No_1_1959 — Page 20

I

nevertheless

feel frustrated,

even become

instrumental? Do

I, sharing

Frank Lloyd Wright though my wife and myself have had his some of these consequences, really have

ог

By Richard Neutra

<lay.

that

Has

last friendly letter only a few weeks before the chance to make any worthwile state- his death. Who can gauge the sorrows and ment

would at least preliminarily, the effectiveness of the extraordinary man and to myself, clarify anything? I am happy that Mr. Wright was granted progress or evolution any map? to keep his exuberance almost to his dying Destiny is not designable, lives are not planned, their effectiveness is not calcul- I have often said, and later on many able. This is an embarrassing statement

one who furnishes said it, that Mr. Wright found his first for

professionally followers and appreciation in Europe, al- blueprints to those who trust him to most twenty years before there was an plan, if not their future, at least for it! inkling of it in America, which has be-

Life must be lived forward, but com-

come

his country, not only because his prehended backward. Or may this be a father and his mother's people had come fallacy, too? Perhaps life can really be only and truly understood while living it

to make roots here.

The least it

was SO

This

north, south east от

which I

I am living and I can testify that I and by no means through the fallacies, was stirred by the wonderfully illustrated fiction and post factum postry of retros- publication of designs described in garbled pection. German. Mr. Wright had to finance it That an evolutionary sequence is strict-

By comparison I can feel where young roots in a spot, from ly automatic in the realm of world events himself in Berlin to see it in print and Wright had firm

become momentous. It surely was a soul wherfe surprisingly he spreal the branches that is uninfluenced by the Michelangelos,

anchorage for me and I cherished it like Richard

of his growth, Wangers

Frank or

Lloyd

what Wrights, is not a readily accepted hypo- said; I believe I can somewhat recall what Otto Wagner did and Adolf Loos

No doubt, my own being was so much thesis, not even in socialist countries or

a stranger in the hemisphere in behind the Iron Curtain. Visual preserva- dividual,

began sprouting in myself, another in- more

permeated by so unequal per- which I began to practice first without tion of the outstanding personality, has

which were for their any contact but him, without any uncle had practice and appeal for many thousand sonality currents,

strangeness the more magic. But who in like his or even without his eloquence, the years, because of the general consensus

ог Holland or anywhere in linguistic benefit to easily communicate that the sedimentations of culture, politi- Germany cal, social, economic character are not Europe is still alive, who then was stimu- with Americans, merely mechanic phenomena, but need the lated and stirred, and recognizably kept middle-west.

It is Mr. Wright perhaps by this very miraculous senders and receivers of human on producing, under this impact!

so hard to see a true line of descendency, reason of social rootedness brains quite especially the far range

subconscious conversion or suprapersonal lacked became demonstratively unortho- senders, the genius who pushes through

evolution.

doz. A master of integration, he loved its communication and causes many unan- ticipated turns.

Was Wright really trying to proselytize to magnificently shock his surroundings and those of his clients through words and Now, Frank Lloyd Wright has died. I any Europeans, or later Japanese? know how many people, who hardly have was no conscious plan of his, I dare say. through designs. Unorthodoxy became his while for example the caption when in his first creed been converted by his endeavours over seventy years, have with deep or with decade of work Mr. Wright, through the "What will the neighbors think", which passing interest read the obituaries. And Oak Congregation of his pastor-uncle, be- "Time" magazine set under my likeness, these obituaries were much better, kinder, came very rapidly more successful. He was a question on which Mr. Wright had so thoroughly different sentiments than I, more befitting than I ever would have was more fortunate than any young man believed these last fity years. He looked I have known among some forty thousand with my passion for "fitting in any act of leadership into its human end other an old man at the time when I met him or so in our profession all around the globe.

neighborhood setting. A grand view for in 1924 at Louis H. Sullivan's funeral in Far from being ostracized for new design the potential of the dramatic change of Graceland Cemetery and even more so a ideas Frank Lloyd got job after job as a nature or landscape few evenings later, when I walked with very young man, built himself a better landscape as part of it has, since my him up and down on Michigan Boulevard studio than other architects had and a teenage, become a part of my naturalist's in Chicago and looked with him at Gage home to rear a numerous family. No one faith or hope. It makes me comprehend Brothers, one of the splendid buildings of in his parochial neighborhood realized that by contrast, what Frank Lloyd Wright so the old master, of which we talked with what he did would have signilcance far often strove to accomplish and achieved away, in Amsterdam or in Vienna, Wright in his "organic architecture"' as though In June of this year 1959, Frank Lloyd himself claimed the prairie of Illinois as Wright would have been ninety. He had his specific area of influence and stimula- grown, but truly designed by him to al- most frantastic formal beauty, was often outlived not only his older friend and tion. He made no cosmopolitan pronun found an occasion for overwhelming trans- master, his fellows and helpers of that ciamentos, and wanted to be an American, formation of what was there before. day, but practically all his early followers. a Middlewesterner. He was it, rebelling "Falling waters" would transmute a little I have know Burleigh Griffin and his wife, against extraneous influence. The affluent lyrical stream into gripping heroic drama, Bill Drummond, and later R.M. Schindler. Chicago suburb around

which could make an insignificant Pennsyl- They are dead. Henry van Bergen, once

architectural polyglot, too much so for vania creek valley better known among his chief draftsman before Mr. Wright him to accept.

architects the world over than the valley made his momentous trip to Europe in His effectiveness to broaden SO far of the Zambezi, however colossialy scaled 1910 I believe, lives in California, like beyond the prairie horizon was even to its waterfall. In the hands of pupils such Purcell of Sullivan's office. Both have him very unsuspected. While a handful mastery seemed to fade. long survived Irving Gill, whom I have of people, -if not in New York or Boston, So many formal followers of Frank Lloyd known and esteemed thirty years after he but in the older Europe, without compre- Wright's different periods have, it seems had been office boy, then Wright was top hension of his Chicago clients, circum- slipped out of sight, as he himsalf often designer of Adler and Sullivan.

stances, economics or even the sites of his uncannily predicated their fate of limita- I have heard Mr. Wright, long before buildings, sat up to watch, there are tors. Perhaps I have been more destined he wrote it down relate his own life really few, if any, alive now, beside my to, or capable of, admiration than of even story, I have seen manny of his relatives. self, to remember or to be deeply grieved attempted followership. The last of our I try to recall all this because, theoretical- on his ninetieth anniversary of the day team to visit Mr. Wright, not long before ly, such contact and familiarity with when a Unitarian schoolteacher gave birth his death, came back to say that he had preceding and surrounding circumstances to Frank. He woull have loved the cele- expressed himself as generous, as so often should give me a fair chance to see and bration!

toward my young man and myself, and interpret what had happened then or was When, how and for what consequences truly I owe him my heartfelt thanks to going to happen to this day.

did his birth actually and provably my own end.

sadness.

was

a scene of

——

human nature and

16

THE HONG KONG & FAR EAST BUILDER

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VOLUME 14, NUMBER 1

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