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AP®︎/College Art History
Course: AP®︎/College Art History > Unit 6
Lesson 2: Modern and contemporary art- Courbet, The Stonebreakers
- Early Photography: Niépce, Talbot and Muybridge
- Manet, Olympia
- Painting modern life: Monet's Gare Saint-Lazare
- Monet, The Gare Saint-Lazare
- Velasco, The Valley of Mexico
- Rodin, The Burghers of Calais
- Velasco, The Valley of Mexico
- Van Gogh, The Starry Night
- Van Gogh, The Starry Night
- Cassatt, The Coiffure
- Munch, The Scream
- Gauguin, Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?
- Sullivan, Carson, Pirie, Scott Building
- Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire
- Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire
- Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
- The first modern photograph? Alfred Stieglitz, The Steerage
- Stieglitz, The Steerage
- Gustav Klimt, The Kiss
- Constantin Brancusi, The Kiss
- Analytic Cubism
- Matisse, Goldfish
- Kandinsky, Improvisation 28 (second version), 1912
- Kirchner, Self-Portrait As a Soldier
- Käthe Kollwitz, In Memoriam Karl Liebknecht
- Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye
- Mondrian, Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow
- Stepanova, The Results of the First Five-Year Plan
- Meret Oppenheim, Object (Fur-covered cup, saucer, and spoon)
- Meret Oppenheim, Object (Fur-covered cup, saucer, and spoon)
- Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater
- Kahlo, The Two Fridas (Las dos Fridas)
- Jacob Lawrence, The Migration Series (*short version*)
- Jacob Lawrence, The Migration Series (*long version*)
- Duchamp, Fountain
- Lam, The Jungle
- Mexican Muralism: Los Tres Grandes David Alfaro Siqueiros, Diego Rivera, and José Clemente Orozco
- Rivera, Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Central Park
- de Kooning, Woman I
- Mies van der Rohe, Seagram Building
- Warhol, Marilyn Diptych
- Yayoi Kusama, Narcissus Garden
- Helen Frankenthaler, The Bay
- Oldenburg, Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks
- Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty
- Venturi, House in New Castle County, Delaware
- Basquiat, Horn Players
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Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater
Perched above a mountain cataract on a rocky hillside deep in the rugged forest of Southwestern Pennsylvania, some 90 minutes from Pittsburgh, is America’s most famous house. The commission for Fallingwater was a personal milestone for the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, since it clearly marked a turning point in his career. After this late-career triumph, the sixty-seven year old would go on to create a series of highly original designs that would validate his claim as “The world’s greatest architect.”
“the greatest architect of the nineteenth-century” —Philip Johnson
The mid-1930s were among the darkest years for architecture and architects in American history; the country’s financial system had collapsed with the failure of hundreds of banks. Almost no private homes were built. Many of the architectural projects started during the boom of the late 1920s were halted for lack of funds. Now in his sixties, Wright and his new wife Olgivanna were struggling to keep Taliesin, his Wisconsin home and studio, out of foreclosure. Worse still, his peers were beginning to regard Wright as an irrelevant anachronism whose time had passed.
In 1932 Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson opened the "Modern Architecture: International Exhibition" at the newly founded Museum of Modern Art in New York and simultaneously published the book International Style. This was, perhaps, the most influential architectural exhibit ever mounted in the United States and the book became a manifesto for modern architecture and would profoundly affect almost every major architectural project worldwide for the next 30 years. It focused on the work of four great “European functionalists”" Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and J.J.P. Oud. Wright was largely snubbed.
Hitchcock had praise for his early work, for its “many innovations," but he condemned Wright for a “[l]ack of continuity in his development and his unwillingness to absorb the innovations of his contemporaries and his juniors in Europe.” Hitchcock insulted Wright further by characterizing him as “a rebel by temperament… [who] refused even the discipline of his own theories.” The catalogue calls Wright a “half-modern” throwback, one of the “last representatives of Romanticism.” Wright responded by denigrating European Modernism as an “evil crusade,” a manifestation of “totalitarianism.”
A fellowship and a commission
The Wrights devised an architectural apprenticeship program that came to be known as the “fellowship.” And among the first candidates was Edgar Kaufmann Jr. who became enamored with Wright after reading his biography. Kaufmann was the son of Pittsburgh department store tycoon Edgar Kaufmann Sr.; whose thirteen story downtown Pittsburgh emporium was reported to be the largest in the world. Kaufmann senior was no stranger to architectural pursuits—he was involved in numerous public projects and built several stores and homes. Kaufmann let Wright know that he had several civic architectural projects in mind for him. He and his wife Liliane were invited to Taliesin and were duly impressed.
There are varying accounts regarding the circumstances that brought Kaufmann to offer Wright a chance to design a “weekend home” in the country; but we know that Wright made his first trip to the site on Bear Run, Pennsylvania in December, 1934. Wright’s apprentice Donald Hoppen has spoken of Wright’s “uncanny sense of...genius loci”1 (Latin for "spirit of the place") and from the very beginning, the architect rejected a site that presented a conventional view of the waterfall; instead, he audaciously offered to make the house part of it, stating that the “visit to the waterfall in the woods stays with me and a domicile takes shape in my mind to the music of the stream.” The South-southeast orientation gives the illusion that the stream flows, not alongside the house, but through it.
Fastest draw in the Midwest
Perhaps the most famous tale to come out of the lore of Fallingwater is the improbable story that Wright, after receiving the commission procrastinated for nine months until he was forced to draw up the complete plans while his patron was driving the 140 miles from Milwaukee to Taliesin. However, the essential story is validated by several witnesses. Apprentice Edgar Taffel recalled that after talking with Kaufmann on the phone, Wright “briskly emerged from his office...sat down at the table set with the plot plan and started to draw…The design just poured out of him. 'Liliane and E.J. will have tea on the balcony…they’ll cross the bridge to walk in the woods…' Pencils being used up as fast as we could sharpen them....Erasures, overdrawing, modifying. Flipping sheets back and forth. Then, the bold title across the bottom ‘Fallingwater.’ A house has to have a name.”2 There seems to be agreement that the whole process took about two hours.
Organic architecture
Edgar Kaufmann Jr. pointed out that Wright’s famous concept of “Organic Architecture” stems from his Transcendentalist background. The belief that human life is part of nature. Wright even incorporated a rock outcropping that projected above the living room floor into his massive central hearth, further uniting the house with the earth. “Can you say” Wright challenged his apprentices “when your building is complete, that the landscape is more beautiful than it was before?”3
In his book, Fallingwater Rising: Frank Lloyd Wright, E. J. Kaufmann, and America's Most Extraordinary House, Franklin Toker wrote that,
this delicate synthesis of nature and the built environment probably counts as the main reason why Fallingwater is such a well-loved work. The contouring of the house into cantilevered ledges responds so sympathetically to the rock strata of the stream banks that it does make Bear Run a more wondrous landscape than it had been before.4
Wright further emphasizes the connection with nature by liberal use of glass; the house has no walls facing the falls, only a central stone core for the fireplaces and stone columns. This provides elongated vistas leading the eye out to the horizon and the woods. Vincent Scully has pointed out that this reflects “an image of Modern man caught up in constant change and flow, holding on…to whatever seems solid but no longer regarding himself as the center of the world.”5 The architect’s creative use of “corner turning windows” without mullions causes corners to vanish. Wright even bows to nature by bending a trellis beam to accommodate a pre-existing tree.
Influences
Although he denied it, Wright was influenced by every conceivable architectural style, but Fallingwater owes little to his previous designs (the only exceptions being perhaps the use of irregular stones that are also found on Taliesin and his interest in strong horizontal lines). At Fallingwater, he appears to be more concerned with responding to the European Modernist design that he had in part inspired—but that had since eclipsed him. In effect, he set out to beat the Europeans at their own game, using elements of their idiom.
We see, for example, inspiration drawn from the balconies of Gropius’ design for the Chicago Tribune Tower competition, though instead of the stark white of the International Style, he paints his balconies a warmer, earthen tone in deference to nature and perhaps the Adobe dwellings of the American Southwest.
Fallingwater falling down?
The Kaufmanns loved Wright’s radical proposal to literally suspend the house over the waterfall. But Edgar Kaufmann Sr., ever the pragmatic business man (who had also studied engineering for a year at Yale) prudently sent a copy of Wright’s blueprints to his engineer; who found the ground unstable and did not recommend that he proceed with the house. Wright was not happy with his client’s lack of faith, but permitted an increase in the number and diameter of the structure's steel reinforcements—Kaufmann agreed to proceed. Its worth noting that the engineer’s warnings later proved valid, an issue that “haunted” Wright for the rest of his life.
Wright is famous for pushing the architectural envelope for dramatic effect. We see this is in the vast cantilevered wooden roof of Robie House in Chicago. In Fallingwater he chose ferro-concrete for his cantilevers, this use of reinforced concrete for the long suspended balconies was revolutionary. He boldly extended the balcony of the second floor master bedroom soaring six feet beyond the living room below.
However, due to the lack of proper support, cracks began appearing in the balcony floors soon after they were poured. Over the years since, cracks have been repeatedly repaired as the cantilevers continued to sag. By 2001 some of the 15 foot cantilevers had fallen more than 7 inches. To avoid a complete collapse, an ingenious system was devised using tensioned cables to correct the problem and stabilize Wright’s masterwork.
Almost from the day of its completion, Fallingwater was celebrated around the world. The house and its architect were featured in major publications including the cover of Time Magazine. Over the years its fame has only increased. According to Franklin Toker, Fallingwater’s most important contribution to Modern Architecture is surely the "acceptance of Modern architecture itself."
Essay by Charles Wiebe
Notes:
1. Donald W. Hoppen, The Seven Ages of Frank Lloyd Wright: The Creative Process, Dover Publications: New York, 1993, page 23.
2. Edgard Tafel, Years with Frank Lloyd Wright: Apprentice to Genius, Courier Dover Publications, 1979.
3. Hoppen, page 97.
- Franklin Toker, Fallingwater Rising: Frank Lloyd Wright, E. J. Kaufmann, and America's Most Extraordinary House, Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2003, np.
5. Meryle Secrest, Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography, University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1992, page 168.
Want to join the conversation?
- What year was this essay written?(3 votes)
- Cite this page as: Charles Wiebe, "Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater," in Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, accessed March 7, 2017, https://smarthistory.org/frank-lloyd-wright-fallingwater/.(5 votes)
- why was it called Fallingwater?(0 votes)
- Is the description of 'Fallingwater' as, "organic architecture" universally known as an architectural term? As an artist, I would call 'Fallingwater' extremely geometric and modern, but that it's dynamism is in its juxtaposition with the organic, natural, dynamic forms around it. Even if we were to consider 'Fallingwater' as the construct in conjunction with the natural space around it, I would hesitate to define it as "organic" but rather emphasize the quality of the geometry in dialogue with nature as it's defining feature.(3 votes)
- The term "organic architecture" is an idea from Frank Lloyd Wright's mind. It is the idea of a higher power's natural "plan" (not a tree, but God's ideal of "tree," as an example of that concept) applied to architecture. You can get a real sense of the beginning of this concept in his geometric abstractions of plant forms for stained glass in his early work (although I don't think he coined the term "organic architecture" until much later). In "Frank Lloyd Wright: A Film By Ken Burns & Lynn Novick," one of his apprentices explains it as "...more natural than nature itself."(1 vote)
- what is the name of the photographer who took the photo of Fallingwater and also who published it out on time magazine? please answer anyone, if you know !(2 votes)
- Here is a link to the Wikimedia Commons user that took one of the pictures:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Daderot
And the house was drawn on the cover of the Time's Magazine cover on Jan 17, 1938, which you can see here:
http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19380117,00.html(3 votes)
- Can you explain more about Fallingwater's cantilevers? Thank you.(2 votes)
- The cantilever is a structure that is attached to a solid, stable base on one end, but is not connected at the other. Think of a diving board. Falling Water is anchored to the boulder on which it sits and its lowest cantilever juts out over the Bear Run creek and waterfall. The cantilever above that is turned ninety degrees to the first level and sticks outward over the waterfall. The cantilevered floors began to sag due to some engineering problems and there was real concern that the cantilevers would fail. Around 2001, engineers began a huge renovation, removing the stone floors (mapping and numbering every stone) and installing huge cables like giant guitar strings under the floor which, when tensioned, arrested the sagging of the cantilevers and even brought them back toward level. They could not bring the concrete structures back to true level again because it would have put too much strain on the house. The entire renovation cost more than $11 million dollars which is 71 times the cost to build it in 1937 and 367 times more than the original budget of $30,000 (Wright went way over budget at $155,000).(2 votes)
- I have been studying materials that are good for building, and find it unique to see the different materials being used. for starters I don't think I would be a fan of the straw built structures as many have gone to flames over the years, but my current interest of materials to study is papercrete, I think it has potential in certain locations with the right weather... as for this article, it was quite enjoyable, but where did he come to the conclusion of which material he should use whilst building? great structure architect tho.(2 votes)
- I wonder how many architects of any period in time could design a Fallingwater in two hours as a passenger in a car or as documented in other reports in about two hours time. The man was a genius although Kaufman's engineer had a point about the balconies - Kaufman went forward with the building and the design and in retrospect - I am glad he did. Does anybody know how the issue with the balconies haunted Wright's career for the rest of his life as the article documents?(3 votes)
- How many windows does it have?(1 vote)
- From the author:Quite a few. Perhaps after the pandemic, you will have the opportunity to visit Fallingwater, and if you want, you could count them.(1 vote)
- Another thought was the following statement by Wright: “Can you say” Wright challenged his apprentices “when your building is complete, that the landscape is more beautiful than it was before?” - He was a true organic architect. I did not know that Wright considered himself a Transcendentalist - I thought the Transcendentalists were mostly from Concord like Thoreau and Emerson. Does anybody know anything about this Transcendentalist belief system that Wright supposedly had?(2 votes)
- Was Fallingwater ever used for everyday life? Like living in it and all of that? Or was it solely built for art?(1 vote)
- The home was built for the Kaufman family, which used it as their weekend home from 1937 until 1963.(1 vote)