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

Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan

The Role of Traditional Japanese Art and Architecture in the Work of Frank Lloyd Wright

By Kevin Nute

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About the Book

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.

Reviews

'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

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements. Forewords. Introduction. 'Japanism' and the Boston orientalists. Japanese homes: the Japanese house dissected. The Ho-o-den: the temple and the villa married in south Chicago. Fenollosa and the 'organic' nature of Japanese art. Composition: the picture, the plan, and the pattern, as aesthetic line-ideas. The woodblock print and the geometric abstraction of natural, man-made and social forms. Okakura and the social and aesthetic 'Ideals of the East'. Japan itself: giving and receiving in 'Yedo'. Japan as inspiration: analogies with Japanese built-forms. Japan as confirmation: the universal manifested in the particular. Appendices: summary of events; biographical sketches; Kakuzo Okakura's catalogue of the Ho-o-den; Ernest Fenollosa's essay on 'The Nature of Fine Art'; Frederick Gookin's reviews of Kakuzo Okakura's books; glossary. Bibliography. Illustration acknowledgements. Index.