To anyone familiar with Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural designs, the fact that love of Japanese art, design and print work should come as no surprise. The book 'Frank Lloyd Wright and the Art of Japan: The Artist's Other Passion' by Julia Melch gives clear details of the influence of the Japanese on his thinking and creativity, both in narrative and in glorious photography and print.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Wright was born in Wisconsin shortly after the American Civil War. He studied in the late nineteenth century with noted architect Louis Sullivan, with whom he had continuing and occasionally strained relationship. Wright is probably best known in America for the design of the Guggenheim Museum of Art In New York City; more generally, though, he is known for a particular style of low-built prairie-style houses and institutional buildings, that utilised open-space planning, and often had an element of interaction with elements such as water (in fact, a perennial complaint of Wright buildings is that they leak!). Wright was an innovator in incorporating engineering principles into the design of his buildings to provide sturdiness and creative forms of support and room design. In Japan, Wright was well-known for his design of the Imperial Hotel in Japan, as well as other buildings, including private residences of many prominent Japanese citizens. His work in Japan did not extend much beyond the early 1920s, however, and even the Imperial Hotel was demolished in 1968. Wright himself passed away in 1959 at the age of 91.
Wright and the Art of Japan
This book was produced for the Japan Society Gallery of New York by Julia Melch. It traces early affinities and influences of Japanese art on Wright and his work, continuing interest including Wright's almost voracious collecting habits, and the final selling and distribution of his collection late in Wright's life.
'When Wright died at the age of almost ninety-two, he owed money to several Asian art dealers in New York, and there were six thousand Japanese colour woodblock prints in his personal collection, not to mention some three hundred Chinese and Japanese ceramics, bronzes, sculptures, textiles, stencils, and carpets, and about twenty Japanese and Chinese folding screens.'
Some of this collection remains as part of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, but much had to be sold to pay debts, including tax bills.
Japanese art probably first came into Wright's sphere of creative influences with the World's Fair of 1893 in Chicago. Louis Sullivan had many books of Japanese design and art in his offices when Wright first joined the firm of Adler and Sullivan. This probably represents the earliest introduction. However, Japanese art was becoming widely available in American and Europe by this time, and Japanese principles were beginning to be introduced in novel ways to various buildings. Wright's first trip to Japan came in 1905, the first of many.
Wright became well-known in Japan, and entered a period he sometimes referred to as his 'Oriental Symphony'. During the time of his work on the Imperial Hotel, he gave an interview which showed his standing and mis-understanding in the Japanese architectural community:
Wright was not only a collector, but was himself a dealer of some standing. Particularly in Oak Park and the Chicago area, his designs for buildings would often include artistic recommendations that he would provide as dealer.
This lead to a major scandal, which Melch recounts in some (sometimes juicy) detail, including Wright's egocentric way of viewing the world and attempt to 'get away' with various controversial practices of manufacture and transfer of art work.
'Wright was an immodest foreigner operating outside the guidelines of the closed community of Tokyo print dealers. He flaunted his money and exuded the thinly veiled bravado of the ace dealer. Prices were escalating, the stakes were high, and h is jealous rivals were no doubt pleased to take him out of the game. Revamping was a new technique, totally unexpected. Greed and anticipation of huge profits had made him careless.'
Wright left Japan in 1922, before completion of the Imperial Hotel. He never returned. In fact, he had few international dealings in art or architecture after this period. He longed for greater international acclaim and exposure, but save a few unfinished projects in Hungary and Baghdad, he had few foreign assignments, and none of note.
Disposing of the collection, both before his death and by his widow after his death, is a tale in-and-of itself recounted in the book. Trading with friends and other art dealers, auctioning off pieces individually and as collections, and giving gifts away reduced the collection somewhat, but Wright continued to add pieces throughout his life.
Julia Melch
The author, Julia Melch, has had a career devoted to Asian art. Educated at Smith College and Harvard University, she has worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art organising exhibitions of Asian art. She is currently a senior consultant to Christie's, the famous auction house, specialising in Japanese art works.
This book is produced by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., which has a strong reputation, well deserved, for producing outstanding volumes of art. The colours are vibrant and attractive; the pages are firm and well-suited to the art represented. This is a reference volume, a great coffee-table book, and an interesting narrative read. Giving a perspective on both Frank Lloyd Wright and Japanese art of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the lens of each other is a unique perspective, well executed.
