Lectures
"Robie House: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Revolutionary Idea," an FLWT exclusive Zoom Lecture with Author Kathryn Smith
Kathryn Smith is an author of numerous books, including Frank Lloyd Wright: Hollyhock House & Olive Hill, Wright on Exhibit: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Architectural Exhibitions, and a contributor to Frank Lloyd Wright: The Houses and Frank Lloyd Wright: Prairie Houses.
Recorded June 4, 2024
Christian Witt-Dörring
By 1910 Vienna's architectural avant-garde was deeply divided into two irreconcilable camps. In contrast to Josef Hoffmann and his Secessionist circle, which subscribed to the unity of the arts and consequently pursued the ideal of the Gesamtkunstwerk or Total Work of Art, the lonely wolf Adolf Loos rejected this model as nothing more than a new type of corset. Loos demanded a strict division of art and function. During Wright's visit to Vienna in 1910 – and even while the father of modern Viennese architecture, Otto Wagner, was still active – a new generation of architects like Josef Frank and Dagobert Peche began to enter upon the scene. In drawing from both approaches a new generation reached its own conclusions as to what the future role of architecture and design in society should be.
Taking Wright and the Robie House as its central focus, Frank Lloyd Wright: Origins and Influences explores the international exchange of ideas that shaped the work of progressive designers in Britain, Europe and America at the turn of the twentieth century.
Recorded July 17, 2014
Kevin Nute, Professor of Architecture, University of Oregon
From the opening of the 20th century through to the present day, the relationship between the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and the traditional architecture of Japan has been a recurring source of discussion, and no little puzzlement. One of the principal factors in maintaining this interest has been the fact that whilst Wright freely acknowledged an important philosophical debt to Japanese art, and to the wood block print in particular, he consistently rejected suggestions that Japanese architecture had any direct impact on his work. Wright maintained that he found in Japanese culture not the inspiration which many suspected, but merely confirmation of many of his own ‘organic’ design principles. In his lecture, Kevin Nute examines Wright's interest in traditional Japanese pictorial art in the context of his philosophy of 'organic' architecture, and how the former contributed directly to its formal expression. Taking Wright and the Robie House as its central focus, Frank Lloyd Wright: Origins and Influences explores the international exchange of ideas that shaped the work of progressive designers in Britain, Europe and America at the turn of the twentieth century.
Recorded August 7, 2014
Wendy Hitchmough, Head of Historic Buildings and Research, Historic Royal Palaces
The balance of power between artists and architects shifted in the last decades of the nineteenth century. As artists became celebrities, the 'artist architect' emerged - liberated from social conventions and free to pursue a vision of the house as a complex work of art. Frank Lloyd Wright, who embarked on his career in the waning years of the nineteenth century, embodied the concept of the artist architect. Wright’s ideology, like that of his international contemporaries, focused on the complete integration of the house - site and structure, interior and exterior, furniture, ornament and architecture, every element of the design was connected. Dr. Wendy Hitchmough traces the European roots of Wright’s most ambitious early houses. From William Morris to the Omega Workshops, from Carl Larsson to Eliel Saarinen she considers the ways in which artists and designers joined forces, and art opened the way to breaking rules in domestic design.
Taking Wright and the Robie House as its central focus, Frank Lloyd Wright: Origins and Influences explores the international exchange of ideas that shaped the work of progressive designers in Britain, Europe and America at the turn of the twentieth century.
Recorded September 11, 2014
Pamela Robertson Professor of Mackintosh Studies and Senior Curator, Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow
Nikolaus Pevsner described Charles Rennie Mackintosh as "the European counterpart of Frank Lloyd Wright," but has that assessment stood the test of time and is there common cause in their apparently distinct careers? This presentation seeks common ground and shared experience through an evaluation of Mackintosh's architectural and interior designs, their cultural and ideological origins, and the early critical reputation of both men. The lecture draws on the findings of the major research project currently underway at The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, Mackintosh Architecture: Context, Making and Meaning.
Taking Wright and the Robie House as its central focus, Frank Lloyd Wright: Origins and Influences explores the international exchange of ideas that shaped the work of progressive designers in Britain, Europe and America at the turn of the twentieth century.
Recorded June 20, 2013
Anne Mallek, Curator of the Gamble House, Pasadena, California
Towards the end of his life, William Morris proclaimed that "good houses and good books" were "the pleasurable end towards which all societies of human beings ought now to struggle." About this same time, the English Arts & Crafts movement began to find a sympathetic audience in America, primarily through the exchange of design literature and the American quest for a native style and architecture. Frank Lloyd Wright was at the heart of this exchange, especially in the early decades of his career, from his relationship with Morris-successor Charles Robert Ashbee to his own search for the "House Beautiful." Ultimately, Wright outdistanced the movement as his architecture evolved beyond this early cross-pollination, achieving a style both distinctly his own and distinctively American.
Taking Wright and the Robie House as its central focus, Frank Lloyd Wright: Origins and Influences explores the international exchange of ideas that shaped the work of progressive designers in Britain, Europe and America at the turn of the twentieth century.
Recorded July 25, 2013
Wim de Wit, Adjunct Curator at the Cantor Art Museum, Stanford University and Consulting Curator, Getty Research Institute
Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture was already well known in The Netherlands by the beginning of the second decade of the twentieth century. In 1911, the "father" of Dutch architectural modernism, the architect Hendrik P. Berlage, made a visit to the United States and, accompanied by American architect William Gray Purcell, toured the east coast and Midwest specifically to see the work of not only Louis H Sullivan and H.H. Richardson, but especially that of Frank Lloyd Wright. After his return Berlage went on a lecture tour in Holland and Germany and spoke with great admiration about Wright's work. This was the beginning of a close relationship between the American architect and his Dutch colleagues--both the expressionists of the Amsterdam School and the rationalists of the De Stijl movement. This lecture examines these mutually beneficial interactions between America and The Netherlands.
Taking Wright and the Robie House as its central focus, Origins and Influences explores the international exchange of ideas that shaped the work of progressive designers in Britain, Europe and America at the turn of the twentieth century. The program is generously supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art.