Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan: The Role of Traditional Japanese Art and Architecture in the Work of Frank Lloyd Wright [Paperback]

Kevin Nute (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415232694 | ISBN-13: 978-0415232692 | Publication Date: July 27, 2000 | Edition: 1

This book is the first thorough account of Frank Lloyd Wright's relationship with Japan and its arts. It presents significant new information on the nature and extent of Wright's formal and philosophical debt to Japanese art and architecture. Eight primary channels of influence are examined in detail, from Japanese prints to specific individuals and publications, and the evidence of their impact on Wright is illustrated through a mixture of textual and drawn analyses.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'This is an outstanding addition to the Wright literature. It is well illustrated throughout, with a wealth of new Japanese material as well as the author's own analytical diagrams, and comprehensively referenced. It deserves to be very widely read, not only by those interested in Wright, but as a study of the creative process and the fruitful interaction of two great cultures.' - The Architects' Journal

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (July 27, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415232694
• ISBN-13: 978-0415232692
• Product Dimensions: 11.7 x 8.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,305,302 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wright Explained at Last?, April 24, 2005

By 

tertius3 (MI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan: The Role of Traditional Japanese Art and Architecture in the Work of Frank Lloyd Wright (Paperback)

This book answered a lot more questions on Wright's (denied) influences than I expected. It is a remarkable look into how Japanese woodblock prints and traditional architecture (initially presented by American interpreters) may have helped shape Wright's development, creativity, and specific building designs. Nute has reviewed numerous obscure contemporary sources to help make the case that Wright probably knew a lot more about Japanese art before his first trip there in 1905, when he was already well into his Prairie style phase, than he would later admit. I found this book extremely helpful in clarifying Wright's ambiguities and obfuscations by drawing analogies to concepts clearly expressed by others, who were in effect his mentors.

Nute structures his book around the possible early influence upon Wright of four authors, members of the Boston orientalists. Wright may have learned of the abstruse meanings of "organic" art (part to whole) as practiced in the Orient from Fenollosa (1892), who was instrumental in introducing Japanese art to Americans. Fenollosa's associate, Dow (1899), explicated a theory of pattern drawing as the realization of permutations upon kernal line-ideas, rather like some of Wright's house plans. From Morse (1886), and the 1893 Chicago Fair's Japanese pavilion (Ho-o-den), he could have learned of modular design, the expression of natural materials, lack of clutter, and the flow of space in Japanese houses. And from Okakura (1893, 1906) could have come Wright's references to Lao Tzu, Taoism, and the key Void or space at the heart of buildings--as well as an Artist's rationale for the scandalous breakup of his first marriage.

Nute also explicates the geometric abstraction Wright imbibed from his enormous and early collection of Japanese woodblock prints. The only color pictures are nine of Hiroshige's lovely prints. This spare use of color reinforces Nute's argument regarding Fenollosa's and Dow's influence on Wright in the matter of "line" as his preferred mode of visualization. Although generously illustrated with old photographs and drawings, the many insights presented here will be more revealing the more familiar you already are with Wright's buildings and writings.

A reader looking for proof that Wright was derivative and an imitator will be disappointed. Nute does not find any smoking guns, but makes numerous convincing circumstantial arguments from a carefully calculated timeline that compares Wright's known movements and associates with publications, lectures, meetings, and buildings that Wright COULD have known. Strangely, it appears (from a lack of citation here) that no one knows what was in Wright's own library.

For example, what Wright was doing in his oriental pursuit of "elimination of the insignificant," was to subordinate other programmatic demands to the creation of works of art (for which others happened to be paying)--hence the irrrelevancy of owners' complaints about leaky roofs, low ceilings, or lack of closets. The difference, then, between an early Prairie and a late Usonian house Idea, is, I suspect, the change in his core Form-Idea of womens' roles from social ornament in the parlor to the director of the family from her now open kitchen workspace.

However correct Nute (or others he voluminously cites) may be in ferreting out possible sources for Wright's concepts, Nute does a clear and excellent job setting forth a significant part of the intellectual and aesthetic world of 1880-1910 in which Wright developed. Nute mentions, but does not disprove, alternative antecedents and sources in Arts and Crafts, the Aesthetic Movement, Pure Design, and other Euro-American design currents of the period. He does powerfully demonstrate that Wright abstracted and transformed any Japanese (or other) inspirations in Form (principally plan and section), and arguably transcended them in the Hegelian sense of revealing the Idea in his buildings.

Nute's book ends with some extremely useful and well-organized appendices, if you want to learn more of the fin-de-siecle period from which Wright emerged.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Japan's Influence on FLW, April 1, 2008

By 

Patrick Curren "The no self" (The Happy Dream) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan: The Role of Traditional Japanese Art and Architecture in the Work of Frank Lloyd Wright (Paperback)

If you have ever studied FLW's architecture, you soon learn to see intuitively that he had to be influenced by Japan's art and architecture. Kevin Nute does an excellent job analyzing the connections between Japan and FLW's organic architecture. Connections range from the Ho-o-den of Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition to Ando Hiroshige's wood block prints. I enjoyed seeing the connections to FLW's renderings and the wood block prints. The analysis includes many photos (some color) and diagrams that are used to support the written text. The text itself is very easy to follow and very clear. One example that was very interesting to me was the illustration of how the Unity Temple floor plan was derived from one of Arthur Dow's two dimensional graphic interpretation of the internally purposive organic whole in the form of aesthetic `line ideas' from his book `Composition'. Nute goes on to graphically show how FLW not only used this `line idea' to create the floor plan but how he did it 3-dimentionally. While Nute did a very thorough job of analyzing Japan's influence on FLW, there were some areas that I thought he was stretching it a bit. It would have been nice to get more analysis on Wright's Imperial Hotel. While the Imperial Hotel was analyzed, the analysis was "thin". This is an expensive book but if you are interested in Japan's influence, this book will clear a lot of things up for you.......and you will want to keep it. In fact, this would be an excellent text book for any thesis project in architectural graduate school. A detailed analysis of the Imperial Hotel itself would be a great thesis project.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Clarity & Depth is to be Found in Nute's Book on Wright, March 18, 2002

By 

Norma J Hurt (Clemson, SC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan: The Role of Traditional Japanese Art and Architecture in the Work of Frank Lloyd Wright (Architecture Series) (Hardcover)

Kevin Nute's book, Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan, is written with an unusual depth of inquiry. Thorough and clearly labeled illustrations and descriptive text identify connections between real Japanese buildings and works of art and Wright's architecture and design motifs. By examining the influence of Japanese art & architecture on Wright's work, Dr. Nute also has described the manner in which any designer might be influenced by built and natural environments.

It's great that this book now is available in paperback, as it will prove inspiring to practitioners and students of architecture - as well as the general public. A must buy for everyone interested in the development of ideas who are searching for a fascinating story about creativity at its best!