Description:

A corrected draft by Frank Lloyd Wright with over 20 words in his hand defending his style: "...fresh and new in every building I build...I suggest you put a gently sloping roof on any LE CORBUSIER OR GROPIUS just to see what you have left..."

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT (1867-1959) Important Typescript Signed in type, "Frank Lloyd Wright," 5 pages, 8.5" x 11", Taliesin, August 1939, with numerous corrections and emendations in his hand throughout, a draft of his article entitled "To the Fifty-Eighth," Expected folds, some minor marginal wear, minor staple holes at top margin, else fine.

The article, which appeared in the October 1939 issue of The Journal of the Royal Institute of Architects, was a rebuttal to criticisms levelled at him after a lecture he delivered in London in May 1939 attacking the "International Style" of architecture.

Wright opens his pointed rebuttal: "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 pretty thoroughly 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 out DOWN saplings interfering with good fruit. Therefore certain intellectualists (saplings) are saying I am changed to 'escapist'. A bad word, their word 'escapist'? Boys, Why call names? Why not go to work? Go on...do something on your THEIR own that doesn't take refuge with the incompetent in a 'universal' pattern for something that (should it abide with principle) ought to be as alive and various as human character is itself!"

Countering accusations that his compatriots at Taliesin have their heads in the sand, contributing little substance to the field, he retorts: "Once and for all, concerning this constantly repeated reference to my contribution to Architecture as a kind of romanticism: because any attempt on their part to establish a 'contemporary vernacular' is defied by the revelations of principle eternally fresh and new in every building I build - they DRAG IN THE term 'Romanticism' is dragged in to conceal their own impotence whereas it rally only explains it. I love romance as I love sentiment. But just as I dislike sentimentality I would dislike their 'Romance." Corbusier or Gropius – 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."

Wright's central problem with the International Style was that man had become the tool of the machine: "...Where is that creative force today? THE man is not using the Machine! The machine is using the man and is using him so he is losing himself,...becoming a 'thing' beneath his push button and steering wheel...If he [the creative artist] still exists now he will probably be found under some other name, because, as he stood, the machine ahs already wiped him out as any constructive element in social life today. I foresaw this possibility. I did not accept it."

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