by Taliesin Apprentice Frank Laraway
Am I alone in my very negative reaction and assessment of Ken Burn's recent TV essay on the life and work of Frank Lloyd Wright? Did anyone else notice the general implication of the distortions, half truths and the back-handed put down (intentional or unintentional) of his life and work? Does anyone dare speak out against this highly touted but misleading video essay?
Did it not insinuate that the significance of the many trials of his life, his faults, his failures, his immoralities, his times of poverty and woe, far exceeded his accomplishments and his philosophy of Organic Architecture? Did it not dwell on the personal, as opposed the The Idea, The Work and the quality and volume of his artful design? Did it not spend inordinate amounts of video time with interviews of people who historically or even currently, really never understood, much less favored his uniquely American Movement? Did it not vent the very esoteric, artistic philosophy and rhetoric which has dominated American art and architectural criticism in opposition to Wright and his Organic Architecture since he and it began?
The particular selections of the various periods of his life, the dreary black and white views of old work, the unfortunate old photos of him, rerun -TV shots of his aged face, all gave the public a most negative impression of the man himself. The editorial obsession with his amorous affairs, marriages, divorces, his personal mistakes, his financial woes, his proclivity for debt and living beyond his means, his leaking roofs, all gave the general impression that they literally dominated his life and work.
Even when he was out of architectural commissions during The Depression, he was designing, building, writing and doing great things while the program would lead you to believe that he was dead in the mud. Such peaks and valleys of his life then became the rationalization for the dichotomy of his works into various period-styles rather than a continuum of a central idea. He detested the idea of style itself as a way to characterized movements in art and architecture. He saw such changes in the character of his own work as evolution but only as a continuum, not a new "style."
The use of all of his surviving -old enemies-of-Organic-Architecture (Scull, Johnson, Gill) along with many other of the new literary/academic critics like Levine, Croon, et al, to tell what it was all about, was like letting wolves give their account of the raid on the chicken house. They went on and on with their modernist assessments of the man's personal life and his early architecture, utilizing esoteric rhetoric to rationalize broad historical implications of his various crisis periods. They made much from nothings and little of important things. The editors chose to consume many precious minutes showing us buildings of, and rationalizing about, The International Style of architecture, the very movement so opposite to Organic Architecture and so despised by Mr. Wright. Experts on art and architecture have always been at odds with his work and his system of education. Now, in death they reemerge to come to the lecture and media circuit to comment on his life as if they are now in favor or what he was all about. Some may miss their subtle, backhanded put-downs as they seem to praise his artistic genius.
This video time could have been better utilized to show more contemporary color pictures of his later work, to not only illustrate its consistent good quality but its broad scope of character and volume. The camera editor chose to review the same buildings over and over again. The limited comments by some of his old apprentices dwelt on his mythical character and his idiosyncrasies. This was probably due to no fault of theirs but to the editing of their interviews. There were many anecdotal accounts presented, to the neglect of his positive ideas about beauty, Nature, Unity, architecture, organic education and religion. We heard little or nothing about his unit system of design, his ornament, his concepts of continuity of structure, inside-to-out architecture, his theory of graphics and many more subjects, unique to his life and architecture. There was so much about everyone and everything else, (comparative analysis ) and little attention to the subject at hand .
"Architecture needs no restatement,'' he constantly reminded us. Yet the commentators would leave us to believe that he derived most of his design from other cultures, other men and other times. He was always quick to qualify his position on. this, by saying that similar ideas would produce similar results without plagerizing. He never copied the Mayan, the Japanese or The Bauhaus. He had no need to, he could produce things of more beauty and cleverness of his own. He could have shaken a thousand new designs from his sleeves unto the paper, if only time, money and his clients had permitted him to do so, without copying anything or anyone else.
This type of historical/philosophical analysis and revisionism, is very characteristic of academia and the media. This is a media bent on sensationalistic entertainment. It forever dwells on the personal, sexual/religious immorality, financial affairs, and tragedy rather than on objective historical enlightenment of things that are really important. Supposedly, this type of presentation is what captivates the public, "sells," and "brings 'em in." It has conditioned the public to do just that but to the neglect of real truth and history. In the classroom, it is the obsessive need to break down everything into periods, movements and styles while spicing the lecture up with amusing, scandalous anecdotes.
Surely a man of this genius, a person with such an important legacy to American culture (along with his historical mentor and idol Jefferson), do not deserve the portrait that the media, either by ignorance or intent, have put upon them. If we would be sincere seekers of the truth, true admirers of these two greatest men of American history, we all would do well to devote more time in reading biographies, especially their personal writings about their ideas and life. Relying on opinionated second, third and nth sources of historical information in the media, will not do it for such a true and accurate perspective of their contributions to American history and culture.
The new biographers of Wright and also Jefferson, often have a hidden political agendas since they have nearer really favored their work or philosophy. Indeed they were and are, continually putting them down. Now they have become our experts, feeding the public these opera- like, sensationalistic distortions of the lives and philosophy of these men, men so unique to American culture.
Is there no one who will venture in, to defend these great men of American history since they are so defenseless from death and the grave? Who would dare question the historians, the academic and literary experts or a production by Ken Burns? The program was quite out of character for this great producer of pop video history. I hope and 'am sure that he never intended it to be so, But -.
DO NOT FALL FOR THIS HISTORICAL CUP OF VIDEO- HOT- SPIT!
FRANK LARAWAY
Taliesin Apprentice '58 - '59
reviewed by William Allin Storrer, PhD
Wrightians everywhere must be very disappointed. After three hours of video, we have learned nothing new about Frank Lloyd Wright. For all the concentration on Wright's scandals, Burns was unable to find the one that almost prevented Olgivanna from marrying Wright. All we got was a rehash of the Eastern Establishment view of Wright, which acknowledges the greatness of his non-residential works while damning with faint praise that part of his work that was central to his vision of architecture for America.
Showing us the First Jacobs residence (S.234) as the only example of Usonian architecture, without ever defining Usonian, then dismissing this direction in organic architecture because "only 60 were built," shows how far Burns misses the point. Nearly 150 houses were built after the First Jacobs, and each profits from the Usonian ideal, extending and advancing the concept.
Wright's goal in life was not to be the world's greatest architect - he was that - but to develop a Democratic American Architecture. Nowhere does the Burns bio mention that. Usually, to do a biography, you start with the biographees intent in his life. Then your presentation must answer the question of what level of success did the biographee achieve towards his goal. Wright did NOT achieve a Democratic American Architecture in his Prairie architecture, so he was a failure when he ran away with Mamah Cheney (why did Burns fail to note that Mr Cheney walked with Wright in the funeral procession, and did not criticize Wright for loving Mamah?). Wright left America to rethink his future as well as secure his past. While Wright's acolytes tried but failed to continue Prairie style into the second decade of the century, Wright was moving on. Of course, he returned, and returned, rising from ashes, to build and rebuild. The 1920s experiment in textile block led inevitably to the wood and masonry early Usonian houses, then to all masonry Usonians and even the Usonian Automatic. This was Democratic American Architecture. Do 150 houses qualify Wright as a success? Has any other architect done so much for domestic architecture?
One can, however, decipher an underlying attitude by Burns and Novick towards Wright by noting whom the producer chose to put on camera. The critics, historians, biographers are, with the usual exception or two, all part of the Eastern Architectural Establishment, people with power in the schools of architecture and in some architectural firms who do not and never have understood Wright. They also write about, and profit from, Wright with some urbanity as if they liked Wright and his work, even as they avoid the basics of Organic Architecture, the basis of Wright's architectural success. From Vincent Scully to Neil Levine, not a one of them understands the midWest and how it affected both Wright the man and Wright's work. They come from, live in, and respond to the crowded concrete canyons of New York City.
To have chosen Robert A. M. Stern, who demolished a mountainside to build a house, as a commentator on Wright is arrogant and misguided, an insult to Wright. To have Philip Johnson, who as many journalists have determined did his best to ruin the MOMA Wright retrospective (a site that could have presented to the New York public the travelling Usonian exhibition house, but did not), and who hates Wright, comment is another insult. Is Burns so arrogant as to think that his audience wouldn't recognize this, and wish for an honest commentator? To allow Brendan Gill, who wrote the most hateful of Wright biographies, to ramble on is absurd; Gill never could stand the fact that Wright would not accord him equal genius status. Why have Meryle Secrest pontificate about what was going on at Taliesin when the people from whom she got her information could have been directly quoted?
Of course, the exception; Paul Goldberger, New York Times cultural critic. His comments were to the point and candid. He may have lived at the Times "forever" but he's long since developed a world view of culture. And Bruce Pfeiffer, raised in eastern Massachusetts, but turned Wrightian when he saw the only Wright house in the Commonwealth. He's lived in the midWest and west most of his life; to call him a "former apprentice" is insulting; he is the Taliesin archivist, the one who preserved Wright's plans and drawings when others would have sold them for income.
Part one emphasized scancals, but in Part two, there were none. Why so much talk about Wright's scandals and so little about the buildings? Why present so many of the monuments, which is how Easterner's judge architects, than the houses on which Wright developed his American architecture. Why use, yet repeat, shots of the non-typical William B Greene Residence, S.176, a post-Prairie work? Why current shots of Taliesin to represent the original Taliesin? Shots from the northeast show the famous bird walk. Does Burns know when the bird walk was built?
Why repeat the seriously challenged statement that Wright was born in Richland Center? Not long before Bill Marlin died, he shared with me his information that Mrs Wright was with her husband on the day Wright was born, and they weren't in Richland Center. This is in my bio of Wright, elsewhere on this web site. Click here to go to that biography.
Much hoopla was bandied about regarding this project; PBS's first HDTV broadcast, digital where available. I pick up WNET, Channel 13, Newark, the metropolitan New York City PBS station, and we had standard screen, no new 16:9 ratio HDTV. This in PBS' largest market.
You'd think that with this being the lead-off for HDTV and digital at PBS no expense would have been spared, yet where was the Perspective Correction lens for live architectural shots? Every German TV studio has one, why not PBS.
Let me know YOUR response to the Burns-Novick bio and/or my commentary, with email to wasfllw@aol.com. Thanks.