Speaking of Frank Lloyd Wright................here is one of his most hideous creations. It may have looked sort of nice when it was new but it didn't take long to become more freakish than stylish...........................
http://www.believermag.com/issues/200309/?read=motel_snowflake
paden cash, post: 425810, member: 20 wrote: ....
I personally don't care for either the design of the buildings on campus, OR Frank Lloyd Wright. I understand all his designs that made it to construction were over-budget and the roofs leaked.
A few years back, I visited Florida Southern University in Lakeland Fl.
One of my nieces attended school there. My brother lives there.
The campus of Florida Southern has many buildings designed by Wright.
We got to walk the campus during a summer day when absolutely no one was around with most of the buildings open. No security around anywhere.
So we got to stroll and poke around a few of the buildings. The music auditorium was amazing in design. The acoustics were incredible.
I have been to some of Wright's design.
Some of the traditional and also to
Fallingwater. Fallingwater is a summer home. Also been to some of Faye Jones of the University of Arkansas designs who was a Wright disciple.
Wright was experimental and tried to develop styles with new designs and function.
The interesting thing about the Florida Southern stroll was feeling the sense of his design style. One gets the same feeling that one gets at his other designs and that includes the Guggenheim in NYC.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Southern_College
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_of_the_Sun#
I saw this show at the Guggenheim in 1998. It was cool how they had all
the bikes displayed on the spiral ramp from the ground to the top floor.
That spiral ramp is a wonder.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_the_Motorcycle
I don't know how one could be critical of Wright. Maybe some middle America red state crapola.
Robert Hill, post: 425832, member: 378 wrote: I don't know how one could be critical of Wright. Maybe some middle America red state crapola.
For some reason Frank Lloyd Wright is pretty much the only famous architect whose name even supposedly educated people can muster. Richard Neutra? Nope. Mies van der Rohe? Who? Robert Venturi? Guess not. Ted Flato? No way.
In terms of history, I think Wright is best classified as a bridge between late Victorian design and a modern aesthetic that originated in examination of Japanese architecture where design and craft were expressed in a single form, but in the Age of Automobiles. Probably the best way to view Wright's work in proper context is to see it with period-correct cars in the photo.
Holy Cow, post: 425831, member: 50 wrote: Speaking of Frank Lloyd Wright................here is one of his most hideous creations. It may have looked sort of nice when it was new but it didn't take long to become more freakish than stylish...........................
http://www.believermag.com/issues/200309/?read=motel_snowflake
Robert Hill, post: 425832, member: 378 wrote: ...That spiral ramp is a wonder.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_the_Motorcycle
I don't know how one could be critical of Wright. Maybe some middle America red state crapola.
The spiral ramp is cool.
I would probably fall short of calling myself critical of Wright. He was a very accomplished designer. But a lot of his work just doesn't appeal to me. And I probably have 'tastes' for designs that are near the edges of the proverbial bell-shaped curve. Similar to my opinion of Van Gogh's work; I just fail to see what the hub-bub is all about. I don't think my failing to appreciate the form detracts from the artist's (or architect's) accomplishments. But my opinions and a buck will get you a cup of coffee at 7-11.
Edit: Although not strictly confined to any architectural designs, in my opinion a man named Raymond Loewy was probably the most accomplished "designer" of the 20th. Century. There's probably something in your house that he designed. 😉
paden cash, post: 425837, member: 20 wrote: Although not strictly confined to any architectural designs, in my opinion a man named Raymond Loewy was probably the most accomplished "designer" of the 20th. Century. There's probably something in your house that he designed.
Loewy was a sort of Morris Lapidus of his age, a theatrical designer who knew what the rubes would recognize as modern style.
Robert Hill, post: 425836, member: 378 wrote:
Yes, but to really see the Guggenheim in the context of its age, the cars should be from the late 1940s.
Kent McMillan, post: 425839, member: 3 wrote: Yes, but to really see the Guggenheim in the context of its age, the cars should be from the late 1940s.
NYC to me as a young boy/ teen in the 50s and early 60s was all in grey.
From the smog exhaust and everyone in the city smoked. All the business men wore grey suits.
It wasn't to my later teens that the city became alive with color in my consciousness particularly on museum and other trips, if you know what I mean.
Here are some Fay Jones of Fayetteville designs. He was a Wright apprentice.
Anthony Chapel in Hot Springs at the Garland Conservatory,Crystal Chapel in Eureka Springs Arkansas, and the Pinecote Pavilion the Crosby Arboretum in Picayune MS.
The Pinecote which is about a 45 minute drive made our short list when we got married for the ceremony.
But being in MS and the extra drive time for guests and other change of plans didn't make it happen.
Robert Hill, post: 425966, member: 378 wrote:
NYC to me as a young boy/ teen in the 50s and early 60s was all in grey.
From the smog exhaust and everyone in the city smoked. All the business men wore grey suits.
It wasn't to my later teens that the city became alive with color in my consciousness particularly on museum and other trips, if you know what I mean.
The Guggenheim seems chaste and pure as a modern form compared to the taste of car designers like Harley Earl (and car buyers) of the same period. Then there was Sandy Calder, the artist of mobiles and other innovative modern things. It seems to me that I read that at one time he drove around in a Hispano Suiza convertible sans canvas top.
Kent McMillan, post: 425969, member: 3 wrote: The Guggenheim seems chaste and pure as a modern form compared to the taste of car designers like Harley Earl (and car buyers) of the same period. Then there was Sandy Calder, the artist of mobiles and other innovative modern things. It seems to me that I read that at one time he drove around in a Hispano Suiza convertible sans canvas top.
There are a lot of Calders at the Guggenheim.
Kent, here's an Ozark tale that you will enjoy if I remember correctly.
Moved to Fayetteville in late 1979.
My late first wife started school there. She had an interesting mix of friends.
Since we were both older than your typical students, friends were grad students or instructors at the school.
The university has a loaded storage facility on campus and it was going to be purged. In storage, there were Calder mobiles but the powers that be didn't know that they were Calders. They were going to dump and trash them until some student identified them as such.
http://jonah-m-tebbetts.blogspot.com/2007/09/mystery-of-missing-mobile.html?m=1
Robert Hill, post: 425973, member: 378 wrote: There are a lot of Calders at the Guggenheim.
Kent, here's an Ozark tale that you will enjoy if I remember correctly.
Moved to Fayetteville in late 1979.
My late first wife started school there. She had an interesting mix of friends.
Since we were both older than your typical students, friends were grad students or instructors at the school.
The university has a loaded storage facility on campus and it was going to be purged. In storage, there were Calder mobiles but the powers that be didn't know that they were Calders. They were going to dump and trash them until some student identified them as such.
http://jonah-m-tebbetts.blogspot.com/2007/09/mystery-of-missing-mobile.html?m=1
That's Arkansas in a nutshell, right there.
Robert Hill, post: 425973, member: 378 wrote: There are a lot of Calders at the Guggenheim.
Kent, here's an Ozark tale that you will enjoy if I remember correctly.
Moved to Fayetteville in late 1979.
My late first wife started school there. She had an interesting mix of friends.
Since we were both older than your typical students, friends were grad students or instructors at the school.
The university has a loaded storage facility on campus and it was going to be purged. In storage, there were Calder mobiles but the powers that be didn't know that they were Calders. They were going to dump and trash them until some student identified them as such.
http://jonah-m-tebbetts.blogspot.com/2007/09/mystery-of-missing-mobile.html?m=1
Treasures do show up in junk sometimes.
Here's my "long lost art found" story.
In the '80s I would take my kids up to the Colorado high country in June (when the trout are hungry). Having lived up there I knew some really good "off-the-beaten-path" cabin rentals and fishing spots. This one year we were up in Cottonwood Pass area toward Taylor Reservoir.
The place had about a dozen cabins spattered on the hill side with one cabin serving as the office. Through a short chat I discovered the innkeep was a retired telephone engineer from Oklahoma and had only owned the place a couple of years. While I was chatting with him I looked up into the 16' ceiling and spied a (probably) 12 x16 inch stretched canvas oil painting nailed high in the rafters.
From the open fireplace the rafters were smoked dark and so was the painting. I asked the fella if I could climb up and look at it (I was younger then). When I got up there it was immediately evident I was looking at a signed Charlie Russell original. The painting was unframed and nailed to the rafter with two 16 penny nails. It was an image of two prospectors in the foreground panning for gold at a stream. One was crouched with the pan and the other was standing and hooting to the sky. The horses in the background seemed startled at the hoot.
The owner said he had been told the artist use to come there to fish and had given the painting to the owner at the time. He couldn't remember the artist's name. He did say two women the year before had offered him 10K for the painting and he thought they were crazy.
Being a western art nut, my BIL in Ft. Collins had a connection with Russell's museum in Great Falls. He was skeptical of my story when I spoke with him but he called his buddies in MT. Long story short, after a few trips up there a couple of Russell "experts" verified it was a previously undocumented Russell in-situ. I don't know what ever happened to it, I haven't been fishing up there since life got in the way.
If it were mine I would donate it to the museum merely to have it properly cleaned and cared for.
Remington hung out with the locals for quite a spell in the area near Whitewater and Potwin, Kansas. Frederic Remington High School is a rural public high school, located between Whitewater and Potwin, and north of the unincorporated community of Brainerd. Perhaps the locals should do a bit of searching through the rafters of the oldest buildings around.
Holy Cow, post: 426053, member: 50 wrote: Remington hung out with the locals for quite a spell in the area near Whitewater and Potwin, Kansas. Frederic Remington High School is a rural public high school, located between Whitewater and Potwin, and north of the unincorporated community of Brainerd. Perhaps the locals should do a bit of searching through the rafters of the oldest buildings around.
Not a bad idea. The trouble with junk in the attic nowadays is that one is generally not the first to get there...
Speaking of Remington, my BIL has an original oil and two original pen-ink watercolors by F. Remington. All his Russell's are prints. If a fire were to break out in his house there is no doubt in my mind he would leave my sister to fend for herself and try to get his Remingtons to safety.
