Frank Lloyd Wright and the Dessau Bauhaus

Frank Lloyd Wright and Mason City

One often hears people asking about the flow of influence between the German Bauhaus and American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Pertaining to that, it was interesting this morning to run across this passage from the memoir of an eyewitness who was present then—

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Matthew Josephson, Life Among the Surrealists. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962—

In Germany [in 1927]…I had been deeply impressed by my visit to the school of the Bauhaus-Dessau where Walter Gropius, [Laszlo] Moholy-Nagy, and their confreres carried on a movement for the teaching and propagation of modern industrial design. These people had been frank to tell me that much of their inspiration was derived from an American artist whom Americans scarcely knew: Frank Lloyd Wright.

Wright and Design

 

a report of naiveté in assessing works of art

Cavern [detail] © Roy R. Behrens 2021

Abel Warshawsky, The memories of an American Impressionist. Kent OH: Kent State University Press, 1980, p. 62—

[In Paris] The "cult of the naive" at all costs became a rage…

A group of painters in Montmartre decided to exploit this hysteria and have some fun with the critics. Procuring a donkey, they tied a large paintbrush to his tail, first dipping the brush into an assortment of colors. Then a canvas was set up within striking distance of the donkey's tail, which in its gyrations soon covered the canvas with a weird conglomeration of colors—quite a stunning study in the new style, as the spectators all agreed. Witnesses and a notary, who had been invited to attend, attested to the manner in which the work had been done. This canvas was framed and sent to the Salon des Independants. It bore as title, if I remember rightly, Sunset on the Red Sea. After several well-known critics had remarked it and written about it as a work of extraordinary interest, the story with the signatures of the witnesses was published, and the laugh was on the "new art" critics.

Also see Art by Animals video, Desmond Morris, and pandemic montages.

imagine making your mother an arrangement

Title Slide (2013) © Roy R. Behrens

Above Although it seems like yesterday, it has been eight years ago that I was invited to speak about writing compared with image design at a writers' festival at Luther College in Decorah IA. I chose to give a slide talk, of which this was the title slide. I have always loved this portrait photograph of the Irish poet William Butler Yeats (whose father and brother were visual artists), by George Charles Bereford (public domain).

No, that's not a nose bleed. It's a perfectly purposeful devious use of his fantastic signature—WBYeats. And below, don't miss out on the chance to read his autobiography. There's nothing quite like it. And it doesn't let up for a minute.

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William Butler Yeats, The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats: Consisting of reveries over childhood and youth, the trembling of the veil, and dramatic personae. New York: Macmillan, 1953—

My two sisters and my brother and myself had dancing lessons in a low, red-brick and tiled house that drove away dreams, long cherished, of some day living in a house made exactly like a ship’s cabin. The dining-room table, where Sinbad the sailor might have sat, was painted peacock-blue, and the woodwork was all peacock-blue and upstairs a window niche was so big and high up that there was a flight of steps to go up and down by and a table in the niche. The two sisters of the master of the house, a well-known pre-Raphaelite painter, were our teachers, and they and their old mother were dressed in peacock-blue and in dresses so simply cut that they seemed a part of every story. Once when I had been looking with delight at the old woman, my father [Irish painter John Butler Yeats] who had begun to be influenced by French art, muttered, “Imagine dressing up your old mother like that” (pp. 16-17).

…I was happy when partly through my father’s planning some Whistlers were brought over and exhibited, and did not agree when my father said: “Imagine making your old mother an arrangement in gray!” (p. 50).

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Maurice Browne, Too Late to Lament: An autobiography. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1956, pp. 138-139—

One day [in Chicago] a Skyscraper [member of an elite arts society club] called to see me; his chains of office clanked about his neck. I bowed deeply. He regarded me with disfavor: “You are a friend of Nicholas Vachel Lindsay [the American poet]?” I pleaded guilty; the Skyscrapers mocked Lindsay for the way he read his rhymes and despised him because he traded them for bread, hawking his pamphlets from door to door through the farmlands of the Middle West.…

“Do you know Lindsay’s address?” the clubman asked. I did, “may I have it?” I replied that I had not Mr. Lindsay’s authority to disclose his present whereabouts but would forward a letter. “The matter is rather urgent; could you reach him by telephone?” I could but didn’t. The clubman hummed and hawed, then plunged like Doris Keane [a well-known American stage actress] but the splash was louder: “We are giving a luncheon in honor of Mr. William Butler Yeats tomorrow and would like you and your friend to be our guests.” I trust that I concealed my amazement and was courteous in conveying my regret that despite my admiration for Mr. Yeats I would be unable to attend; I could not of course answer for Mr. Lindsay. The clubman grew urgent: “Do you think that he will come?” My silence was duly interpreted: “But we must get him; we have to.” The conversation was growing interesting; I waited. “The fact is,”and this time the diver took a bellyflop which resounded through Chicago—“we announced that Yeats was coming, and now he says he won’t unless we get Lindsay.”

When the clubman had departed…I went into the hotel next door where Lindsay was staying and we laughed ourselves sick. But Lindsay had never met Yeats, and the latter’s demand moved him deeply; so he decided to attend the luncheon and insisted on my coming with him to hold his hand.

[In the concluding half-hour of the luncheon] as though no one else were present Yeats talked directly to Lindsay, and to Lindsay alone. He spoke of the poet’s task, the poet’s reward, the poet’s joy; poet to poet, equal to equal. Then he [Yeats] walked down the room, shook hands, turned again to his hosts, thanked them once more in a sentence, bowed, left. The mandarins were too flabberghasted to show their chagrin; besides, Yeats was a great poet; they themselves had said so.… [pp. 138-139].

[At the end of 1931, two years after the Wall Street Crash, distraught by poor health and financial concerns, Vachel Lindsay took his own life, at age 52, by drinking a bottle of lye.]

A thud of consonants | an upholstery of tears

Roy R. Behrens © altered book collage (1992)

Above Roy R. Behrens, collage, mixed media, altered book. Private collection.

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Anatole Broyard, Aroused by Books [his dismissal of the poetry of Dylan Thomas]—

Such a fatigue of adjectives, a drone of alliterations, a huffing of hyphenated words hurdling the meter like tired horses. Such a faded upholstery of tears, stars, bells, bones, flood and blood…a thud of consonants in tongue, night, dark, see, wound and wind.

Top Selling | Frank Lloyd Wright & Mason City

Digital montage (2017)

Publisher's description of Roy R. Behrens, Frank Lloyd Wright and Mason City: Architectural Heart of the Prairie. Charleston SC: The History Press, 2016 (repeatedly ranked in recent months among top best-selling books on Frank Lloyd Wright on Amazon)—

In the early 1900s, Frank Lloyd Wright transformed a small midwestern prairie community into one of the world’s most important architectural destinations. Mason City, Iowa, became home to his City National Bank and Park Inn—the last surviving Wright hotel. In addition, his prototype Stockman House helped launch the Prairie School architectural style. Soon after, architect Walter Burley Griffin followed in Wright’s footsteps, designing a cluster of Prairie School homes in the Rock Crest/Rock Glen neighborhood. Design historian Roy Behrens leads the way through Mason City’s historic development from the Industrial Revolution to the modern era of Frank Lloyd Wright.  
    

Book Review | Frank Lloyd Wright & Mason City

Jerome Klinkowitz, in "Right Here in River City: An Iowa Community at the Prairie School's Edge: A Review of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mason City by Roy R. Behrens" in Universitas (University of Northern Iowa). Vol 12, 2016-2017—

…it is to Behrens's credit that his comprehension of the [Prairie School] movement reaches well beyond the limits that some commentators would impose…

No scholar has identified both the process of organic architecture and its sources more succinctly or with such clarity of thought. More>>>

Self-Portrait Parody | Evan Seuren

Self-portrait parody © Evan Seuren

Above Digital self-portrait by Evan Seuren (a parody of Triple Self-Portrait by American illustrator Norman Rockwell (1960)), completed in an undergraduate graphic design course at the University of Northern Iowa.

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Guy Browning (The Guardian 1999)—

A shoal of a million fish might not be able to write Romeo and Juliet but they can change direction as one in the blink of an eye. Using language a human team leader can give an order to a team of six and have it interpreted in six completely different ways.

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Tony Benn (The Independent 1997)—

We should put spin-doctors in spin clinics, where they can meet other spin patients and be treated by spin consultants. The rest of us can get on with the proper democratic process.

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Stuart Davis (1940)—

An artist who has travelled on a steam train, driven an automobile, or flown in an airplane doesn't feel the same way about form and space as one who has not.

Promotional Poster | Elizabeth Philipp

Promotional poster (2013) © Elizabeth Philipp

Above Proposed promotional poster for the College of Humanities, Arts and Sciences (CHAS) at the University of Northern Iowa, by graphic design student Elizabeth Philipp (2013).

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Eudora Welty in (her autobiography) One Writer's Beginnings. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1984, p. 10—

At around age six, perhaps, I was standing by myself in our front yard waiting for supper, just at that hour in a late summer day when the sun is already below the horizon and the risen full moon in the visible sky stops being chalky and begins to take on light. There comes the moment, and I saw it then, when the moon goes from flat to round. For the first time it met my eyes as a globe. The word "moon" came into my mouth as though fed to me out of a silver spoon. Held in my mouth the moon became a word. It had the roundness of a Concord grape Grandpa took off his vine and gave me to suck out of its skin and swallow whole, in Ohio. 

Miami Art Deco Postage | Cody Russell

Design © Cody Russell (2013)

Above Hypothetical postage stamp by graphic design student Cody Russell, commemorating historic Art Deco architecture in Miami.

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Elizabeth Pringle (aka Patience Pennington). A Woman Rice Planter. New York: Macmillan, 1905—

Mrs. R., one of the loveliest women in our community, was struck by lightning during the storm last evening. She had always had a great terror of lightning, though in every other respect she was a fearless woman, so that her family always gathered round her during a storm and tried as much as possible to shut out the sight and sound. On this occasion her husband and daughter were sitting one on each side of her on an old-fashioned mahogany sofa, she with her handkerchief thrown over her face. When the fatal flash came the husband and daughter were thrown forward to the floor and were stunned; as soon as they recovered consciousness they turned to reassure the mother as to their not being seriously hurt. She was still sitting straight up on the sofa with the handkerchief over her face; they lifted the handkerchief as they received no answer and found life extinct…There was only one small spot at the back of the neck.

Cubist Food

A cartoon by Frank King (April 1913), making fun of cubist art.

James Elkins in Why Art Cannot Be Taught. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001, p. 68—

Art school catalogs from the turn of the century are filled with reproductions of student paintings that look like slavish copies of John Singer Sargent or Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, and exhibition catalogs from the 1950s show hundreds of students' works that emulate abstract expressionism. The lesson I draw from looking at older art school catalogs and graduation exhibitions is that fifty years from now even the most diverse-looking work will begin to seem quite homogenous. Works that seemed new or promising will fade into what they really are: average works, mediocre attempts to emulate the styles of the day. That's depressing, I know: but it's what history teaches us.

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Joshua Fineberg in Classical Music: Why Bother?: Hearing the World of Contemporary Culture Through a Composer's Ear. London: Routledge, 2006—

Most art is crap. This may be a shocking idea to many people. We think of art as the great masterworks we know, and it's very easy to forget the mountains of mediocrity that were sifted to lift Bach or Dante or Emily Dickinson to their Olympian heights.

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Alan Fletcher in The Art of Looking Sideways. Phaidon Press, 2001—

I made my weekly telephone call to my mother. "What have you been up to this week?" she asked—as usual. "Nothing much," I responded—as usual. Then adventurously said, "I've been putting a book together." "Oh, what's it about," she queried—with vague interest. My mother wasn't into reading, she equated it with working. "Well," I improvised, "it's about seeing." "Oh, I see"—she said. Then changed the subject. "Are you looking forward to going on holiday next week?"

Costumes as Performance & Activism

Roy R. Behrens, Poster Design (detail), 2011

There is such enormous satisfaction in the process of graphic design, especially when a client is clear about the focus of an event (or product or whatever), budget restrictions, and so on—and thereafter it's left to my judgment. A good example recently is this logo-like title image I made for an upcoming symposium (lectures, exhibits, performances) on Costumes as Performance and Activism, sponsored by the University of Northern Iowa Arts Consortium and the Costume Society of America Midwest Region, on October 14-15, 2011. And of course it's the same kind of pleasure that designers of costumes and clothing enjoy.

Mediocre Emulations

A thought-provoking comment by American art historian James Elkins in Why Art Cannot Be Taught (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001), p. 68—

Art school catalogs from the turn of the century are filled with reproductions of student paintings that look like slavish copies of John Singer Sargent or Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, and exhibitions catalogs from the 1950s show hundreds of students works that emulate abstract expressionism. The lesson I draw from looking at older art school catalogs and graduation exhibitions is that fifty years from now even the most diverse-looking work will begin to seem quite homogeneous. Works that seemed new or promising will fade into what they really are: average works, mediocre attempts to emulate the styles of the day. That's depressing, I know: but it's what history teaches us.

Art as Brain Surgery

From an interview with film theorist Ray Carney in Rick Schmidt, Feature Filmmaking at Used Car Prices (NY: Penguin, 1995)—

The greatest works [of art] do brain surgery on their viewers. They subtly reprogram our nervous systems. They make us notice and feel things we wouldn't otherwise. One of the principal ways they do this is through the strangeness of their styles. Style creates special ways of knowing. Henry James and John Milton do it with sentences. Chantal Ackerman and Roberto Rossellini do it with pictures and sounds. Artistic style induces unconventional states of awareness and sensitivity. It freshens and quickens our responses. It limbers up our perceptions and teaches us new possibilities of feeling and understanding. In this view of it, art is not a luxury, a frill, a pastime, a form of entertainment or pleasure (although it can be supremely entertaining and pleasurable). The greatest works of art are not alternatives to or escapes from life, but enactments of what it feels like to live at the highest pitch of awareness—at a level of awareness most people seldom reach in their ordinary lives. The greatest works are inspired examples of some of the most exciting, demanding routes that can be taken through experience. They bring us back to life.