants of the Fellowship at Taliesin
seem to have prevailed in denying this exposition. The idolization of
Olgivanna persists!
The book reveals it all and is a great read!
Bill Patrick
Racy, readable, delightful........2007-07-03
What fun this book is! I could hardly put it down. A fascinating, almost embarrassingly readable entree into a group of brilliant, talented and contradictory people who literally changed the face of America. Frank Lloyd Wright comes across as a conflicted and rather scary genius who attracted star-struck acolytes prepared to put up with his mercurial humors; his family and entourage are equally vividly brought to life, as is the fascinating intellectual and artistic spirit of the times in which Wright's unique vision was born and developed. Some critics claim that sources are not cited - not true, they are, dozens of pages of them, but you don't realize they're there until you've finished the book (no callouts in the main text). Treat yourself to this one, you're almost certain to love it, and learn from it too.
Flawed, like the man.......2007-06-14
If you liked muckraking author Seymour Hirsch's sensationalist book about the Kennedy Administration, "The Dark Side of Camelot", then you'll lover "The Fellowship". If you would prefer an objective, concise, and balanced review of Mr. Wright's architecture as well as his personal life, then you would be better served by reading the revered architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable's recent book, "Frank Lloyd Wright", from the "Penguin Lives" series of biographies. Ms. Huxtable is both a Pulitzer Prize winner and a MacArthur Fellow, which puts her credibility head and shoulders above the authors of "The Fellowship", one of whom sounds like he could be a disciple of Gurdjieff himself.
Fascinating book.......2007-06-12
Not only did this book teach me a lot about architecture, it also presented a highly entertaining soap opera about an incredible bunch of people. Fun read.
Book Description
Frank Lloyd Wright exerted perhaps the greatest influence on twentieth century design. In a volume that continues to resonate more than seventy years after its initial publication, Frank Lloyd Wright: An Autobiography contains the master architect's own account of his work, his philosophy, and his personal life, written with his signature wit and charm.
Wright (1867-1959) went into seclusion in a Minnesota cabin to reflect and to record his life experiences. In 1932, the first edition of the Autobiography was published. It became a form of advertising, leading many readers to seek out the master architect--thirty apprentices came to live and learn at Taliesin, Wright's Wisconsin home/school/studio, under the master's tutelage. (By 1938, Taliesin West, in Arizona, was the winter location for Wright's school.)
The volume is divided into five sections devoted to family, fellowship, work, freedom, and form. Wright recalls his childhood, his apprenticeship with Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, the turmoil of his personal life, and the background to his greatest achievements, including Hollyhock House, the Prairie and the Usonian Houses, and the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.
Customer Reviews:
great story.......2006-03-14
Not just for architects.... the autobiography of Frank Loyd Wright it's a great story for everybody who's interested in passion for life.
Book Description
The most pivotal and yet least understood event of Frank Lloyd Wright’s celebrated life involves the brutal murders in 1914 of seven adults and children dear to the architect and the destruction by fire of Taliesin, his landmark residence, near Spring Green, Wisconsin. Unaccountably, the details of that shocking crime have been largely ignored by Wright’s legion of biographers—a historical and cultural gap that is finally addressed in William Drennan’s exhaustively researched Death in a Prairie House: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders.
In response to the scandal generated by his open affair with the proto-feminist and free love advocate Mamah Borthwick Cheney, Wright had begun to build Taliesin as a refuge and "love cottage" for himself and his mistress (both married at the time to others).
Conceived as the apotheosis of Wright’s prairie house style, the original Taliesin would stand in all its isolated glory for only a few months before the bloody slayings that rocked the nation and reduced the structure itself to a smoking hull.
Supplying both a gripping mystery story and an authoritative portrait of the artist as a young man, Drennan wades through the myths surrounding Wright and the massacre, casting fresh light on the formulation of Wright’s architectural ideology and the cataclysmic effects that the Taliesin murders exerted on the fabled architect and on his subsequent designs.
Customer Reviews:
All My Life I Have Been Plagued by Fires.......2007-09-29
Ever since I studied FLW as a freshman in architecture school, I wondered how he made it thru such a dark and difficult time. So when I found this book, I had to get it. I have always admired and actually enjoyed studying FLW designs and visiting his works. I had read that he was very arrogant but most of what I had read just glossed over his personal life and focused on his work.........which is ok. In fact when I can, I tend to use his design vocabulary in my designs. After reading this book I am truly sickened to discover how much of jerk and crook FLW truly was. How a father of six children could leave and not just leave but stay away from them for over a year? I am grateful that I did not know him as a person and that I cannot relate to his behavior at any level.
Given that, I have no idea how such a loser could be such an architectural genius? If it takes an ego of this magnitude to BE a genius, I am grateful that I am not one.
It appears that the author has researched the Taliesin murders in great depth. There are over 30 pages of footnotes! Drennan's analysis for me is sound. The only thing I could not agree with was that FLW's houses became fortifications after the Taliesin murders. If you read the book "Wright Space: Pattern and Meaning in Frank Lloyd Wright's Houses" you will find that all his houses were sanctuaries of refuge starting with the hidden entrance. That's one of the characteristics of what his clients loved about the houses, security and privacy. Did FLW look for ways to prevent fires after the murders........yes as all competent architects should, would and do.
It is clear that he got caught up in some bad karma. The Spring Green community hated him the most and believed that FLW committed the murders. Even the parts of Taliesin that were burnt (living quarters) versus the parts that remained untouched (design studio) reflected his life.
There is not much evidence to support racial hatred towards Julian Carlton, the alleged murderer and arsonist, but being so close to the time of the civil war, it seems likely that there was. I still don't understand why they let the wife go. She was found hiding dressed in her Sunday's best? She had answers that remained hidden.
No matter how much FLW deserved getting what was dished out to him, you can't help but pity the man when at the end of the book, one of his apprentices heard him walking the grounds of Taliesin in the dark repeating the following statement over and over, "All my life I have been plagued by fires, All my life I have been plagued by fires.............."
Brilliantly written. I had very difficult time putting this book down.
"Enquiring minds want to know" journalism.......2007-05-14
Mixed view of this book. The author has dug deeply to unearth whatever facts are still out there about this tragedy. And, the story is compelling. However, I am bothered somewhat that recent books on Wright have focused soley on the sensational aspects of his life rather than the work which made him famous and which is still relevant today!
As for the content, I am not totally convinced by the timeline of events which he puts forth. However, he does convincingly demolish the long-standing, accepted version. That leaves some big questions which will probably never be answered. Finally, Bill (the author) has an irritating tendency to constantly refer to Frank Loyd Wright as "Frank". Bill needed a more competent editor.
Well Done.......2007-05-07
This is a fascinating book that is written in an interesting style The history of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders in particular are well documented. Well worth the purchase.
This book has it all.......2007-05-03
William Drennan blends brutal murder, sensational scandal, exhaustive research and thought-provoking theory in this important book. A clear style and a flair for the mot juste make this book both scholarly and page-turning.
At last, an author has had the courage, persistence and skill to delve into Wisconsin's crime of the 20th century. It's a wonder no writer previously tackled this topic, given that it involves a horrific killing that claimed the paramour of America's foremost architect, as well as his signature home design, Taliesin. We're all fortunate Drennan accepted the challenge.
A Great Read!.......2007-04-26
Meticulously researched and thoughtfully presented, Death in a Prairie House is also a great read. I recommend it.
Average customer rating:
- The most content in the fewest words
- So Much that is Wright
- Very interesting biography on Frank LLoyd Wright
- Excellent intro to Frank Lloyd Wright
- A Genius, or A Con Man?
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Frank Lloyd Wright (Penguin Lives)
Ada Louise Huxtable
Manufacturer: Viking Adult
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Frank Lloyd Wright: An Autobiography
ASIN: 0670033421
Release Date: 2004-11-04 |
Book Description
From the way we build to the way we live, Frank Lloyd Wright's influence on American architecture is visible all around us. Now, Ada Louise Huxtable, the Pulitzer Prize- winning architecture writer for The Wall Street Journal—and chief architecture critic for The New York Times for nearly twenty years—offers an outstanding look at the architect and the man. She explores the sources of his tumultuous and troubled life and his long career as master builder as well as his search for lasting, true love. Along the way, Huxtable introduces readers to Wright's masterpieces: Taliesin, rebuilt after tragedy and murder; the Imperial Hotel, one of the few structures left standing after Japan's catastrophic 1923 earthquake; and tranquil Fallingwater, to which millions have traveled to experience its quiet grace. Through the journey, Huxtable takes us not only into the mind of the man who drew the blueprints, but also into the very heart of the medium, which he changed forever. A story of great triumph and heartbreak, Frank Lloyd Wright is, like Wright's own creations, an expertly wrought tribute to a man whose genius lives on in the very landscape of American architecture.
Customer Reviews:
The most content in the fewest words.......2007-06-14
Books about Mr. Wright, especially those that delve into his personal life, tend to grow like kudzu. Their authors start out intending to present a coherent, concise picture of the man, but they find themselves overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information, controversy, and innuendo that swirls about him even today. Too many authors abandon any pretense of order and just splash it all down on paper, leaving the reader to hack through the resulting jungle alone.
Ms. Huxtable's admirable book is the first Wright biography I've seen that resists the temptatation to make the reader do all the work. She tells more about Mr. Wright and about his important buildings in fewer words than any other author. Of course there are errors here and there--most of the principals are long dead, and who can reconstruct a conversation that took place eighty years ago with any accuracy? All Wright biographers, except the syncophants associated with the Taliesin Fellowship, disagree on various points. One must also remember that the Fellowship's mythmaking apparatus started up shortly after the Fellowship began, and went into overdrive after Mr. Wright's passing in 1959, making it difficult to separate fact from fiction. Having to see through this smothering blanket of hagiography makes Ms. Huxtable's accomplishment all the more remarkable.
Even those who think they know all about Frank Lloyd Wright may learn a thing or two from this book, and it would be hard to imagine a better introductory book for those who know they do not.
So Much that is Wright.......2005-12-20
There is so much that is right about this handy and elegant little biographical volume that anyone who wants to know about Frank Lloyd Wright would find themselves in good company with the brilliant Ms Huxtable.
She knows architecture (her skyscraper book is a classic) and her appreciation of Wright comes through. So does her awareness that the same genius that made such serene spaces also led a wildly tempestuous life.
Having read this book, the reader wanting more that is Wright would want to read Brendan Gill's "Many Masks" and Meryle Secrest's bio of the great architect, too.
Very interesting biography on Frank LLoyd Wright.......2005-12-03
Heather Carolyn Riehl holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Textile Design from Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York and is currently seeking her Master's degree from Edinboro University in Edinboro, Pennsylvania.
Frank Lloyd Wright, a biography by award winning architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable is a very insightful novel about a man who made such an impact on the art of architecture during his lifetime. Huxtable focuses both on the life of Frank Lloyd Wright both personally and professionally. Although it seems at times to steer more towards a personal biography, it is essential to understand Wright's background and beliefs to truly appreciate him as the artist that he was.
Huxtable takes us all the way through Wright's life, from birth to death. She briefly touches on the impact that Wright's architecture had following his death as well as some unfortunate family matters concerning the placement of his remains.
Frank Lloyd Wright is depicted in this biography as somewhat of a rebel. He lived by his own rules and detested establishment. It may be fair to say that Wright was somewhat of an egotist, but had he not possessed the confidence that he did, it may not have been possible for him to think outside of the box as often as he did. It was his ambition to create his own style that made him stand out from the rest, and no one was able to get in his way from doing so.
Huxtable explains how Frank Lloyd Wright was influenced by Japanese art and the philosophies of Viollet-le-duc. Sculpture reproductions of the Winged Victory and Venus de Milo were often used in his interiors. Wright was a very intellectual, knowledgeable man although he had no formal training in architecture.
Being involved with several different women, marrying three of them in his lifetime, it would appear that women were very important in Wright's life. Conceiving six children in his first marriage and two in his third, one might see Wright as a veritable family man although this assumption could not be further from the truth. No matter what was happening in Wright's family life, his architecture always took precedence.
Huxtable examines several of Wright's architectural triumphs, including his many prairie homes which lead to a domestic revolution in the Midwest, Fallingwater which was built for the Kaufmann family in Pennsylvania, the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and his two Taliesin estates, one of which endured a murder rampage and three tragic fires.
Frank Lloyd Wright comes across in this biography as a beatnik architect, if there ever was such a thing. Being educated on the subject of architecture, unexplained references to such people as Mies Van Der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Frank Gehry; I was able to understand the passages, where as a reader completely uneducated on the topic may be confused by some topics in this novel. Subsequently, I would recommend this novel to anyone interested in art or architecture as it is a very interesting look into the life of this magnificent architect.
Excellent intro to Frank Lloyd Wright.......2005-11-03
A briskly written, concise biography of Frank Lloyd Wright that manages to be very even-handed about both his enormous talent and his nearly-as-enormous ego. It's not a thorough study of his life and work (I particularly thought it was skimpy on Wright's later projects; for that reason, I'd probably give it only 4.5 stars if Amazon allowed half-star rating increments), but it is an excellent, quick-read introduction to an incredible architect.
A Genius, or A Con Man?.......2005-05-31
This was written not as a biography but as a project for the Penguin Lives Series by Ms. Huxtable who previously had published THE UNREAL AMERICA: ARCHITECTURE AND ILLUSION. Being an architecture critic, you'd think she would have concentrated on his varied styles and master creations. But she dishes the dirt about his personal life and that of this parents.
He was born on June 8, 1867, in Wisconsin and named Frank Lincoln (after Abraham) Wright, later changed to Frank Lloyd Wright which was a maternal family name brought over to America from Wales in 1844. He has been dead since April, 1959, and the Archives have been opened for perusual by 'scholars' so that his real life is becoming known for scandals instead of innovation.
I was expecting a treatise about the complicated and varied buildings he designed. Chicago is full of them, (as is California) a whole neighborhood in Oak Park on the North Side. The week I stayed with my son when he was a student at the University of Chicago, we passed one near the campus and Jeff wanted me to go inside. I didn't see anything unusual about it, but was assured that the interior held a host of beauty, and unique corners, mantles, etc. He was never able to entice me to stop and go inside. After all, there is so much to see in the Windy City and one week left me craving for more.
Ms. Huxtable claims that his surface life was a creative act and manipulated facts -- no truth whatsoever. Instead of praising his talent and achievements with his architectural wonders, she dealt on his 'painful search for love (some of her "illusion"); he married more than once and suffered the destructive impulses, revenge, destruction and emotional ambivalence of his second wife. The man had no peace. Even with his trouble-filled personal life, he lived to be an old man.
Why bring a big name master builder down to ordinary terms in which she wants to prove that his whole life (as presented) was a lie. This writer believes in airing a celebrity's dirty linen. It was his second wife whose crazy antics ruined his finances and almost his professional life. In 1927, he had opened an office in Los Angeles and started designing his unconventional houses. He was not only an innovator, but a hands-on builder as he dictated every detail.
Russian immigrant Ayn Rand wrote THE FOUNTAINHEAD, which became a movie starring Gary Cooper, about an architect modeled on Frank Lloyd Wright. He appeared to be an architectural Don Quixote. Wesley Peters, who married Stalin's daughter, figured in on his 'afterlife' in Arizona at Taliesin West where Wright's third wife formed a commune after his death.
Others in this series include: ROBERT E. LEE by Roy Blount, Jr., CRAZY HORSE by Larry McMurtry, JOSEPH SMITH by Robert V. Remini, ELVIS PRESLEY by Bobbie Ann Mason, and ROSA PARKS by Douglas Brinkley.
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Tales of Taliesin : A Memoir of Fellowship
Cornelia Brierly , and
Cornelia Brierly
Manufacturer: Pomegranate Communications
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The Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship
ASIN: 0764913352 |
Book Description
Cornelia Brierly was one of the first apprentices to attend Frank Lloyd Wright's school of architecture. Before long, she was a working colleague of the master architect; during the last thirty years of his career, she made important design contributions to many of his building projects. Brierly has spent most of her life at Wright's Taliesin (Wisconsin) and Taliesin West (Arizona).
This lavishly illustrated memoir tells the story of nearly seventy years spent with the Taliesin Fellowship. It is an important work, not only because of the author's closeness to the twentieth century's foremost architect but because she has observed at first hand the unfolding of organic architecture -- Wright's design precepts made manifest. In an affectionate, honest, and preceptive book, she celebrates the fellowship as a way of life and brings to life a vibrant community that is still going strong, forty years after Wright's death.
176 pages, size: 10" x 10." 150 color and black-and-white photographs, hardbound book with dust jacket.
Book Description
A must-have for Wright fans and lovers of architecture and design. This comprehensive guide to the life and times of the man widely considered to be one of the most innovative and influential figures in modern architecture provides an A to Z chronicle of Wright's work, family, friends, and the major events that shaped his career. Over 1,000 stunning color photographs include interior and exterior shots of his most acclaimed architectural masterpieces.
Customer Reviews:
Paperback, info is encyclopedic, photos are good sample.......2007-03-28
It does feel comprehensive, with a paragraph on each of the homes he designed. Thank goodness for the size. At 12" tall it can accomodate lots of big color photos. There's about 15 photos that fill the page and another 15 that cover both facing pages. Excellent usage of the size. There is a key system for the listings, Buildings: Private, Religious, Corporate, Public, Commercial or Civic. And keys for Textile Block, Solar Hemicycle, Usonian, Prairie, Demolished, Planned/never built, Remodeled/altered/reconstructed, Exposed concrete black, Desert rubblestone, General information. Once you get it down it does help identify these various categories more readily. There's a 56 page Chronology listing in the back that uses the key code plus distinguishes between houses built and plans or projects as well as some small photos.
The information is comprehensive without being very in depth while also being quite interesting. Twenty-two structures are with numerous photos and further information from about 4 to 10 pages each. It really is an enjoyable book. I feel like I want to give it 4 1/2 stars because it doesn't feel like a masterpiece. But I'll gladly err on the side of 5 over 4 because it really does cover a wide range and I could keep reading it over years learning new things about his various buildings accompanied by very pleasant pictures almost all in color. chrisbct@hotmail.com
Lovely!.......2003-02-24
We collect books on FLW's work, and this one is particularly beautiful.
Wonderful photographs-leave you wanting more information.......2001-01-05
An encyclopedia gives brief information on a subject. This one is no different. Sometimes however, I was left wanting to know the significance of the work. What was it that stood out about Mr. Wright's accomplishment on a particular work. The pictures were very nice but left me craving more information and more detailed pictures of the same house or building. This book is a wonderful start and quick reference with good cross links higlighted in each description. You will be left wanting more information however.
Misses its mark.......2000-06-29
This could be a valuable book, but its worth is diminished by a fairly large number of mistakes. Buildings are mis-identified. Some photos of Wright's decorative features are printed upside down. Other photos are backwards. Several of the aerial views are dramatic, but others seem to be space fillers. One in particular of Forest Avenue in Oak Park shows no details of the homes except for the roofs. With a bit more care in the choice of prints, the photos could have a far greater impact on the reader's understanding of Wright's design genius.
very nice book.......2000-03-07
i got it by 30 canadian dollars from a bookstore in toronto?
Book Description
A complete biography based on a wide range of previously untapped primary sources, covering Wright's private life, architecture, and role in American society, culture, and politics. Views Wright's buildings as biographical as well as social statements, analyzing his work by type, category, and individual structure. Examines Wright's struggle to develop a new artistic statement, his dramatic personal life, and his political and economic ideas, including those on cities, energy conservation, cooperative home building, and environmental preservation. Includes over 150 illustrations (photographs, floor plans, and drawings—many never before published), extensive footnotes, and the most exhaustive bibliography of Wright's published work available.
Customer Reviews:
Everything about the life and work of Wright.......2000-06-14
This book is very good to understand the works of Wright. The biography put always in parrallel his life with his works, so it is interesting to understand why he makes one project or another at a certain time. the books has also a good selection of photography and drawings not seen in must of the others books.
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- Beautiful Romantic Look at Taliesin Now and Then
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Frank Lloyd Wright and Taliesin
Frances Nemtin , and
Frank Lloyd Wright
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ASIN: 0764912615 |
Customer Reviews:
Beautiful Romantic Look at Taliesin Now and Then.......2001-07-11
Although many people know that Frank Lloyd Wright operated his architectural enterprise for many years from Taliesin in Wisconsin, relatively few Wright fans have been there. Having been born into the rural farm country of Wisconsin, many of Mr. Wright's architectural ideas emerged from that rolling country and its beautiful rivers and views.
Many who admire Fallingwater will be intrigued to compare the views of the Wisconsin river at Taliesin ("shining brow" in Welsh) with the stunning sights in the Alleghenies. Mr. Wright was working at Taliesin when he sketched his first drawings of Fallingwater. The land is steeper at Fallingwater, and the waterfall at Taliesin was originally there to provide power. Many of the principles of the two sites are otherwise similar in striking ways that will give you a deeper understanding of Mr. Wright's work.
The highlight of this book comes in the wonderful color photography that will probably inspire you to want to visit (in the summer time) to enjoy the hundreds of acres of grounds and the many architectural features that Mr. Wright designed there. Many may not know about his windmill tower that the local farmers predicted would not survive high winds, but which continues to beautifully grace the site.
I was fascinated to see original photographs of Taliesin and its surroundings while Mr. Wright was working there, as well as the views from today. Like a lot of Mr. Wright's work, the romantic idealization of his vision has proceeded quite far. But we will still enjoy it, even if it has evolved from the original.
Having seen this book, I have decided to make a pilgrimage to Taliesin. I have been to Taliesin West many times, and have enjoyed that wonderful Wright work very much. Taliesin West is located in Scottsdale, Arizona and was Mr. Wright's refuge from the cold Wisconsin winters in his later years.
After you enjoy the beauty and the history of Taliesin in this fine volume, I suggest that you think about the place where you were born. How has it shaped your vision? In my case, my home was nestled in a small valley surrounded by enormous mountains. It was natural to want to aspire to climb to great heights upon considering that monumental view every day.
Take the best from your heritage and share it with those whom it will help!
Customer Reviews:
Insightful Look Beyond the Aura of FLW.......2007-02-09
If you have the gusto to wrangle through this slightly pedantic work, the true Frank comes out in its pages. Wright was a prolific letter writer, and Gill prudently includes much of the correspondence between architect and client, father and son, and husband and wife/ex-wife/future wife. These excerpts along with snippets of telegrams really brought FLW alive for me.
However, this book could have been much improved if Gills theme: "The many masks of Frank Lloyd Wright", had been present throughout the meat of the book. He only approaches his pet-thesis during the opening pages and in his conclusion.
In all, Gill is an adept writer that marches the reader into the tumultuous backstage of some of the greatest spaces ever created. If your looking for these backstories, this could be just the read for you!
Pick another biographer, this one is TERRIBLE!.......2006-05-08
First, Brendan Gil is noted for 'good work' but this one is the pits. I am not touching the subject matter nor areas of trash this author deems necessary to descend to. (Suffice it to say, I am not an FLW idealist and actually care little about his work).
This was a toughh book to read, editted poorly, chronologically all over the map. Probably more disjointed than my simple review with long wordly (boring) digressions that vaguely related to FLW or some area of his life.
I can understand why there are so many of these editions 'for sale'. This edition is just as big a 'train wreck' as that of the person whom it tries to cover.
Colorful, Chatty and Informative..........2005-12-18
Brendan Gill's writing is always sophisticated and utterly charming. Nowhere is that more evident than in this treasure of a biography of the man who - not without good reason - styled himself as America's greatest architect.
It is an unquestionable fact that Wright was a genius in the aesthetic realm; it is also unquestionable that he was a bit of a mountebank in all realms; even so, one cannot help but enjoy the outrageous, larger-than-life swath he cut across the better part of the 20th Century in his Cherokee red luxury cars, pork-pie hat and theatrical cape. If he hadn't been such a good architect, all of this would have been considered laughable, but anyone who has stood in his sublime interiors knows that the man knew his craft thoroughly.
Gill conveys all of this and more. His narrative is like a good long conversation by the fire with someone who not only knew the man but also had an appreciation of him that did not miss the quirks and foibles. Asides, such as the pulling of all the teeth, make this book a constant surprise. Wright, of course, had more than one mid-life crisis, and the various loves of his life brought every conceivable high and low. No wonder Mr. Wright's saga has been turned into a grand opera! But Brendan Gill makes it more like the family stories of an eccentric uncle.
This is my favorite biography of Wright but it sits right next to Meryle Secrest's -- one really needs both of them to have enough perspective on the man and his accomplishments.
After all the anecdotes have been recounted, there are still some stories left to be told, by Wright clients who remember and students who are now getting on in years. One hopes that they, too, will put to paper their reminiscences, before it is too late.
WHAT'S RIGHT WITH WRIGHT..........2004-11-15
The Story of Frank Lloyd Wright has been told many times. Aside from his many biographers he is also the inspiration of a well known book and hilarious (unintentionally, though) movie, The Fountainhead. Other than Michaelangelo, I do not know of another architecte who has rated such a treatment.
Wright's life was heroic and this book is useful in seeing how that came to be. Gill is suited to the task, he not only knew Wright, but wrote the building column in the New Yorker for many years.
This book is a common sense take on Wright's life. Gill explores many of the myths that Wright constructed around his life and finds that Wright's creative powers were not always expended in the direction of his buildings. Wright was a genius who did not feel the slightest need to conceal this fact from the world. He was also a visionary who took the Eurpean architecture of its day and transformed it into the American vernacular. This feat he conttrasts strongly with Beaux Arts school which merely transplanted these European fads. Wright was a real original
The book is lavishly illustrated since all of Gills writing does not give the same feel for Wright's genious as a hangful of these images provide. I think that were it possible color photographs might have provided a clearer view.
As Gill demonstrates, Wright at times could be a rascal, but he was also a genius even when when all of the artifice of his life is stripped away. This book is a welcomed addition to Wright biographical scholarship.
Good alternate view of FLW for a reader who is already famil.......1999-06-29
If you do not know much about FLW's life, this isn't the book for you. It assumes that you are familar with his life-story as it jumps back and forth and drops names of people out of sequence to his chronological life story. For the neophyte reader there may be too much verbal description of floor plans. Despite these "flaws" (which forced me to do some background research in his other bios) the book is insightful and revealling as it peels off the layers of masks (most built by FLW himself). The book has many, many, black & white photos of his buildings and furniture - most of which I have not seen in other books. This would be a good companion book for someone who has read FLW's autobiography or other bios. It is amazing he survived, professionally, in spite of his apparent self-destructive habits. I found myself comparing his life to Picasso's - perhaps genius cannot be contained in an conventional life .
Average customer rating:
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Frank Lloyd Wright & Lewis Mumford: Thirty Years of Correspondence
Manufacturer: Princeton Architectural Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
General
| Architecture
| Professional & Technical
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Architects, A-Z
| Architecture
| Professional & Technical
| Subjects
| Books
Wright, Frank Lloyd
| Architects, A-Z
| Architecture
| Professional & Technical
| Subjects
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Artists, Architects & Photographers
| Arts & Literature
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
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Letters & Correspondence
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 1568982917 |
Book Description
What began as a simple letter--a mid-career architect's comments to a young writer--turned into a 32-year correspondence, by turns amusing, inflamed, and conciliatory. Frank Lloyd Wright and Lewis Mumford, two pivotal figures in 20th-century American architecture and urbanism, were both passionate writers, keenly aware of world events. Their 150 letters from 1926--1958 covered a wide range of topics, including Wright's position in the history of American architecture and contemporary practice, their friends and rivals, the invention and spread of the International Style, and political events in Europe and the US. A fallout over isolationist politics in the early 1940s led to a 10-year gap in their exchange, and when it resumed, the two were on an entirely different footing: Wright, the elder dean of American architecture at the height of his creative powers, and Mumford, an established critic in late middle age deeply committed to rebuilding a humanist outlook in the aftermath of World War II. Frank Lloyd Wright & Lewis Mumford offers an intimate look inside the minds and hearts of these two cultural giants, deepening our understanding of the men and the society they helped shape.
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