Frank Lloyd Wright: Essential Texts

by Robert Twombly (Editor)

The most influential, provocative, and enduring writings of the American master are gathered in this anthology. Twenty-one carefully chosen selections from Wright’s extensive literary output span the important period between 1900 and the late 1930s, when the architect exerted a powerful influence on the developing modern movement. A concise biography, explanatory head notes, and a short annotated bibliography make this an ideal introduction for students. 25 illustrations

303 pages, Paperback

First published February 16, 2009

Reviews

[Bruce Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Twombly, the editor of this work, points out Frank Lloyd Wright was 'constitutionally unable to let sleeping dogs lie.' His writing style was described by Twombly as 'never especially fluent or polished, but now increasingly rambling, with garbled syntax making his prose and his meaning more difficult to fathom.' Thus, in places, the work is a bit of a slog. But his cantankerousness makes it worth the read. Back in 1908, Wright called the skylines the sky lines 'fantastic abortions', for example. In the same year, he wrote that structures have no more meaning aesthetically to cultured men and women 'than has the stable to the horse.' That 'workmen seldom like to think....' People who care most about their “individuality”... 'were inevitably those who had the least.' So yeah, Wright liked to put people right, especially if he was rattling their cages.
What surprised me most is Wrights deep love of Japanese art, and his lengthy essay on 'The Japanese Print' alone made the book worth reading. Another surprise was that one of his masterpieces, Tokyo's Imperial Hotel, was seriously tested by a large earthquake in 1922, a year before the horrendous 1923 quake. No wonder it was still standing.
Frank reminds me a bit of Johnny Rotten, using his public voice to dislodge brain calcification:

"That hostility of the provincial mind is found on the farm, in the small town, on Main Street, on Fifth Avenue, in the Seats of the Mighty, in the Church, in New York and in Hollywood. Wherever that type of mind is found it will accept no radical, because anything radical is the death of the provincial." 'Louis Sullivan,' 1924 in Frank Lloyd Wright, Essential Texts, (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2009), 222