Making things happen
... with integrity
Monday March 29, 2004 Volume VI Number 13
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Taliesin by Ken Kemp |
rank Lloyd Wright built his first home in Oak Park, Illinois, my birthplace. Later, his residential masterpiece, thirty seven thousand square feet of living space he called Taliesin, emerged from the rolling green hills of Southern Wisconsin on the banks of the wide Wisconsin River just outside the village of Spring Green, where Carolyn’s parents live in retirement. The Master Architect, whose name to this day sparks vigorous architectural debate, this caped, top-hat-and-cane, self-styled aristocrat with a shock of wavy white hair, shares our geographic roots.
When he died in 1959, he was celebrated as a genius. He
mastered the art of personal presence. He understood that clothes make the
man. He endured nasty public scandal and personal tragedy. Born in the modest
town of Richland Center just after the Civil War (1867), young Frank grew up
with meager means. But his mother believed her only child was destined for
greatness, and never missed an opportunity to build this perception into his
impressionable conscious mind. So when he ventured off to the university in
Madison, he fully expected he would excel. He studied engineering, preferring
the drawing board. But quickly he became impatient with what he believed to be
a pervasive mediocrity. Course
work bored him. His professors lacked
ambition. He moved to Chicago. He sought out the most influential architects
in the city, determined to learn all he could about the design and construction
of great buildings. He won a position as apprentice with the prestigious
Chicago firm, Adler and Sullivan. The principals of the firm soon recognized
his potential, his perfectionism, his attention to detail, and promoted him up
through the ranks.
He married early into a moneyed Chicago family with the full blessing of Adler and Sullivan. He and his new wife, Catherine, began the design of a sprawling “prairie style” residence on a wide tree lined avenue in Oak Park in 1893. Wright’s design endures to this day as a prototype of the style and elegance that marked his creations for the remainder of his long career. Catherine bore six children in that home. But Frank remained inattentive. As the new century began, he grew increasingly restless. He felt bound by the duties of employment, and the monotonous routines of building on someone else’s design. He yearned for independence. Social obligations became a tedious waste of time. Perhaps it was the absence of siblings during his childhood – he had little time for fatherhood or interest in parenting and he did not appreciate Catherine’s pre-occupation with the brood he had created. He obsessed over his work. He longed to expand his experience in architecture. He was impatient for greatness.
His sights turned to Europe. He arranged to take a leave of absence from the firm to study abroad. The wife of a client of the Chicago firm, Mamah Cheney, shared his curiosity and passion for the continent and accompanied him. Two years later, the two returned, bypassed Chicago, and settled in Spring Green where he announced his plans to acquire six hundred acres and build Taliesin, to the shock and dismay of his Chicago friends and colleagues. The firm fired him. The headlines blared scandal. Catherine refused to divorce him. Frank Lloyd Wright, the young architect with unlimited potential, high social standing, associated with the finest firm in one of the largest cities in America, spurned it all with contempt. He escaped to Spring Green.
Frank Lloyd Wright spent money. He didn’t maintain reserves. His expansion plans occurred because of his incredible powers of persuasion and aristocratic airs. Creditors and vendors were often left empty handed.
When he died, at the age of eighty-two, he would boast a massive portfolio of unique properties – most of which he completed in the final fifteen years of his life.
He would become known during the nineteen-fifties as the greatest living architect, primarily because he introduced himself as such. In a televised interview preserved in a grainy and scratchy film, Mike Wallace, then a young upstart news anchor asked the aging artist if he believed his reputation was perhaps a bit overstated. Wright answered simply, “No, it is not.” So the legend grew.
Wright’s flight to the country-side and the creation of Taliesin established the style that would become associated with the Frank Lloyd Wright legend. Blending the sophistication of city life and European culture with an agrarian work ethic was perhaps his greatest contribution. He learned to despise the city, and said so. In the nineteen-twenties and thirties architecture was enamored with efficiencies and industrial prowess and wiz-bang machines. New buildings, particularly in the cities, reflected this utilitarian approach. Buildings were boxes, square and rectangular, with none of the craftsmanship or style of European artisans. He believed the city, and its pre-occupation with high pressure productivity and efficient functionality had stolen the heart and the soul of its occupants.
He said, “The tall modern office building is the machine
pure and simple...the engine, the motor and the battleship are the works of art
of the century.” His advice to city dwellers: “Abandon it.”
Which is what he did.
The original Taliesin is located in perhaps the most beautiful farm land in America. Its rich soil (a neighboring town is called Black Earth), deep forests and slow, rolling hills, broad open meadows, rivers and lakes and streams would be a suitable canvas for a skilled painter. The seasons color these hills in different shades, rhythmic cycles, pulsating through time. He would say, “Do not build a house on top of a hill. Build it in the hill.” A residence should never dominate a property; rather it should dwell among the nature it inhabits. Such was Taliesin.
Just a few years into the development of his new home while Wright was away, a disgruntled employee, in a mad fit of rage, murdered Wright’s companion Mamah Chenney and her two children and then four other of Wright’s employees in cold blood and then set fire to Taliesin. Most of the main house burned before firefighters doused the blaze.
Unrepentant, unfazed, Frank Lloyd Wright simply went back to work. He rebuilt Taliesin with heightened resolve. Alone. He never connected with the wife or children he left behind in Oak Park. Catherine eventually agreed to divorce. He began to write. He penned an autobiography of himself, framing his life and work as that of a tortured genius rejected by the mainstream for his sensitivities to the spiritual nature of architecture and his flat rejection of stark, inhuman utilitarianism. He published articles. After a failed romance with an unstable woman, Wright married Olgivanna Milanoff in 1927. She understood him and appreciated his potential. She would be the companion and business partner who would propel his career to the heights predicted by his mother during those childhood years in Richland Center.
And this became the hallmark of Frank Lloyd Wright. He
believed that the space we occupy defines us. The shapes and openness, the
walls and windows and ceilings, the relationship between the interior and the
space outside, express the way in which we perceive ourselves and our world.
There is an elegance to his architectural lines, an openness in the space, the
boundaries that separate interior and exterior seem to disappear. It was
Olgivanna’s idea. She proposed that Taliesin become a center for aspiring
architects. They would come to the place to study with the master. But their
experience at Taliesin would be far more than academic. They would create.
They would work. Part of the day would be devoted to study and drawing.
Another part of the day would require physical labor – cultivating the soil,
working the farm or expanding the improvements on Taliesin. Then in the
evening, and on weekends, they would enjoy the arts. Music. Theater.
Concerts. Readings. It would be a total communal experience for the whole
person. A kind of Skinnerian Walden Two. Participants would pay a substantial
fee for the privilege of learning. Applications streamed in from all over the
world.
And so they built. Mr. Wright as Captain. He dressed the
part. Commanding the ship. Olgivanna tended to operations – setting menus and
living arrangements and schedules, processing applications and designing
events. The work progressed, and the Frank Lloyd Wright style invaded
America. The prairie houses in Chicago, Los Angeles and Tokyo. Schools.
Churches. Public buildings. Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona. The
Usonian Houses (Wright’s attempt to popularize his style in affordable middle
class residences). His crowning achievements: the Johnson Wax headquarters in
Racine Wisconsin and the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. But his most
famous house, “Fallingwater” in southwest
Pennsylvania – the Kaufman residence
built in the forest on a rocky waterfall. Exquisite.
When Mr. Wright died at age eighty-two still hard at work, to Olgivanna’s dismay, he directed that his remains be buried at Taliesin beside his mother and his beloved Mamah Chenney.
* * * * * *
On this Monday morning, you are a leader. At some point in your life, you may have considered greatness as a life-goal. Probably not. Greatness doesn’t seem all that appealing in this modern age. There’s a downside to greatness. Ask Frank Lloyd Wright.
I know the tree-lined streets of my birthplace, Oak Park, Illinois. And I’ve wandered through those rolling hills of Southern Wisconsin, up and down the streets of Spring Green where the memory of Frank Lloyd Wright remains. We’ve taken in an outdoor production of a Shakespearian play in the summer festival down the road and up the river from Taliesin and watched the sunset over the hills and trees. It’s no wonder that the master architect loved this rich land.
His obsessions blinded him. He abandoned his family. His lover murdered. His home burned. His colleagues banished him. And yet somewhere out of the darkness, he created work of lasting power and beauty.
And Frank Lloyd Wright was right. The environment we create for ourselves defines who we are. The rooms. The art. The fabrics. The color. The tone. The gardens. The books. The feel. The relationship to the land. All of these connect us as the spiritual beings we are.
We are more than function. Our space is not simply practical.
We are built for something more.
Posted in Valley Center, California
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2004
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