541

Frank Lloyd Wright

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:2,000.00 - 2,500.00 USD
Frank Lloyd Wright

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Auction Date:2018 Apr 11 @ 18:00 (UTC-5 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
Important typescript article entitled “To the Fifty-Eight,” copiously emended and annotated in black ink by Frank Lloyd Wright, five pages, 8.5 x 11, August 1939. The article, which appeared in the October 1939 issue of The Journal of the Royal Institute of Architects, was a rebuttal to criticism of a lecture he delivered in London in May 1939 censuring the ‘International Style’ of architecture. The article, in part: “If printed reactions to my talks in London—no speaker really—which should have reached me there but now reach me at Taliesin mean anything, I have succeeded in getting myself misunderstood and well disliked, especially by those who should have been quick to understand me. I refer to the 58th variety—‘the fruit of my own orchard’? For such pains as I took in the circumstances I am accused of disowning ‘the fruit of my own orchard’ when I intended only to cut down saplings interfering with good fruit…Is the idea that good architecture must be, first of all, good building and the architect a master-builder first and an aesthetician afterwards—heresy? Is the idea that good community life is the life of the individual raised to the nth power rather than the life of the individual reduced to the lowest common denominator—idealistic hallucination? Cake? In this connection I ask M. A. R. S….again…which came first—hen or egg? Well—if the egg is the Idea then the egg came first—and, just so—society. First the great Individual (the Idea or Egg) then Society (the Hen). After that what have you?…I love Romance as I love sentiment. But just as I dislike sentimentality I would dislike their ‘Romance.’—I suggest you put a gently sloping roof on any Le Corbusier or Gropius just to see what you have left of the so-called International Style after proper deductions have been made…Have I ‘changed’ because I used to say the machine is the artist’s tool and now say that man should use the machine and not the machine use man?…I accept that backwash as European reaction on the way towards the ‘International Style’: a style that could never be Democratic because it is the use of man by the machine. ‘They’ are striving to perfect that?…I began my work as architect by sensibly accepting the machine as the creative artist’s inevitable tool believing that only where such as he had it in control could it prove a blessing instead of a curse.” In fine condition, with rusty staple holes along the top edge.