A 5 1/2" x 4 1/4" x 1 3/8" book called, incorrectly, a "Field Guide." The Frank Lloyd Wright Field Guide, subtitled "His 100 Greatest works," is also headlined as a "cyclopedia." It is none of the things it claims to be except cheap. "A work containing information on ALL subjects in a particular department" is a cyclopedia. This book limits itself to 100 of Wright's over 400 works. A field guide gives information on where an item is located, either with an address and directions or graphics, such as a map; this book has none such. It claims to identify Wright's 100 greatest works, but does not include many, such as the Husser Residence (the great preamble to the Prairie era) or Midway Gardens and the Imperial Hotel, for instance, which, although mentioned briefly in the text, are not shown. Further, there is incorrect information, with such items as the "Timeframe" being largely compiled from sources that have long needed correction. The Hillside Home School, Building 1 [S.001 in the standard Storrer Catalog of Wright's built work] is listed as being incorporated into the Taliesin Fellowship Complex in 1932. Sorry, but the first Hillside was a separate building. A second Hillside [S.069] was built in 1903, and that is the one incorporated into the Complex [S.228]. Much information is taken verbatim from other sources (by Taliesin Archivist Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer and Wright scholar William Allin Storrer, in particular) that remain uncredited. Recent research has revealed additions to the canon of Wright, and none are included (admittedly, none would be among his 100 greatest). There are no plans, though to get them means purchasing rather expensive tomes. Some of the photos are misleading; the William B. Green house [S.176] photos show the parts designed and altered by Harry Robinson, not Wright's work. Ms Clayton completely misses the situation on the Darwin D. Martin House [S.100] in Buffalo, showing a photo of the Gardener's Cottage [S.090] as if it were the main house, then rambling on in the text that the D. D. Martin house is cramped on its sight (as is the Gardner's Cottage, but not the main house) and one of the least successful of Prairie structures; completely wrong! It is one of the masterpieces. She also identifies the Fred B. Jones Gate Lodge [S.084] as the main house [S.083] for the Jones family!. She calls the Seth Peterson Cottage [S.430] a duplicate of the Donald Lovness House [S.391]; again, wrong, twice. The Lovness Cottage (not the house, but a separate building) is a version of the Wright-designed Seth Peterson Cottage designed by Taliesin Associated Architects after Wright's death and has a full basement, something Wright detested. Did Ms. Clayton herself ever travel to the places she's chosen? One would have to believe not so based on these examples. So how does she know which 100 to choose? Nor did her photographer have a copy of The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion with him when photographing her choices, for that would have shown him what to photograph at each site. Fortunately, the photos which were provided by Simon Clay/Chrysalis Images are with a few exceptions, perspective correct and taken in good light. While they are the best part of the book, they are just too often of the wrong building! This 480 page tome is nicely designed, but doesn't provide what it claims to offer, so is hardly a bargain, even at $9.95.

Usonia NEW YORK; Building a community with Frank Lloyd Wright

Roland Reisley with John Timpane

2001; Princeton Architectural Press, New York. 172 pages. $40.00

Roland Reisley has succeeded where other authors have usually not even tried; he has shown conclusively the significance of Wrightian organic architectural ideas beyond Wright himself.

Writing about Wright without writing about America's most famous architect presents a problem for most writers. A few books have been written about his apprentices and their work, and there are also some good studies of followers of organic principles who were independant of Wright, such as John Lautner, Faye Jones and Lloyd Wright. Reisley, in writing about New York state's Pleasantville Usonian community does justice to the concept of community housing, the Usonian ideal, Wrightian influence on a variety of architects, and a whole raft of other ideas and ideals important to those of us who believe in organic architecture as one of the few ways to save the future for our grandchildren.

The great strength of Reisley's book is that he tells the whole story. This is not a book of self-gratification for the author, who could easily have devoted a whole book to his own Usonian house (S.318), but who instead honors David Hencken (the "Moses" of Pleansantivlle's Usonia) and the individual members of the community who built houses with a great variety of architects that met Usonian standards.

Reisley interweaves both the desire for aesthetic elements in their surroundings and the social conscience of those who gathered in a "collective" effort. Whether Wright's Utopian/Usonian ideals could be realized outside a socialist or semi-socialist effort is worth consideration, and here we are presented with the basic materials to make ones own decision.

"Usonia continued to grow in the 1950s, but the cooperative was not thriving as hoped. Tension was building along both philosophical and financial lines. Money was clearly the issue. Everything was costing too much and Usonia's complicated financial system only only added to the problems. First, not only were the costs of labor and materials rising, but the challenge of building new, innovataive designs with inexperienced builders also added expense." Is this the heart of why only Pleasantville, Galesburg Country Homes, Parkwyn Village and the East Lansing Usonia ever got past the banks and the builders to achieve some level of construction. Each is a part of Broadacre City, at least in spirit, but Broadacre was never built.

An omission of importance must be noted; a bibliography of other works on Wright and his architecture as well as other architects that contributed to Usonia, Usonian and Utopian communities and their progenitors.

An important inclusion, however, is an index, essentially a "catalog," of the works within Pleasantville's Usonia. 43 black & white photos interwoven with 8 color images, each keyed to the lot on which it stands, is a most useful guide to this Usonian project. Forty of these are designs by Wright or his apprentices! Reisley claims 47 houses, but the photos add up to 51 due to the rebuilding/remodeling of four houses. These are not arranged in order of lot number or alphabetically by client, but by the logic of chronology, thus, a catalog more than an index. Where the items appear in black & white in this section, there may also be a color photograph within the text. Most of the beautiful photographs are by the author.

There are hundreds of books on Wright and his works. Few deserve the ink with which they were printed, being mostly regurgitations of what is in the best dozen or so books that should be in any respectable book store. On a recent visit to the Taliesin West book store there were noted perhaps over a hundred books that the proprietor should be ashamed to offer in the sanctity of a Wright-focused emporium. The few truly worthy books were often hidden among flashy but empty tomes, or were badly displayed. Has greed overtaken even the lovers of Wright?

Roland Reisley's Usonia NEW YORK deserves a place among the honored few that deserve to survive into the next century.

Finally, a book on the work of the Taliesin Architects. Not just a book, but one worthy the subject. John Rattenbury, chief architect of the Taliesin Architects is the author. He's done a fine job of representing the built work from over 1300 projects of the past forty years of an organization based at Taliesin West and originally called the Taliesin Associated Architects. The larger share of work presented belongs, as well it should, to William Wesley Peters, one of the triangle - Peters, John H. Howe and Eugene Masselink - who were the pillars of Taliesin under Wright. Many others share in the organic expressions shown here, from A, Anthony Puttnam, properly credited with Monona Terrace, to R, Arnold Roy, architect of Gold Mountain completed just last year.

Rattenbury traces not only some of the history of the Taliesin Architects, but also describes, without pontificating or going into elements involved in organic design (such as the grid, the cantilever, and abstracting from the site and client needs), principles of organic architecture as created by Frank Lloyd Wright and practiced by his acolytes. They are generalized, and rely nicely in most instances on quotes from Wright, Lao Tse and others familiar to apprentices over the years. The projects that are presented are divided into nine categories; Cultural, Hospitality and Recreational, Commercial, Civic, Educational, Health Care, Religious, Residential (clearly the largest selection), Production Housing and Master Planning. The very titles of these sections is a sign of how the Taliesin architects think of buildings, by their uses and clients. Once one begins turning pages, it is hard to put this heavy tome down. Every page turn reveals a new delight, a different way of solving the design problem at the site and for the client.

The photographs by a variety of photographers could be works of art. They are quite spectacular (tho my shot of the Lykes residence, S.433, remains unchallenged, as does my view of the Marin County Hall of Justice, S.417).

The book is quite up front in its honesty about buildings. While the Lykes residence was fully sketched by Wright and put on the site as Wright directed, Rattenbury was responsible for its completion, but he took no credit for himself. Now the Norman and Aimee Lykes residence, remodeled inside for Linda Melton is properly called the Lykes/Melton house. This should be the way all Wright buildings should be listed whose interiors (or exteriors) are significantly altered by someone other than Wright. Thank you, John. Further, the Gammage Memorial Auditorium, S.432, though sketched by Wright, had not proceeded very far when the Master died. Vern Knudson was the acoustic engineer, and Wes Peters not only the architect of record but the person who brought about the building as we see it today. Perhaps, because we know it to be a version of the Baghdad Opera House, for which Wright left considerable drawings, we can attribute the work to him. Whatever the reader's view, it is refreshing that the archivists at the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and the designers in the Taliesin Architects no longer support fictions. It is worth our knowing of the true achievements of the Taliesin Architects without a prop named Frank Lloyd Wright.

Problems? Too often plans of the buildings are absent. While privacy for homeowners may be a paramount consideration, this is not true of public buildings, for which full addresses ought to have been given. Projects shown in the book are listed, with cities (only) and architects. The photo of Wes Peters, Gene Masselink and Jack Howe with Mr Wright is identified in the wrong order. It is Wes, Frank, Gene and Jack. Don't let that deter you from adding this to any important collection of architectural books.

How often when I visited Taliesin or Taliesin West did Wes Peters take me aside and ask why I did not do for the Taliesin (Associated) Architects what I had done for Frank Lloyd Wright. I had to tell him that, though I'd asked a number of publishers to do this, and volunteered to be the author should they want me, they were universally not interested. The only previous book to deal with the architecture of those who studied under Wright was Tobias Guggenheimer's A Taliesin Legacy; The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright's Apprentice, which is otherwise the catalog of a show mounted at the Pratt Institute in New York City. It is a useful companion about those outside Taliesin to relate to Rattenbury's work which focuses on those inside Taliesin. Now Pomegranate Press has done us all a favor. For this venture which others begged off, I wish them much succcess.

The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, by Neil Levine.

1996, Princeton University Press, 524 pages. $85.00

Academics that really like the architectural work of Frank Lloyd Wright are rare, though many have made claim to that distinction, even as they pass on the reports of leaky roofs. Professor Neil Levine really likes Wright's architecture and has no difficulty saying so.

In saying so he is often wordy, avoiding graphic solutions where he can find William S Buckely-sized words to fill the void. Levine writes too technically for the general reader. He seems to be writing to impress his academic and museum-curator peers, not to enlighten a general or even liberal arts college-educated audience.

Levine is clearly in love with Wright and his work. Since academia and the architectural profession has tried to put Wright into a category that sets him outside their activities, this may do Levine's career great harm, though a tenured Harvard professor hardly has to worry about others in his profession. The question is, what is the ultimate purpose of Levine's statement?

Essentially Levine argues that Wright was at odds with others in his profession because his purpose in his designs was different from that of those others. Wright's architectural works were representational in very specific ways, and Levine sets about taking several masterpieces &emdash; built works and projects &emdash; apart until he reveals to his satisfaction the nature of the representation. In the instance of the Baghdad Opera House, he finds the entire history of Iraq revealed, including The Thousand and One Nights. Can you, the reader, stretch your imagination to match the professor's? All of Levine's described imagery may be found in the work, given a psychedelic mind set, but was it conscious in Wright's head?

In his process (or literary processional), Levine takes us from the Winslow house (S.024), Wright's first independant commission, to the Marin County Civic Center (S.415-417), the architect's last "major" non-domestic work. He choses works that appeal to his method of analysis, not works that by general concensus are the most important to his career, and herein lies the first flaw in what, whatever its flaws, is a major study of Wright.

By choosing to analyze only what he considers to be Wright's masterpieces, Prof. Levine misses the point completely. When you chose a group of items to support a thesis, you are sure of success, for you can choose only those that work for you, reject those that don't. To call the Masieri Memorial a masterpiece is pushing limits of credibility. Maybe it is. Maybe all of Wright's opus are masterpieces. I'm afraid that Levine must prove his theory by applying it to a dozen Usonian homes (he does not analyze a single "typical" Usonian, yet this is the heart and focus of Wright's work). Or, one could ask, why not the Midway Gardens instead of the Imperial Hotel? Or the Johnson Wax Building, to which he often refers?

Levine, who claims to have interviewed both Lloyd Wright and Wes Peters, did not learn from them the basics. The first "basic" has to do with Wright's professed goal, his desire to create a Democratic American Architecture. To do this meant he'd have to be foremost an architect on the domestic scene. "Wright is not merely a domestic architect" (emphasis by reviewer) notes Levine, but he fails to note that he was, by choice, primarily a domestic architect (p.419). But for his own two homes, Levine does his best to skirt this issue.

Yes, there would be the monuments, which are too often wrongly called masterpieces. The monuments brought all too needed major income to Wright, but they were not the thrust of his design schema. Levine asserts a point concerning Wright's focus after returning from Europe in 1910, namely the design and building of Taliesin, as the focus of Wrightian design. He fails to see that the single largest program of design occurred at this time, the American System-Built Homes project for the Richards firm in Milwaukee. There are more plans in the Taliesin Archives for these buildings than for any other project; how can Levine ignore this?

Well, he does, and that leaves a gaping hole in his argument. Wright early in this century knew Victorian society, for whom he'd designed his homes, was crumbling. Live-in servants, even for middle-class citizens, were on the way out as these servants gave up security and servitude for factory jobs to which they now could take a hot lunch, due to the invention of the thermos.

Yes, Wright spent a lot of time on his big commercial projects because he had no process for their design as he did for much of his domestic work. He could "turn over" that domestic side of his architecture to the Taliesin Fellowship or, earlier, his Prairie associates because they knew the language. For the larger works, he often had to create a new language per work. Of course, it is this element of architectural language upon which the Harvard professor dwells, and it is the main interest in the book, namely how each work represents the specifics of its site, time, history, function, and so forth.

Levine assumes his reader knows the meaning of "representational," which would imply knowledge also of "presentational." Yet few people really grasp these opposed concepts. What is abstract versus representational in painting? Is music inherently presentational except in those rare instances where the composer tries to specifically represent an event or place or scene which is thus identified in its title (Beethoven's Symphony 6 "Pastoral," Strauss' Alpine Symphony, Honegger's Pacific 231, Villa-Lobos' The little train of the Caipira). In film, are only color films representational, and black & white presentational, since we see in color? (Namely, is representational "realistic," and presentational "abstract"?) Is any work of architecture representational unless it looks like its subject, such as a hamburger drive-in that looks like a hamburger? Levine avoids these questions, which do need explanation. Is it only a matter of abstract versus concrete? Or abstract versus realistic? What is the difference between concrete and realistic? These questions are central to Levine's argument, and need explication.

"The very process of abstraction may stand as a metaphor for the artistic act" Here Levine is right, but what then? What is the process, in concrete terms? (p.23.) Wright had a process of abstracting from nature into specific designs, and there are Taliesin Fellows who can demonstrate the process. It was one of reducing nature's phenomena, particularly flora or the landscape, to its geometric components. This form of abstraction is not explored in this volume. Yet Levine asserts that "the way (Wright) abstracted (Nature) and represented it in his architecture will be the underlying theme of the book." (xvii column 1, bottom). Levine never shows the absolutely practical manner ("way") in which this process was done, on the drafting table, the only place Wright did his work other than within his brain.

Instead, in his traversal from River Forest to Marin County, he turns Wright's life into myth and his buildings into works of mythical proportions. This makes for interesting reading, particularly in the chapter on Taliesin West (S.241-245). Here the myths of the Amerindian cultures of the southwest come into play. The Hohokam were resident in Paradise Valley (what a name for this area around modern Scottsdale!) There are the petroglyph boulders moved from the nearby McDowell Mountains. Levine starts his thesis by arguing that Fallingwater (S.230) and Taliesin West are much alike! Yes, in their treatment of the contradistinction between permanence and impermanence. Ultimately, there is developed a theory of the processional nature of Taliesin West, the site sacred to both Indian cultures and the modern Fellowship culture that Wright created. This is a most intriguing approach to understanding what Wright might have been thinking as he designed and redesigned his western home. Might, however, is the key word, here and throughout the text. For while Levine shows the processional direction of early Taliesin West, he stops before the Cabaret Theatre and Music Pavilion came into existence; how they affected the processional direction is never answered.

Consider further the representational aspect of Wright's work in terms of his most famous work, Fallingwater. "In reference to the most salient feature of the site, and the one for which the house is named, we ask if it is really "falling water," as certain impressions would support. Or is it "water in suspension," like the dew on leaves? Or is it perhaps even "rising water," like mist in the air? The actual experience of Fallingwater supports all theses readings. . ." (p.250). And that is the problematic point. Will Levine support one, or all of these? Science reduces observable facts to singular equations. Art, conversely, reverses the process as it looks for all possible expressions of a single principle. Prof. Levine here gives us a very personal view which may be understood and valuable to some readers, but to others may remain distant and unapproachable as a means to understanding Wright and his work.

One of my own views, and only one of them, that what Wright did was for theatrical effect, is an equally valid approach to the master's work, one not so deeply imbedded in the singular representational focus given it by Levine. In one paragraph, Levine uses "stage - theatrical - drama - theatre - proscenium arch" in one paragraph (p.383). In another place he mentions that "Everything . . . was made . . . more dramatic" (p.332). Wright did many things merely for dramatic/theatrical effect, and to many a reader that is a concept readily graspable as a way to view Wright's work.

You CAN read anything you want into a dead artist's work, of course without contradiction, but you shouldn't!

Now, I don't want to claim that I know everything about Wright, his work, his design process, but I listened to Lloyd Wright, to Wes Peters, to John H. Howe and others describe their experiences as they tried to pass on their unique knowledge. Levine claims friendship with at least the former two of these.

From Lloyd he'd have learned that the key to Wrightian space is the cantilever, and Wright's space was based on the grid and the cantilever. How, then, can the Winslow house (S.024) be considered the first Prairie house when it employs no element of either the cantilever or grid? Levine has his reasons, but they are slim meat.

From Wes Peters he'd have learned of Wright's contribution to Silsbee's Helena Valley Chapel, of which Wes was fond of revealing. Okey, this is a minor detail.

In an essay that, at least in the 50s and 60s appeared in the HARVARD CRIMSON every college generation, students learned the damaging effects of the "unwarranted assumption." Professor Levine is a master of its use. witness ". . . we must look more closely at Fallingwater's language of expression, which, of necessity, brings up the question of precedents" (p.238). Why so? Why "precedents"? Why not something else? Nowhere does Levine justify this assumption. But once you, the reader, accept it, he can get away with saying just about anything he desires and you will believe it. Undergraduates were warned of this; their professors, too, should have learned the lesson, and shouldn't try to prove themselves greater intellects than the undergraduates, who spend their spare time challenging each other. Harvard (Ivy League?) undergraduates learn more from each other than from their professors.

Relative the Marin County Civic Center (p.414) Levine asserts that Wright no doubt had the Golden Gate in mind. How does Levine know this? On what or whose authority? His own speculation? Wright when in New York railed against the George Washington Bridge; would he have thought any better of the Golden Gate Bridge? Is this not an unwarranted assumption?

Calls Cheney and Robie "most typical" No! Perhaps most unique, least typical (p.46). Another unnwarranted assumption?

Comparing House C at Doheny with Fallingwater as an "obvious predecessor" is another unwarranted assumption. "Precursor" is about as far as one can assert a connection, though even that may be too strong. The Elizabeth Gale house in Oak Park could equally be asserted as an earlier and stronger precursor.

One could continue this line of argument, but enough has been said.

When I first consulted with Lloyd, I had worked out the grid system that Wright employed from Willits (S.054) on. Wright's eldest son added only "the cantilever," explaining this as the essential element in the greatness of his father, for it took the two dimensional floor surface with which most architect-designers worked and carried it into the third dimension. Wright saw his designs in space before he put them on paper.

Levine seems oblivious to grids. Witness the final Guggenheim plan on 8'0" squares (p.342). This is never explained, namely why it was designed on such a grid even when the main event was the spiral. The Harvard-hired professor throughout argues diagonality here, the spiral there. Levine hammers at the idea that once Wright left "Prairie" behind, he developed an architecture of diagonality. Yet such architecture was designed on regular grids of squares. It is incumbent upon this Cambridge-based author to show us, in drawings, how squared or rectangular spaces designed on grids of squares generate diagonal space. He does not, so his assertion, even if true, will for the most part fall on deaf ears and blind eyes. And if he is right, what then explains how Wright eventually, and not sooner, came to go from squares to equilateral parallelograms (a.k.a. "diamonds") for his grid system, thus achieving an organic diagonality only forced upon the square.

By avoiding such a discussion, Levine perpetrates another unwarranted assumption, namely, that this is not a significant issue.

The Samuel Freeman house (S.216) is square rooms on a grid of squares built of square concrete blocks. The butted corner window broke the box, but did it create diagonality, as Levine asserts, or even moreso as he asserts did it do so by the intention of its artist? If so, why tell us in words without a source? Why not illustrate this diagonality by drawing over a plan the diagonal effects produced in the space? (The question of Levine's leaving out visual proof will be touched upon shortly.) Levine never explains why all these diagonal constructions that he discusses were laid out on a grid of squares, or why, later, Wright switched so often to equilateral parallelogram modules (p.174).

A related issue is that of the corner window. Barnsdall Residence B (S.211) has the first mitred corner window, and predates the butted corners of Freeman and Ennis (see p.168 footnote 36).

The book is heavy reading, given Levine's choice of using the most complex terminology or language available. Many readers will need an unabridged dictionary, a Latin dictionary, and a glossary or dictionary of architectural terms to keep up with his verbiage. This, too, is troublesome. Words, not graphics. Too many assertions are made by Levine without follow-up visual evidence. Here are some examples;

"After finishing his own house, so similar to the Low House (of McKim, Mead & White)..." Where is the evidence of this, or any visual proof in the book, such as a photo (p.14)?

FLlW's Taliesin West vs. Andrews' Gund Hall at Harvard.. Levine's claim is a similarity of the sections. Where is the proof? Where are sections of the two buildings; is Levine afraid to show them, knowing the comparison won't hold (p.430)?

Levine uses Glasner (S.109) as an example, but makes no difference between as-built without pavilion and as-designed by Wright version with pavilion in terms of its effect (p.93).

Re. Como Orchards; "self-centered Prairie houses, some based directly on the Cheney House. . ." (p.52 ). This point is not supported by any comparison of plans of the Como cabins (S.144) with the Cheney house (S. 104) and I doubt a comparison would show significant similarities.

Levine lists "reminiscent' villas, yet shows no photos as evidence (p.92). Yet his assertion of Taliesin's roots in Wright's visit to Italy and the European concept of (country) estate is instructive.

And on it goes. Why? Why, when he references another building to one he is discussing, does he so often refuse to show us the graphic evidence? Certainly there are photos of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., his p.349 referent. And photos and/or plans/sections of those items mentioned above.

Some other points;

Levine fails the nomenclature test. "Lewis" even dated is really not enough, for there are two Lewis houses, Lloyd (S.265) and George & Clifton.(S.359) (The only other way to get around this problem is to use the Storrer Catalog numbers: Levine uses neither these nor Taliesin project numbers for the unbuilt work, which should be standard references). The same applies to Freeman; Mabel & Samuel as well as Richard (one later owner of S.184, the Brigham residence) and W.H. (the unbuilt S.092).

"Born in Richland Center" (p.2, column 2). I thought everyone by now knew that this is challenged. Yes, Wright lived in Richland Center as a child, but Bill Marlin was convinced he was born in nearby Bear Valley.

In the Chapter VI discussion of textile block. Levine footnotes (#13) Sweeney who points to the mid-teens Knitlock of Griffin as a source for Wright's inspiration. This discredits both Sweeney and Levine, for Griffin's construction method was wholly unlike Wright's (a point I made long enough ago that surely Levine was aware of the point; or did he never look at Griffin's system?).

Why no scale or north arrow on (all but a few) plans? Why so many plans "redrawn 1940" and others from Wasmuth? These plans were drawn to look good in publication rather than accurately represent the architectural structure, and thus may be suspect on all counts. In redrawing the plans for The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion, I found discrepancies between the beautifully drawn plan and the built structure at every turn.

The author miss-identifies Jørn Utzon's Sydney Opera House (figure 386, p.401); the large foreground building is the Sydney Concert Hall, the opera house is the smaller facility behind, and hidden by, the concert hall.

Levine quotes Vincent Scully to support the accepted post-War position that "the problem with Wright was that he was unteachable" (p.423) [Anyone who quotes Scully on Wright deserves to be spanked], then argues that Wright's influence was actually extensive, while avoiding Wright's own apprentices. From S thru Z to A and back to R (A to Z alphabetization is a form of discrimination) &emdash; Milton Stricker thru John Rattenbury are my choices &emdash; Wright's methods are taught outside and inside Taliesin. Tobias S. Guggenheimer in his A Taliesin Legacy, The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright's Apprentices has documented a small sampling of this work (including Stricker, but not Rattenbury). Stricker's demonstration of the process of abstraction is better than any shown in Levine's book.

The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright is a lie in its title, for Levine deals more in Wright as a creator of mythical structures than in the thousand projects of which he touches upon only very few. Like the series of books I began with The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, A Complete Catalog, followed by The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, A (now "The") GUIDE to Extant Structures, and a planned series of regional projects, such as The Michigan Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, Levine's monograph should have been subtitled to make clear its purpose. Perhaps it should have been titled The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, A Mystical Biography, for its traversal through Wright's life in a limited selection of projects often touches less on architecture than the supposed mental mystique of this American genius.

Is this book worth your purchasing? That depends on whether or not you want to accept Levine's very personal view of Wright's work rather than develop your own. Perhaps through your own resources you could find Wright's view. I still believe that by looking at Wright's works, from the inside space, on your own without preconceptions, is the best approach. The best aid to such an approach would be little more than a book of plans and photos, perhaps with some supportive commentary on the clients or site or project history limited to fact. This is why I wrote The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion rather than a mythology of Wright's life and work. It is better to fall under the spell of Wright's architectural spaces on ones own time than the spell of an academic wizard weaving words of wiley wisdom.

Frank Lloyd Wright

by Meryle Secrest.

New York; Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.

So you hadn't heard of Meryle Secrest until it seemed that every book reviewer was commenting about her biography of Frank Lloyd Wright. Well. Secrest's credentials are impeccable. Her interest is biography: great people, genius. seems to be her fetish; Romaine Brooks, Bernard Berenson, Kenneth Clark, Salvador Dali, and now Frank Lloyd Wright. Four of these are very familiar to me, Bernard Berenson from my Harvard years, Kenneth Clark because everyone knows him, and Salvador Dali as one of maybe two twentieth- century artists to whose work I respond strongly and positively. So I'm not certain that Secrest likes great people; she sees dark corners and hiding places everywhere, and reveals them, whether or not the information is useful to the reader's forming an opinion about her subject. One comes away feeling that something is missing from her analysis, and that she prefers common people to great ones who place great demands upon the world around them. Her writing is, nevertheless, everywhere engaging, enjoyable, fun to read.

One problem of writing about a dead person you've never met is that you don't know how something written on paper would have been spoken by the writer. This is critical with Wright, for the twinkle in his eye often belied the sharpness of his speech. Secrest reveals no immunity to Wright's brilliant wit. Nor does she deny his lavish largesse to many around him. Her view is, nevertheless, focused too much on Wright's ancestal connections.

How strange it is that Wright waited until 1956 before he visited Wales. Yet it is the premise of Secrest's book that being of Welsh descent, more than any other single factor, caused Wright to be what he was. It is Wright's Welsh ancestry on which Secrest focuses her efforts, and which she puts forth as central to his complex personality. Thus, she avoids her own dictum, which she takes from one of her earlier biographical studies; "If I had to say which was telling the truth about society, a speech by a Minister of Housing or the actual buildings put up in his time, I should believe the buildings." Secrest begins chapter 15 with this quote from Kenneth Clark, breaking with her pattern of quoting "Poems from the Old English." (15 of her 20 chapters). It is not by study of the man, but the man's work, by which we can learn from and about genius; that is Kenneth Clark's argument, one that we would all do well to heed. It is equally true that books about people, particularly people who are decidedly more significant in their impact on those around them than are those around them on anyone else, will outsell by 100:1 any book on the works of the person. Sad that we should be more interested in peek-a-boo activities than in self-improvement, and sadder still for the world as a whole.

Secrest does not follow the direction commanded in Clark's quote, but keeps after her man and his life and remembrances of things past. Further, when Secrest does get into some level of interpretation of the master's work, she can be very off-base. She does not sort out the Arizona Biltmore (S.221-222) controversy satisfactorily, missing the point of the design. As examples of Wright's "influence" on the design of the hotel, Secrest notes "the low horizontal lines of the building. . ." Wrong; the building is one story too high wherever Albert McArthur could find a way to add a story to Wright's (lower) elegant, and truly "low," design.

Consider, too, the comment about Wright's work for A. J. Chandler; "All these fascinating experiments of working on a vastly reduced scale would prove their worth ten years later when he came to design his first Usonian houses." Apparently Secrest missed Wright's 1950s statement that the California block houses were his first Usonian houses, an argument that cannot be easily dismissed without denying then that the Usonian Automatics of the 1950s were, indeed, Usonian. Publicist that he was, Wright used "Usonian" to promote Jacobs and later works, but the Usonian premise traces back to California, and up to the two-story Usonian automatic on a pancake-flat site in Detroit for Dorothy Turkel (S.388), then on to the Erdman prefabs, "wood" versions of block automatics.

Later (p.553), Secrest comments about one of the earlier admirers of Wright (and one of our century's great minds); "Mumford rightly observed that many of these innovations for which Wright was now claiming sole credit, the open plan, for instance, were not his inventions, but that he had grasped their significance and made unique uses of their advantages." Is this not what genius is all about? Most of the plays written under the name of Shakespeare were not new in their stories. There were plays on the same topic, even with much the same structure, by lesser playwrites before Shakespeare wrote "his version." There is even an Ur-Hamlet, but Shakespeare (whoever he was) grasped the significance of what "Hamletness" is all about, and made the great play about it. The same is true, for instance, of Rossini and his greatest work, "The Barber of Seville." Paisiello had written a "Barber," and his supporters were enraged by Rossini's arrogance at writing another work on the same subject, and with the same title. Paisiello's work is comparatively superficial; Rossini's resonates with the foibles and beauties of humanity in all its guises.

Though Secrest's arguments would support a specific theory concerning Wright's need to create, she articulates no cogent position. Men create. Women procreate. Men cannot procreate, however much they may share in that which is procreated. Women's ability to both create and procreate is a threat to one domain that men would like to keep as their own, as a balance to woman's biological pre-eminence. Consider this in context of Wright's leaving Catherine as she is ending her procreative sphere of activity, dear reader, and you will see one point completely missed by Secrest. Or, perhaps omitted, as not cogent to her viewpoint.

Secrest puts forth a facade of detailed completeness, yet misses at least one important liaison by Wright. She delineates Wright's long relationship with one important Wisconsonian, yet misses a second family connection that, in an interesting turn of events, caused Wright to blanch white after a Michigan lecture in the early 50s. She could have revealed this.

Secrest, like the British citizenry, enjoys her royalty. At times it seems that everyone with whom Wright associates is a prince, count or duke (or at least a scion of industry). Ms. Secrest is able to paint a convincing portrait of how the last Mrs. Wright set herself and her husband up as a royal family within the Taliesin Fellowship.

Secrest falls heir to the British proclivity for not following their own grammatical rules. While Hollywood all too often uses "I" where "me" is called for (as does president-elect Clinton), internationally circulated British magazines &emdash; GRAMOPHONE is one of my favorites &emdash; continue to mangle "their" language far more than American equivalents &emdash; FANFARE in this instance. Secrest sprinkles her writing with conjunctions at beginnings of sentences, and with "howevers" at every conceivable opportunity. "However" is an adverb (as in, "however much" three paragraphs above), though often used as a conjunction in American (as opposed to British) writing. As a conjunction, it should conjoin two sentences. To use it at the beginning of a sentence, worse yet at the beginning of a paragraph, is to let our written language be debased to the level of spoken colloquial discourse. Minor slip-ups, such as "exemplified by Albert Bush-Brown, as exemplifying. . ." show more of an editorial laziness than anything about Secrest's prose, which is more entertaining than that of most previous writers on Wright. While Secrest's writing is admirably interesting, we must still await a truly elegantly written study of Mr. Wright's life.

Secrest is hardly faultless. She is uncritical in praise of too many second rate authors, making little or no distinction with the first rate ones. For instance, she fails to notice that John Sargeant covers only half of the subject the title of his book promises. Typos and mistakes are hardly uncommon. Try Tomak (p.481). Should be Tomek (S.128). Or a photo (p.504) of five people around Wright, but only four are named. She errs re. Zona Gale (p.302); Zona was not related to the Oak Park Gales. Secrest confuses "module" with "unit." The module is the shape, and but for the 2x4' rectangle and the circular segments, Wright's modules were equilateral, thus could be stated by the geometric shape plus one dimension (either length of side, or altitude).

Secrest devotes only one chapter to Wright's last decade, yet it is in this decade that Wright produced over a quarter of his built work. This is but one sign of Secrest's focus on the man, and denial that the work is what reveals the truth of the man.

If some still wonder about the "FLlW" in this newsletter's masthead, please read p.384 on the subject. There Secrest justifies this as Wright's "final" solution to the way he wrote his initials.

Wherever you go these days, you may find Ms. Secrest promoting her book. She appeared at Taliesin during the September Reunion. On December 7 she is scheduled to give a presentation in the resident associate's program at the Smithsonian.

Do not let my negative comments put you off from reading this book. There is no bio yet available on which I could not give many pages of negative comment. Secrest has provided an entertaining if unbalanced Wright bio. She has left room for yet many other possible approaches to this infinitely fascinating American artist, one that would not place the Welsh heritage above all other influences. Other than Wright's own factually aberrant but truthful An Autobiography, there is no more entertaining biography of America's most famous architect currently available than that by Meryle Secrest. Too many readers bought Brendan Gill's vitriolic account of Wright, not enough will buy the Secrest study, which offers much previously unresearched information from which it derives its premise, and is everywhere entertaining

The Wright State; Frank Lloyd Wright in Wisconsin

edited by Mary Garity LaCharite and Terrance L. Marvel, with articles by Jonathan Lipman and Neil Levine.

Milwaukee, WI; Milwaukee Art Museum, 1992.

So you didn't see the exhibition in Milwaukee. It is only a few years since the Madison exhibition did Madison proud, and now Milwaukee does the whole state. Few of us can get to every activity related to Wright and/or his work. So we have to rely on catalogs. This is the catalog of the show. 50 of Wrights approximately 150 designs for Wisconsin are included, with photos or drawings showing the breadth and depth of the exhibit.

The book, all 96 pages (numbering beginning, oddly, with the title page) features two articles in addition to a 43 page "checklist" or exhibition catalog. The first essay is by Jonathan Lipman, Consulting Curator of the exhibit; "The Architecture of Arcadia." Lipman presents Wright's childhood Arcadia, the great Helena Valley of the Driftless Area (spared from the Wisconsin Ice Sheet's glacial destriction) to which the mature Wright returned after his European sojurn with Mamah Borthwick. Lipman spins a good story, covering Wright's entire architectural career with a specific Wisconsin focus.

In the middle of his essay, Lipman notes "Having moved into Taliesin, Wright never again seriously made his home in a city. This was an almost unprecedented choice of lifestyle for an architect, who receive most of their work through the network of acquaintances and referrals that they build up in an area. Virtually every other architect in modern history has chosen to practice in a metrpolis . . ." This ties directly to the other essay, by Neil Levine, "Under the Aegis of Taliesin," a paen to Wright's greatest Wisconsin structure.

As his topic sentence for his second paragraph, Levine asserts that "Taliesin is not like any other building Wright designed," thus disposing of Narciso Menocal's argument (in Wright Studies, Volume One: Taliesin, 1911-14: Carbondale, IL; Southern Illinois University Press, 1992) that the Gilmore residence (S.146) is some sort of protype of Taliesin. More than that, Levine extends his argument; "Taliesin was as much a representation of Wright's belief system as it was a sign of its artistic efficacy." His argument is brilliantly logical, but will be difficult for many, as the author traces possible (only) sources for Wright's love affair with a place, a poet, a building, an ethos. If Levine takes his argument into esoteric corners, others will follow him. To this writer, it is a bit too academic, too erudite, the product of one who teaches at Harvard, but was never a student there. Yet Levine ends with a clear statement of what all Wrightians feel; "Wright hoped, as he said, to 'allow the child in him to live' so as to be able to "rediscover himself.' That happened enough for us to be able to experience many buildings of his, no matter how many times we visit them, as if always for the first time and, at that time, as if never for the last time."

The catalog section is, of course, a detailed and complete document of the exhibition. One but wishes it were filled with more photographs of the exhibits rather than text explanations, such as was done in Frank Lloyd Wright; Retrospective, the 1991 Japanese exhibition for which Jonathan Lipman was the guest curator. In this matter, however, we cannot expect Milwaukee to match Japan; the Milwaukee exhibit went from idea to show in ten months, and was woefully underfunded. Bravo for such a well-designed book, and forgive the typos considering the pressure under which the museum exhibition staff operated.

The bibliography is divided into Biographies, Surveys of Wright's Architecture and Decorative Designs (Monographs, Studies of Wisconsin buildings), Studies of Wright in context with other architects, Essays, lectures and writings by Wright, and Bibliographies and guides to buildings and archival collections, a useful and helpful approach for most readers. No annotations for the choices are given, and some of the listed choices are hardly worthy of inclusion, such as Harvey Einbinder's rather inept An American Genius: Frank Lloyd Wright. In sum, a suitable document of an exhibition that was around for too short a time.

The Wright Style

by Carla Lind.

New York, NY; Simon & Schuster; 1992.

A specially designed display typeface, spectacularly colorful photos, discussion of Wright followers, all would suggest a new approach to the phenomenon that is Frank Lloyd Wright. The basic premise is one against which the subject himself would have railed. "The Wright Style?" What Wright style? Though Ms. Lind admits to an "irony" in "Wright style," she does nothing to dispell the idea on which her book is premised. She fills a chapter with sources of chairs, rugs and other Wrightinalia with which people could clutter their homes to add some Wright style; is Wright rolling over in his grave, or just laughing?

There is no "Wright style," just the style of each building as related to its client, site, climate. Webster says style is that quality which gives distinctive character and excellence to artistic expression. Is there a single quality which identifies Wright from anyone else? What quality of Prairie is the same as Usonia? If a style can be defined for one artist, it must exclude other possiblities, yet all the multiple qualities Ms. Lind gives us to identify Wright do not guide us to exclude works by Griffin, Byrne, Drummond, Howe, Dow or Green. Ms. Lind leaves more unanswered than answered, and never answers the question of what style is, let alone what comprises Wright's style, or even the more encompassing and, perhaps more easily definable, Prairie style.

Ms. Lind has succeeded in taking a complex subject and making it complicated by trying to present it simply as a collection of items which, together, equal style. Unity, music, nature, geometry, Louis Sullivan, Japanese Design, Organic Architecture, Site, Space, Scale, Materials, Color, Light, Decorative Arts, Furniture, Textiles, Accessories, put them together and we have style. A style? Wright's style? Come on!

Photographs from many sources (Julius Shulman, Balthazar Korab, Yukio Futagawa, Ezra Stoller, Jon Miller of Hedrich-Blessing . . .) are well-chosen in terms of representing buildings, though some of the color photos are unnaturally warm due to use of daylight-balanced film under partial or full tungsten lighting. The photos to develop the theme of "nature" in Wright's work are a strange collection. A photo of "limestone outcroppings" is at odds by 45° with the "naturally laid stone walls at Taliesin." The abstracted sumac in the art glass of the Dana house is in warm autumn colors, yet the comparison photo of live sumac is in full summer green foliage.

Ms. Lind is myopic in her view of Wright and Wrightian studies. She is able to write "For further information about Frank Lloyd Wright and his buildings, contact the following organizations . . ." and then she lists only the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy and the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio Foundation, completly ignoring the Getty Museum, the Avery Library at Columbia University, the Burnham Architectural Library of the Art Institue of Chicago, the Frank Lloyd Wright and Prairie School Collection of the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Architectural History Foundation and collections in Kansas City, Evanston and Buffalo, just to name a few. Her bibliography is equally single-minded and lacking in useful diversity. She does not even list the major sources for information on some of the specific buildings included in her book, such as the Stanford University Library for the Hanna's "eight feet of shelf space" in "over fifty ring binders" that constitutes the client's documentation of their house. Her selection of "Classic Wright Houses" seems to be dictated more by buildings to which she had access rather than any choice based on an identifyable principle of "classic." Throughout, she fails to identify her criteria for inclusion of items, topics, whatever, in relation to any standard or defined principles.

For instance, she calls the Hanna House (S.235) Usonian (the Hanna's did not, and advised this writer why it wasn't). If it is Usonian, so are the California block houses. Hanna uses few of the design elements for which the First Jacobs (S.234) is often called the First Usonian design, yet that seems to be Lind's standard. Further, the Palmer House (S.332) should not fit her expectaions of Usonian if the Jacobs is the standard (neither does it fit Sargeant's view, and she lists that book in her Bibliography as her only source on the subject).

In trying to simplify, she sometimes confuses or leaves out essentials. There are no plans to show how Wright arranged his spaces. Under materials she discusses plaster and stucco, but makes no distinction with cement plaster. When she writes of concrete, she states that "It was molded into tactile blocks." They may have been tactile, but the term that is needed is "Textile." She writes of stone as the material Wright "probably spoke about" the most, yet fails to note that he often called textile blocks "stone." She gives no clue to Wright's hierarchy of materials, or of hierachies within material groups (why, for instance, Philippine mahogany replaced cypress in the 1950s).

Ms. Lind makes a major contribution to Wrightian literature by including several examples of those who learned from Wright and practiced organic architecture. There is no apparent reason for her choices other than the availability of the architect for interview and photographs of a "representative" building. John Lautner, with all his curves (Segal House, Malibu, CA), is certifiably more organic than Rudolph Shindler (Shindler's own house, Los Angeles, CA). Where are examples of any of the current members of the Taliesin Architects?

Ms. Lind has taken information from sources to which she gives no credit, either at the point of publication or in her bibliography.

We have been told by some of her subjects that Ms. Lind gained access to their buildings and interviews (she calls them "biblio-visits") by representing herself as the Executive Director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy. The book does not place that organization on the title page, nor does it profit from sales of the book. Remember that before you hand over $50.00 for the hardcover edition.

The Wright Space, Pattern & Meaning in Frank Lloyd Wright's Homes

by Grant Hildebrand.

Seattle; University of Washington Press, 1991

"The reality of the building consists not in the walls and roof but in the space within to be lived in." This quote, attributed to Laotze, was used often by Frank Lloyd Wright in his discussions of organic architecture. Yet, for the last ten or more years, the vast majority of books written on Wright have concentrated on his personal life, his decorative arts, or the development of his forms. Few have dealt with the reality of his spaces and the philosophies and forms that shaped them.

In this book, Grant Hildebrand discusses the components that shape the spaces of Frank Lloyd Wright's homes and how the experience of those spaces meet subliminal and very fundamental needs of the human condition. It is the fulfillment of those needs that makes his homes so appealing to the general public.

By applying the theory of prospect and refuge, put forth by English geographer Jay Appleton in The Experience of Landscape, to the residential work of Frank Lloyd Wright after 1902, Hildebrand demonstrates that ".when a house combines strong refuge signals, inside and out, with strong prospect signals, inside and out, it may be argued that it provides conditions that human beings are preconditioned by nature to select as pleasurable in their habitations." In other words, "to see without being seen" meets a fundamental human need that dates back to the prehistoric hunter.

Hildebrand also introduces the theories of complexity and order, and hazard and mystery as additional experiences in Wright's homes that impact the emotions. He identifies thirteen characteristics that comprise Frank Lloyd Wright's "pattern," and are used consistently, in varying degrees, in all of his residential work after 1902 (the beginning of the Prairie era). The components of this pattern shape those spaces and shape the way we experience those spaces.

Hildebrand then goes on to apply this pattern and several theories to a variety of homes covering Wright's career from 1902 to 1951. To be sure, he uses the best-known examples, such as the Coonley (S.135), Robie (S.127), Hollyhock (S.208), Hanna (S.235) and both Jacobs houses (S.234, S.283), along with the California block houses (S.214-217) and Fallingwater (S.230). His arguments are, however, always valid and his presentation cogent. Hildebrand's discussion of the spatial experience in the Ennis House (S.217) is extraordinarily enlightening and does much to enhance the qualities of a significant house that has suffered from "bad press."

The text is well-supported by photographs of the specific houses here discussed. In many cases, the houses are illustrated with wonderfully prepared exploded isometric drawings that greatly enhance our understanding of the spaces, particularly for those who have difficulty reading floor plans.

One statement by Hildebrand bears contradiction. He states that the characteristic of placing the major spaces (i.e., living room, dining room) directly under the roof ".began with the Heurtley Residence (S.074, 1902) and was used almost without exception thereafter." In fact, this technique was used intermittently and infrequently until the Usonian houses when it became the rule.

To his credit, Grant Hildebrand is one of the few writers to demonstrate that the principles embodied in the Prairie School house are found in all of Wright's domestic work.

Hildebrand presents this book as a basis for further investigation and discussion. He understands the limitations of a single book on a subject that could generate volumes. Many important characteristics, such as the use of specific materials and changing patterns of ornament, remain undiscussed in this book, and rightfully so. This is a book that deals with space in Frank Lloyd Wright homes, how that space is experienced, and what that experience means to the human condition. It is an important book to anyone interested not only in the work of Wright but in the way we as human beings design and choose our homes. &emdash; Henry G. Zimoch, A.I.A.

Grant Hildebrand responds: "I agree, re. 'major spaces under the roof' that there are indeed major exceptions before 1909, noted n. 6, p. 168, but perhaps they belonged squarely in the text. Thereafter come Taliesin, the five great California houses, etc. where the point seems to hold. But scholarly quibblling is dismal stuff; let me conclude with an expression only of gratitude for a careful and most positive reading."

Many Masks, A Life of Frank Lloyd Wright

by Brendan Gill.

New York; G.P.Putnam's Sons, 1987.

In this book Brendan Gill demonstrates a tremendous ability to manipulate the written word, and combines it with a wealth of information, some not extensively published before, covering Frank Lloyd Wright's long and colorful life. That is why it is doubly disappointing to find that, rather than reading a scholarly work of analysis and interpretation, one is faced with a corrupted account of Wright's life worthy of the tabloid press.

It is beyond the scope of any book review to discuss the various inaccuracies found in Many Masks. It is interesting to note that Gill several times berates the inaccuracies and lies found in Wright's own writing, but doesn't feel compelled to practice what he preaches. This double standard is found throughout. Gill criticizes, and rightfully so, Wright's use of ". . . evangelical gibberish consisting of words like 'search,' 'sentiment,' and 'principle,' none of which he condescended to define." Yet Gill uses such words as "curious," freakish," and "bizarre" to describe certain of Wright's buildings without similar condescension. Also, the dust jacket refers to Gill's "lifelong study of what he has called 'the robust and necessary irrationality of architecture'." This is a phrase that bears explaining. Or perhaps not.

Brendan Gill's style of slanted writing in this book runs from the subtle innuendo to the overtly manipulative. For example, he feels compelled to point out that what Wright called his "private office" adjacent to Louis Sullivan's was "simply a small partitioned-off space." Yet anyone familiar with architectural offices knows, and as Gill's own illustration demonstrates, that this was a very real hierarchal distinction, and worth noting as such by Wright. Regarding the Dana House (S.072), Gill writes "What had begun as the remodeling and expansion of a sturdy Victorian mansion in the Italianate style ended with the total exterior obliteration of the mansion . . . Usurping much of the land on which the mansion had been built. . .: Obliteration? Usurping? One wonders if this is a book about an architect or Attila the Hun.

The photographs that Brendan Gill selected for this book are sometimes curious in themselves. Aside from the issue of poor photographic quality, the most interesting are the family and personal photos. The buildings receive very uneven coverage. For example the Larking Building (S.093) in Buffalo is illustrated by seven photographs and drawings, from well-known shots of the interior and exterior, through a picture taken during its demolition, to a lone remaining pier acting as a gravemarker. On the other hand, the Richard Lloyd Jones house in Tulsa (S.227), one of those described by Gill as a "curious structure" is not illustrated at all. The most curious photograph is the one of the smoking ruins of the Unitarian church in Oak Park later replaced by Unity Temple (S.096).

A mask is a facade. This may seem like an appropriate architectural analogy, however a facade is by nature a two dimensional object. Gill attempts to define Wright as a series of facades. This is more applicable to architecture than to architects, particularly Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright accomplished more by the age of forty-six than most architects accomplish in their lifetimes, and he succeeded, in the forty-six years that followed in surpassing himself. His life was full of happiness and tragedy, success and failure, honor and neglect, love and hate. It was anything but two-dimensional.

It is unfortunate that the power of Gill's writing was not leashed to create a book with substance as well as style. In the years to come, this book will probably be considered one level above the oversimplified and melodramatic 1960s biography on Wright by Finis Farr. For those looking for real information on Frank Lloyd Wright, it is not worth all of the trouble required sorting through the fact and fiction, truth and innuendo, and the overpowering bias contained in this book. &emdash;Henry G. Zimoch, A.I.A.

"At Taliesin" (1934-1937)

ed. Randolph Henning.

Southern Illinois University, Carbondale & Edwardsville, Illinois, 1992.

This compilation is akin to traveling up that long road to the hill-top to visit that Wrightian redoubt, Taliesin, in its third stage (after 1925) of evolutionary transition. Instead of descending into nostalgia, we are ascending the road to spiritual renewal and into an architectural America renaissance. Surely the experiences there in the 1930's must have been exhilarating, haunting, sometimes frustrating and physically exhausting but always an intellectual, aspiring, never to be forgotten education.

This book gathers together the weekly newspaper columns entitled "At Taliesin" which appeared in several Wisconsin papers from 1934 through 1937. The column originally advertised the weekly Taliesin film, written by the early apprentices and in some cases by Wright himself. It later evolved into a larger format which presented an overview of life at Taliesin plus news about the unusual film offerings.

What was the Taliesin Fellowship like in its earliest stages? Newspaper columns written by these very first apprentices give us a clue as to its fiber, texture, and cultural consistency. In the beginning, the column was created to gather a bigger audience and to attract the outside world. The films presented at the Playhouse were some rare viewings of foreign art films or American classics, plus Disney productions and a short subject. Certainly these evenings of varied movie programming were a delight, not only to the Taliesin members but to the citizens of the surrounding agrarian small town areas. One gathers from the many subjects the apprentices dealt with that truly this was in educational undertaking, unique to American and most Wrightian in its scope.

At first sight the book would appear to be one of those tired re-treads of old Wright dug-up material, but that is not the case. I was happily surprised to find a fresh gathering of truly neglected matter and to find the amount and quality to be very worthwhile. One hundred twelve columns are included, several by the Master himself. These columns mirror

the young Fellowship as well as Wright's own struggle to reestablish his stalled career. As a living record of that period in his life, they exemplify his creative, recuperative, powers and his belief in the apprentice "system." Also, it should be noted that the "system" was a clever, shrewd way to have at hand a School of Architecture, pools of manpower, maintenance income from student tuition, and a studio design operation, all provided by the students ("Fellowship") themselves. It enabled Wright to survive those very lean, difficult years until the Second Golden Age appeared (Fallingwater, S.230, and on).

As editor Henning points out, these columns and the "open invitations" to the film event introduced the public to that mysterious arcadian experience, Taliesin. These accounts present a true picture of its very early days and its changing, ever-evolving nature. The Playhouse movies were entertaining, stimulating, and certainly a pleasant way to view an unusual, sometimes exotic, movie. It was also a clever exercise by Wright to advance his unorthodox views on life, and to evangelize his architectural, cultural agenda. The Taliesin milieu as "designed" by Wright is brought into the limelight through these columns. The posture of these first apprentices as reflected in these weekly "pictures" is strong, experimental, and certainly charming. Many names dear to Wrightian followers appear: Bob Moses, Edgar Tafel, John Lautner, William Beye Fyfe, Eugene Masselink, John H. "Jack" Howe, William Wesley Peters, and others as well as Wright himself. The inclusion of rare black & white photos is enlightening.

After reading this revealing study of the early Fellowship, one senses pride, excitement, and a searching energy for true architectural change. Even today, almost sixty years later, the same energy remains, and the pride&emdash;still intact with its fame now world-wide. Time, the world climate of academe, economics, the deaths of Wright and his wife Olgivanna have altered some of the outer "shape" of the experience, but the inner core remains the same. The Fellowship continues to be Wrightian and is an architectural force (now revitalized) as it was yesterday, today, an into architectural tomorrows.

Frank Lloyd Wright - Retrospective, A Catalog.

Sezon Museum of Art (Tokyo) Traveling Exhibit to Kyoto, Yokohama and Kitakyushu

with the Mainichi Newspapers and the Architectural Institute of Japan, 1991.

"The architect engages in both a dialogue and a competition with the past." - Allan Greenberg.

This unusual book, a catalogue, is based on a recent Wright retrospective traveling exhibit organized and only shown in Japan, to be viewed from a Japanese standpoint, and for a Japanese audience. The basic tenet of the book is that Wright's architecture, especially that which was designed in and for Japan should be analysed from a Japanese cultural, academic, professional, architectural attitude.

I admit to be immediately drawn to this intriguing, well-documented search into Wright's Japanese adventure. It is a much-needed expository detailing of Wright's difficult, long (1915-1922) and ambivalent years in Japan, resulting in the execution of the Imperial Hotel (S.194) and five other smaller designs (Imperial Hotel Annex S.195, Hayashi S.206, Fukuhara S.207, Yamamura S.212, Jiyu Gakuen S.213) of which only two stand today (part of Hayashi, Yamamura, and Jiyu Gakuen), plus a reconstructed facade and lobby of the Imperial Hotel.

The material is well-organized and relates to the exhibit's purpose and scope. The artistic composition is excellent; fastidious in particular at the several Chapter Separaters (color photos of pale colorized marble-like textures), executed in Japanese fashion. The English translation appears to be faithful to the original, bringing to the Western world a fresh insight into Wright's faraway architecture.

The accompanying commentary by guest curator Jonathan Lipman is superb and very instructive. His overview of Wright's career, the art and craft of the machine, gives us the necessary background to properly set the stage for the forthcoming Japanese interpretation of Wright, his Japanese designs, and how contemporary Japanese architectural academics view his work.

"Shibaraku&emdash;Wait a Moment!" is proclaimed by the Kabuki actor hero who announces to the theatre audience that he will save the intimidated characters. This role as depicted in Japanese woodblock actor prints was immortalized by the artists whose works were not only extolled by Wright, but highly prized by museums.

What do we learn from this study? It is a radically different picture of Japanese appreciation of Wright's architectural accomplishments. With surprising candor, Japanese scholars, architectural historians, art experts and practicing architects state that Wright was definitely given much attention and was appreciated even before the Imperial Hotel was completed and subsequently opened as The Hotel in Tokyo! Also, much notice was gathered from the publicity around the Hotel's survival of the 1923 earthquake and fire. However, after 1929, LeCorbusier and Modernism were in control of style and Wright went out of influence. He was viewed as a man of the past. It wasn't until 1965 to 1968 that the controversy over preserving the Imperial Hotel became news, and so a revived interest in his organic architecture was born.

Other conflicting facts appear: the question about the 1923 telegram concerning the earthquake/fire. Did Wright receive it from Japan or was it sent via Spring Green to his Los Angeles office? The plans for another Hotel (a resort type built but quickly destroyed), private residences, a theatre and the American Embassy proposal, twelve in all-half of them never got beyond the design rendering stage. Only six were completed. Wright was actually let go (fired) from the Imperial Hotel project before it was finished. Reason: construction delays and increasing costs. Other facts are given as to how Wright, Japanese architects and time have dealt with conceptions of space and volume. Of importance are Japonisme, woodblock prints, and Wright's inspiration derived from these sources.

The exhibit, as listed and as perceived in photos, draws uniquely on various Japanese holdings and the usual fragments, bits and pieces from domestic sources. Rare renderings, drawings and historic photographs from Japanese collections add reality to this work, although in some cases the photos are disappointingly small. There are many historic studies: the Larkin Building (S.093), Unity Temple (S.095), Coonley House (S.135), Wright's Home & Studio (S.002-4), and so forth. Overall, this Catalogue has a positive stance with a sterling quality of unity of thought on Wright's contribution to Japan and its meaning to world design. -- Lyman Shepard

Three American Architects; Richardson, Sullivan, and Wright, 1865-1915.

by James F. O'Gorman

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1991.

The end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th bring together the forces of dramatic, dynamic change for the urban city and the then-emerging suburbs a change which provides the backdrop for three giant architects to add greatness to the very word "architecture." The changes are architectural, societal, national imagery, urbanization, commercial, industrial, financial, and cultural; yet most of all for the vastly growing middle class of Americans. Their ambitions, needs, aspirations are mirrored in the structures designed by Henry Hobson Richardson, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Each architect is a connecting link to a chain of events and situations which were already in motion and which their particular stylistic vocabularies would symbolize in the new eras.

The author has tightly controlled his parameters of scope and time sequence (half a century only, 1865-1915) so that this trio of seminal movers of architectural design transformation are his main thrust.

Richardson was the Boston architect whose monumental Marshall Field Wholesale Store design (1885-1887) reshaped Chicago's conception of a commercial building. This structure ignited Sullivan's imagination and daring, leading him to postulate that the tall, tall building must be tall! In Richardson's architecture, Trinity Church Boston, Allegheny County (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) Courthouse and Jail, Ames Memorial Library (North Easton, MA), Old Colony Railroad Station, Crane Memorial Library (Quincy, MA), Ames Harrison Avenue Store (Boston), Stoughton House (Cambridge, MA), William Watts Sherman House (Newport, RI), Glessner House (Chicago) and many others, the picturesque has been tamed and brought into a new discipline of simplicity. Function and form are dealt with in a direct way so that finally architecture could logically serve the American public. At last here is evolving, yet to come, that form of architecture that is unmistakably American in appearance and substance. Richardson's Romanesque style would go through various phases of reduction and interpretation, but always there would remain the positive power of a structure meant to fulfill its functional design obligation. In his own time, perhaps Richardson's structures were not totally perfected as to detailing, comfort zones, and general aptitude for commercial purposes; but the basic aim was there. Surely his early death at the age of 48 robbed the architectural scene of more great, brilliant designs which would solidify his design position. Incidentally, the East Coast has managed to save nearly all of Richardson's classic structures, but in the Chicago area, which originally had three including Marshall Field, alas, only Glessner House remains. Richardson out-distanced the orthodoxy of the prevailing architectural establishment, creating a form and design to become the flashpoint for Sullivan's designs of progress.

Sullivan, the Irish-American architectural renegade, would go even further than Richardson, for he would insist, "The facade, the outward expression, of the tall office building should in the very nature of things follow the functions of the building, and where the function does not change, the form is not the change." This insistence could possibly work for the systems of use within the building, but certainly not for the steel framework that allows the tall building to be tall. Wright saw this division and recognized it, especially in the Wainwright Building. This whole process would be part of Sullivan's logic, including his standard &emdash; there must be a base, shaft and capital. Sullivan, having Richardson's Field Wholesale Store as a guide, managed in the Auditorium complex to state his objectives strongly and brilliantly, and moved confidently to the Wainwright, yet still searching for his own style. The Guaranty, Chicago Stock Exchange and others showed his signature.

As for Sullivan's use of decoration&emdash;ornament&emdash;his guiding light was not Richardson but rather various sources fostered by Frank Furness of Philadelphia. His developing ornament began to take on a life of its own as it was becoming increasingly divorced from the structural element. Thus Sullivan's ornamental designs can be seen as over-powering the unity and continuity of the total design. As his career shortened and his age lengthened, his last years were spent designing small banks located in out-of-the-way places. The irony of this architect of the tall, tall building was this; he was unable to sustain a relationship with important clients. This and the fact that he was not "in sync" with the advancing times, led to his demise as an architectural force. Thanks to the Preservation Movement, his recognition has grown in recent years.

As the author makes abundantly clear, Wright was, most surely, the insecure student in the very beginning of his relationship with the Master, Sullivan. By the time Wright had departed (1893) he was well on his way to controlling his architectural destiny, yet still experimenting and stylistically unsure. It is also clear that Richardson and Wright are the major design "fasteners" while Sullivan links these seminal figures; the major link was the formulation of an architecture expressive of the steel cage construction.

In Wright's first truly independent design, the Winslow House (S.024), the architect consciously incorporates a Sullivanesque front entryway, with the second floor frieze also typically in the style of his former employer. From Richardson he blends and borrows a modified porte-cochere. Also, the window openings are determined squares&emdash;very Richardson. Keep in mind Wright's approach to the bulk of this building, the hip roof topping off the frieze, banding under which is the tapestry Roman Brick frontal masses and, finally, a strong continuous base as O'Groman implies that Wright really was indebted to Richardson for the interior plan which is inspired by Glessner House.

Later, as Wright's Prairie design is born in different variations, many of these "borrowed" ideas would appear and reappear, only to be defined by Wright as his own. Of course, as author O'Gorman firmly states, Wright was wise enough to create out of these sources a very personal statement, in most cases above and beyond Richardson and Sullivan. Since Wright was inspired by the same "idea men"&emdash;Ruskin, Morris, Ashbee, plus other Arts and Craftsmen, as was Richadson in a more moderate way, there is a common thread woven into their designs. Granted, Richardson was more attuned to the pre-industrial concept than was Wright, but both saw in these dicta the basis for a changing American view of architecture, for its cause is the enrichment of life. -- Lyman Shepard

Frank Lloyd Wright & the Prairie School in Wisconsin; An Architectural Touring Guide

by Kristin Visser.

Madison, WI (Prairie Oak Press), 1992.

Here is a new and valuable twist on the Guidebook and Wright literature phenomenon. Whether a guidebook tells you everything about a single place, or some things about lots of places, whether it judges quality or simply lists options, guidebooks sell well because they help people plan their recreational time. Books on Wright, or Wright and his contemporaries, have sold well ever since husband left wife to live with mistress.

With architects, it is, or should be, the buildings that reveal the true character of the person. Sadly, too often, we can only view the exterior of buildings. While with too many self-annointed architects this exterior view provides a true statement of character, with Wright this is false voyeurism; a room to Wright was its space, and one cannot know that space from the outside. Yet one must begin somewhere and, with plan in hand, a view from the outside can be more revealing than a view limited to book photographs.

Go one step further; don't limit yourself to Wright. After all, half a hundred buildings in one state, only a few of which are open to the public, may not make for good touring. So consider also other Prairie structures that fill in the distances between Wright artifacts. This is what Ms. Visser has done, with admirable enthusiasm. Here is a guidebook to Prairie architecture in Wisconsin, including, even emphasizing, Wright. Yet there are towns in which there is no Wright, but if there is a significant Prairie structure, Ms. Visser points it out to the reader.

The work is presented geographically. After two introductory chapters, one on Wright and the other on the "others," 26 chapters are devoted to towns and the surrounding region. It would have helped had the contents page been followed with a state map showing these 26 regions and the major roads connecting them. Madison and vicinity is given 46 pages, Milwaukee and vicinity 28 and Spring Green 29, while many regions command no more than three pages each.

Besides Wright, works of Louis Sullivan, Purcell and Feick, Purcell and Elmslie, George Maher, Claude and Starck, Percy Dwight Bentley, Russell Barr Williamson and Robert Spencer are included. Interestingly, post-Prairie Wright is included, but no work of organic architects who continued Wright's ethos beyond the Prairie era.

Each work is discussed, not just listed, and placed in an historical framework. Each is also noted as to its availability for visits, with phone numbers. The text avoids controversy, except as noted in the next paragraph, with most of the information available from other reliable sources. Yet here it is presented in a friendly, almost chatty, manner that lends itself to easy summer perusal.

The most interesting anomaly, perhaps, is the listing of the Spring Trail Park Stonework and the Spring Grove Tavern Stonework as "Attributed to Frank Lloyd Wright 1926." By whom? Never stated. These are in the 3700 block of Nakoma Road west of Lake Wingra and near the never-built Nakoma Park Gateway and Country Club. This latter Nakoma project is fully documented by Paul Sprague and his compatriots in Frank Lloyd Wright and Madison: Eight decades of Artistic and Social Interaction without a mention of the "nearby" Spring Trail/Grove stonework. The "style" of stonework is so common in Wright-designed structures that, perhaps, Ms. Visser's final suggestion is the one to live with; ". . .stonemason Philip Volk, who had worked extensively for Wright (including at Taliesin, ed's note), simply did the work in a Wrightian style."

The one disturbing flaw is the photos, most by Ms. Visser, which are for the most part not perspective correct. Good "shift" lenses are not cheap, 35mm versions ranging from $445 (Nikon) to $590 (Canon), and 24mm units from $800 (Olympus) to $990 (Canon EOS). Rectilinear ultra-wide lenses, however, have been available at reasonable prices since the early 1970s; photos mad