Frank Lloyd Wright: Europe and Beyond / Edition 1

by Anthony Alofsin

Overview

Ask Americans to think of a famous architect and the person they are most likely to name is Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright's work, his reputation, and his long and colorful career have made him an icon of modern American architecture. But despite his status as America's most celebrated architect, his influence throughout an active practice spanning the years 1896 to 1959 is so wide and complex that it has been difficult to grasp fully.

The essays in this book look not at the United States, the context usually associated with Wright, but at countries around the globe. Anthony Alofsin has assembled a superb collection of scholars to examine Wright's importance from Japan to Great Britain, France to Chile, Mexico to Russia, and the Middle East. Interwoven in the essays are stories of champions and critics, rivals and acolytes, books and exhibitions, attitudes toward America and individualism, and the many ways Wright's ideas were brought to the world. Together the essays represent a first look at Wright's impact abroad, some from the perspective of natives of the countries discussed and others from that of informed outsiders. Of special note is Bruno Zevi's firsthand account of traveling with Wright in Italy. Zevi was instrumental in bringing Wright's ideas to Italy and in helping launch the movement for organic architecture. Of unusual interest in light of today's events in Iraq is Mina Marefat's essay on Wright's elaborate designs for a cultural center for the city of Baghdad. The Baghdad projects, which were never realized after the assassination of King Faisal II, were Wright's principal focus in his last decade.

In searching out the little known rather than reexamining the well-established aspects of Frank Lloyd Wright's work, this collection is a rewarding exploration of his vision and influence.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520211162
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	10/26/1999
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	298
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 10.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Anthony Alofsin is Martin Kermacy Centennial Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written a new introduction to Frank Lloyd Wright's famous Wasmuth monograph, Ausgeführte Bauten und Entwürfe von Frank Lloyd Wright (Studies and Executed Buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright, 1998) and is the author of Frank Lloyd Wright: The Lost Years, 1910-1922 (1993).

Table of Contents

Wright, Influence, and the World at Large, Anthony Alofsin
Wright and Japan, Margo Stipe
Kindred Spirits: Holland, Wright, and Wijdeveld, Mariëtte van Stralen
Wright and Italy: A Recollection, Bruno Zevi
Wright and Italy: The Promise of Organic Architecture, Maristella Casciato
Useful Hostage: Constructing Wright in Soviet Russia and France, Jean-Louis Cohen
Wright and Great Britain, Andrew Saint
Wright and South America, Alberto Sartori
Towards an Organic Architecture in Mexico, Keith Eggener
Wright's Baghdad, Mina Marefat

What People are Saying About This

Gwendolyn Wright

Gwendolyn Wright, author of Moralism and the Model Home:

Frank Lloyd Wright: Europe and Beyond moves architectural history beyond its conventional boundaries. The book opens up new dimensions in our understanding of Wright's own oeuvre (the creation of the architecture, the persona, and the myth) and of the broader patterns of transnational influence in the modern world.

Terence Riley

Terence Riley, Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art, New York:

Alofsin's book solidly rounds out the recent wave of scholarly reappraisal of Wright's work, shedding light on the far reaches of the architect's influence across the globe as well as revealing the many references in Wright's work whose sources can only be found overseas.

Leonard K. Eaton

Leonard K. Eaton, author of American Architecture comes of Age:

This collection of essays on the international impact of Frank Lloyd Wright is a volume that has long been needed. All the contributors are authorities in their fields. The book is exceptionally well edited and illustrated. Highly recommed.

Editorial Reviews

Assembles an impressive array of scholarly essays...this volume rounds out Wright as a true world architect.

Austin AmericanStateman

Here we have something old and something new in the field of Frank Lloyd Wright studies. The old is a revised edition of Treasures of Taliesin (LJ 10/1/85), a coffee-table selection of unbuilt designs spanning Wright's lengthy career. Pfeiffer, a Wright apprentice and director of archives at Taliesin West, presents 77 unbuilt projects, which arguably reveal Wright's visionary imagination to a greater degree than do the buildings actually realized. The text is unapologetically laudatory, often beguiling with anecdotes about famous and eccentric clients. Pfeiffer's later Frank Lloyd Wright Drawings (Abrams, 1990) offers a larger sampling of the master's output but is not as focused. The new Frank Lloyd Wright: Europe and Beyond is a collection of ground-breaking essays exploring Wright's influence abroad, edited by Wright scholar Alofsin. He has assembled nine international experts to probe Wright's influence in Europe, the Americas, Iraq, and Japan. Their research corrects misconceptions and oversimplifications that have inevitably grown up around a figure as legendary as Wright. Conclusions, however, are tentative, with further investigation called for. Public libraries already owning Treasures need not purchase the new edition, which is not extensively revised; those owning Treasures and/or Drawings should make sure they have Pfeiffer's well-illustrated survey Frank Lloyd Wright: The Masterworks (Rizzoli, 1993). Academic libraries will want to add Europe and Beyond and should be aware of Alofsin's resurrection of the influential 1910 "Wasmuth monograph," Studies and Executed Buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright (Rizzoli, 1998), which introduced many European architects toWright.--David Soltesz, Fairview Park Regional Lib., OH Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Library Journal

Move architectural history beyond its conventional boundaries. The book opens up new dimensions in our understanding of Wright's own oeuvre and of the broader patterns of transnational influence in the modern world.
—Gwendolyn Wright, aothor of Moralism and the Model Home

Gwendolyn Wright