Academic literature on the topic 'Frank Lloyd Wright House (Oak Park, Ill.)'

Eleven recently discovered letters in the Royal Library in Stockholm, written by Mamah Bouton Borthwick and Frank Lloyd Wright to Ellen Key, the Swedish social theorist and feminist reformer, between 1911 and 1914, shed new light on Key's influence, not only on the couple's image of themselves as radical reformers, but also on the design and concept of Taliesin, the house that Wright built as a residence, workshop, and retreat for them in 1913. These letters reveal that Borthwick, a client and neighbor of Wright's in Oak Park, discovered Key's writings soon after she and Wright abandoned their families and fled to Europe in 1909; from that point until August 1914, when Borthwick was murdered by a deranged servant at Taliesin, both she and Wright became avid disciples of Key's philosophy, and looked to her for guidance and support. It has long been known that Key's many publications on subjects such as marriage, divorce, birth control, children's education, and individual freedom, were read with interest by Wright and Borthwick, and that Borthwick was named Key's "only authorized translator" in English. The letters, analyzed in the context of close readings of Key's most significant and widely read texts, offer new insights into the meaning of Key's writings for the couple, revealing an explicit connection between Key's ideas and Taliesin, which Borthwick describes as having been "founded on Ellen Key's ideal of love." The texts provide further evidence of the feminist influence on Wright's emerging ideas about individual responsibility, artistic freedom, the family, and household life.

This is a contextual investigation of the theory and design of Rudolph M. Schindler (1887-1953), one of the most outstanding and interesting architects of the Modern Movement in the United States. Born in 1887 in Vienna, he was trained under Otto Wagner at the Academy of Fine Arts, under Adolf Loos in the Bauschule, and under Frank Lloyd Wright working in his studio in Oak Park and Taliesin. The architectural design of Schindler not only reflects the influence of his teachers but it also has had a lasting influence on modern architecture in the United States. Although Schindler did not teach extensively at architectural schools, his articles and buildings were published throughout the United States and Europe. Schindler's personal background is unusual since, although trained in Austria, he spent the rest of his life in the United States without ever returning to visit Europe. He left Europe before World War I and maintained no direct relationship with architects and artists of the Russian Constructivism, Dutch Cubism, German Bauhaus, or Italian Futurism, and, living in the United States, he also was never confronted with the cultural policy of the German Third Reich and the notion of Entartete Kunst. Most modern architects from Austria and Germany left their countries during the time of the fascists. Schindler was in a unique position. Since he remained in the United States after World War I, he was spared the fate of his contemporaries. Throughout his life, Schindler was very much isolated from the so-called International Style, and as a result he gave his body of work a very personal interpretation.