Playing in Clay

Picasso with Suzanne Ramie, 1946

What happens when you give a child a lump of clay? Typically, you get some little four-legged critter, a snake, maybe a bird, a monster from his or her worst nightmare, or maybe some sort of oddly shaped clay figure that literally defies description. In 1946, Georges and Suzanne Ramie, owners of the Madoura pottery workshop in Vallauris, France, gave a very famous, yet childlike, artist a few lumps of clay (actually the run of the whole place) and the results were quite similar--some of the most freshly original ceramic works of art ever created. The artist was Pablo Picasso and quite  apart from his painting and sculpture, we find this 20th century was equally adept in playing with clay.

Picasso's bikini clad vase.

Perhaps reacting to his bleak, wartime "captivity" in Nazi-occupied Paris, Picasso unleashed a flurry of creative energy, turning out whimsical cubist nudes, painting with enamels and glazes "in the round", dressing up a curvaceous vase in a bright yellow bikini (right), creating plates complete with fool-the-eye fish and forks baked on their surfaces (below), a fantastical pitcher featuring a beak and full plumage (bottom, or large-scale mosaics reflecting the warm, joyous, Mediterranean landscape. It was playful, profound, and personal, also unfashionable at the time, and derided by critics as superficial and trite. It was a happy three years Picasso spent in the south of France with his companion, Francoise Gilot, and their young son, Claude.



Picasso's Plate with Fish, 1946, here seen
on a Vatican City stamp.

There are the usual Picasso motifs, bullfights, circus characters, birds, female nudes, but there are also delightful mythological creatures, fish swimming, snakes slithering, and goats kneeling--so many pieces, his son remembers them stacked floor to ceiling waiting to be fired. He celebrates his love of children and Francoise's beauty on the surface of the pots freshly turned by Modoura artisans, which he would often reshape while still wet, before inscribing his beloved flute players, or playful lovers, or motifs from Etruscan tombs. There is an exuberant joy and brilliant, Mediterranean light reflected in his painted ceramic, sculptural figures done at the time too. His son, Claude, notes that until recently, his father's ceramics were largely ignored, but are now being recognized as a significant part of his oeuvre.

Picasso's Pitcher withBeak

 

The Price of Art these Days

Cezanne's Card Players, 1888, currently holds the price record as of 2011, $267 million

Garcon a' la Pipe, 1905, Pablo Picasso,
nice work but, $127 million?

It seems like every time you turn around prices have gone up. Just try buying a pair of shoes your teenager will actually wear for less than a hundred bucks! And blue jeans! How about eleven bucks for a movie ticket and that much more for popcorn and a soft drink. And don't even think about a dinner for two at a fine restaurant for less than forty or fifty bucks plus tip. Okay, so everything hasn't gone up. Gas prices have held relatively steady or even gone down a little, but that's small consolation when you see the price they're getting for Picasso's nowadays--$127 million, for a portrait of a Persian boy smoking (left). And if you think that's bad, just try laying your hands on a Van Gogh portraait for less than the $82.5 million big ones paid for Portrait of Dr. Gachet back in 1990. It's getting harder and harder now days to afford good art work.



Portrait of the Artist without Beard,
late September, 1889,
Vincent van Gogh

The van Gogh is his Portrait of the Artist Without Beard (right) and it was actually $71 million plus a hefty commission for Christie's. It was painted in 1889 and may well have been his last self-portrait, maybe even one of his last paintings ever. He sent it to his mother on the occasion of her 70th birthday, along with a note telling her how upset he was that he couldn't be with her. The bidding began at $14 million and there were cheers and gasps when the gavel finally fell 71 million dollars later. And it's not just the big stars of the art world that are bringing astounding prices. The relatively unknown Jean-Michel Basquiat, who started out as a graffiti artist, had a portrait of himself holding a spear, which was expected to bring about $500,000, go for $3.5 million. His previous record was a mere $596,000.

Portrait of Jeanne Hebuterne,
1917, Amadeo Modigliani

 

 

It's gotten so bad that whole art collections are going on the auction block. Lila Acheson Wallace would be rolling over in her grave if she knew what her Readers' Digest Corporation was doing with her collection, which she tenderly fawned over during much of her lifetime. They let go of Claude Monet's Water Lily Pond for $9.9 million, and Cezanne's L'Estaque View Through the Pine Trees for $11 million, although Renoir's Head of a Young Girl went for a mere $5.3 million and his Portrait of Cezanne" got them only $2.7 million. (Apparently paintings by Cezanne are worth more than paintings of Cezanne.) Add to that a 1919 Modigiliani, Portrait of Jeanne Hebuteme (left), which sold for $15.1 million plus a few other minor pieces, and the Digest walked off with a cool $86 million to take back to Pleasantville to pay for their next sweepstakes. Who knows, maybe I might "already be a winner." I might just win enough to bid on at least a drawing by Van Gogh. They only cost $4.4 million.

Marjorie Merriweather Post

Marjorie Merriweather Post, 1946,
Frank O. Salisbury

Some time ago, I wrote about one of the most important art collectors of the past two centuries, Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner. More recently I talked about the National Museum of Women Artists in Washington; and the collecting savvy of its founder, Wilhelmina Cole Holladay. Hard as it might be to believe, these two women were not unique. Living in the same city as Mrs. Holladay, and no doubt a good friend of hers, was another extremely wealthy heiress about her age with a sublime taste in collecting great art. And like Wilhelmina Holladay and Isabella Gardner she left to the nation the sizable artistic endowment of her collective spirit. Her name was Marjorie Merriweather Post. And just as Isabella Gardner had her Fenway Court, Marjorie left us Hillwood.



Hillwood

Mar-a-Largo, the Post Estate in Palm Beach FL
(now owned by Donald Trump)

Marjorie Merriweather Post did not come by her money the "old-fashioned way"--she inherited it. Her father was Charles William Post, the inventor of the coffee substitute, Postum, the venerable Post Toasties, Grape-Nuts, and the Post Cereal Company. Marjorie was born in 1887. Fortunately, given her expensive tastes in art, she was an only child. Because of this, she was brought up in the business, taught by her father everything from factory production to high finance. She was twenty-seven when he died in 1914, leaving her not just a very wealthy young socialite, but fully in charge of the business as well. At a time when women were seldom more than secretaries in the business world, she became President of the company. In 1920 she married E. F. Hutton, the famous Wall Street broker and financier. Together they moulded Post Cereals into what is now the General Foods Corporation. Their social life brought her into contact with the likes of the Vanderbilts, the Whitneys, and the Fricks. The Hutton extravagant lifestyle is legendary. Besides a Grand New York penthouse apartment, there was an estate on Long Island, Mar-A-Largo in Palm Beach (above, left), a woodland lodge in the Adirondacks, and a yacht in Newport, the Sea Cloud. Marjorie was to get her first taste of art collecting in furnishing and decorating these expensive digs.

Three Faberge eggs from the Hillwood collection.

During the 1930s, Marjorie sharpened her insights into art with classes at the Metropolitan Museum in New York while at the same time throwing herself into the philanthropic work of several charities she helped fund including the Salvation Army and the Red Cross. Later, she became an ardent supporter of the National Symphony Orchestra. During this time also, she divorced Hutton and married Joseph E. Davies, the American ambassador to the Soviet Union. It was while in Russia that she saw the worst the Soviet Union had to offer under Stalin's Reign of Terror while at the same time, buying the best they had to offer in art--hundreds of paintings, tapestries, Faberge' eggs, religious icons, and brightly colored enamelled boxes. It was the cream of the Russian Imperial art collection sold off at a time when the Soviet government desperately needed the hard cash. As a result, in carting it all home just before the war, the Post collection became the biggest cache of Russian art outside the Soviet Union.

The Hillwood Estate and Museum, part of the Russian Collection.
 

Hillwood began in 1955 when Mrs. Post purchased the old Erwin estate called Arbramont overlooking Washington's Rock Creek Park; a beautiful twenty-five landscaped acres complete with a Georgian style mansion built in 1926 by the architect, John Delbert. She renamed her new home after her former Long Island estate. For the next three years Mrs. Post undertook an expansion, remodelling, and redecorating project designed not just to create a spacious and elegant new home but also a museum, eventually to become the showcase for her impressive art collection. During the next eighteen years, until her death in 1973, Mrs. Post continued adding to her collection important European pieces even as she held forth in her role as one of the most important social and behind-the-scenes political powers in the nation's capital. Several years ago, Hillwood underwent a second major restoration project, the first in over forty years, bringing the estate back up to the high standards of excellence Mrs. Post established when she first created her museum home. Isabella Stewart Gardner would be proud...maybe even a little jealous.

Hillwood's gardens exhibit the same exquisite taste and design flair as
Marjorie Merriweather Posts' interiors.

The Evolution of Devotional Art

The changes in art and religion.

One of the things that has changed most in art over the past 500 years, especially over the past 150 years, is the nature of art having to do with the Christian religion. By the same token, there has been a tremendous change in religion itself and particularly its relationship to art. In the period during and after the Renaissance, the arts--architecture, painting, sculpture, music, literature--worked hand in hand in a symbiotic relationship responsible for some of the greatest art (though not necessarily the greatest religion) in the history of mankind. We see it today in the world's great cathedrals, in what is virtually a visual Bible of great paintings, in our hymns, in poetry, literature, sculpture, and various combinations of all of these.

Noli me Tangere, 1532-33, Hans Holbein,
a rare example of Protestant painting.

Then came the Reformation. Save for architecture, there developed a division of church and art, especially the visual arts. During this time (and ever since), religion changed as well. The Catholic side of the split narrowed its appreciation of religious art to that having directly to do with teachings and doctrine of Christ and moved toward the decorative and inspirational as opposed to the instructional. On the Protestant side of the split, religious art tended to move out of the sanctuary and into private religious devotions and from there, it has gradually faded away almost to nothing. While Catholics continue to hang images of Jesus in their homes, probably not 1 in 10 Protestants do so.

St. Bees Abbey Church, Cumberland, England, 16th century, interior.
Art survives as architecture, but otherwise banished, even as decoration.

Religious art in the home setting derives from one of the oldest Christian traditions on record, the practice of gathering and worshipping in homes. Early Christians had no churches. Nor did they have art. Art was pagan. And indeed, even after their numbers became too great to gather in homes, even the early Christian basilica churches were largely bereft of pictorial images. For almost a thousand years there was little or no Christian art to speak of - a few primitive catacomb frescos and some rare church mosaics such as Ravenna's San Vitale, being important exceptions (there may have been more but little evidence of them survives). But with the second Christian millennium came an explosion of religious art aimed at beautifying public places of worship and inspiring the worshipers within them. The heavy Romanesque style architecture in the South demanded frescoes while the ornate Gothic style in the North lent itself to sculpture and painted altarpieces.

Wilton Diptych, 1359

As is always the case, the rich are the first to acquire new luxuries, and in the early 1300s, there came the luxury of worshipping privately in their homes. England's King Richard II travelled with a folding altarpiece, the Wilton Diptych (1395), heavy with gold leaf and expensive lapis lazuli blues depicting himself, St Edmund, St John the Baptist, and St Edward the Confessor as they worship, on the opposite panel, a Madonna and Child encircled by a host of angels. During the Renaissance in Italy, the simply well-to-do might have a modest room in their homes called a "studiolo" containing a small altar, a framed image of a Madonna and Child, a crucifix, maybe a stained glass window, and perhaps an illustrated book of hours (prayer calendar). 

van Nieuwenhove Diptych, 1487, Hans Memlinc

Hans Memlinc's The van Nieuwenhove Diptych (right) dating from 1487, is an excellent example of such private devotional art. It features a panel portrait of a Madonna in contemporary dress offering a tiny apple (symbolic of man's sin) to her nude infant Son while the opposite panel depicts the owner, his Bible open before him, in formal prayer. The backgrounds are similar enough to suggest a single room.

Christ as the Man of Sorrows, ca. 1520,
Jan Mostaert

Christ as the Man of Sorrows (left), painted by Jan Mostaert (or one of his followers) around 1520, is often considered prototypical of the single panel portrait of Christ type painting we sometimes see in homes today. Derived from the altarpiece, but simplified and copied widely by artists of the era, such hand-painted images multiplied to the point that virtually anyone could afford to decorate a small corner of a room as a private place of worship. The painting is a head and shoulders depiction of an only slightly stylised Christ, crowned with thorns, his blood and tears intermingling, his hands, holding a reed in one, in the other a bundle of birch branches, are bound before him by a cord. The image was intended to invoke a direct, face-to-face encounter with the suffering of Jesus.

Today, even Catholics would find such dramatic religious art hard to live with in their homes. Many Protestants denominations today even go so far as to eschew such art in their churches. Just as religious art has changed in nature, becoming more restrained, and declining in importance, the worship experience itself has changed as well. Perhaps because of the ascendancy of universal literacy, perhaps because of the descendancy of daily, ritual prayer, perhaps because of the tendency toward a more intellectual, as opposed to emotional, type of worship, what remains of religious fine art today seems to have moved to a higher plane. It continues very often to be decorative in nature, but now seems subtler, more abstract (not just in style), less confrontational, and almost subliminal. In effect, its importance to the modern worship experience has become marginal. All of which begs the question, do we no longer need such art, or do we simply not want it? Perhaps both?


Today architecture, symbolism, and functionality dominate the art of public devotional spaces. Private devotional art is rare.

 

Rulers' Portraits

Richard II of England, ca. 1395

As a portrait painter, I naturally study a lot of portraits. In doing so, the one thought that keeps recurring is how different is the demand for portraits today, and how different are the demands upon the portrait painter today than in the past. In the "good old days," before the invention of photography, the status of the portrait painter was one of prestige near the top of the artist's profession. Even today, it's considered possibly the most demanding type of work in which an artist can engage. Ironically, the invention of photography, while making the work of the portrait painter less in demand, has also made it somewhat less demanding as well. In the past, from miniatures (equivalent to today's wallet-size photos) to magnificent equestrian portraits, the portrait painter was all but indispensable. And nowhere was this more the case than in the great seats of power--the royal courts.



The royal found their subjects more likely to be loyal if they could picture what their ruler looked like. Perhaps the earliest royal portrait existing today is the (much-restored) medieval image of England's Richard II (above, left), which was painted around 1395. It depicts a fairly young king, who was, in fact, not very secure on his throne, but who, nonetheless, projected a very kingly presence--bearing crown, orb, and sceptre amidst rich, red and white robes. But apparently all this, not to mention enough gold leaf to start a small mint, was not enough to keep him on his stylised Gothic throne. He was put to death just a few years after the portrait was done.



Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, 1548, Titian

Bonaparte Crossing the Alps, 1801,
Jacques-Louis David's official version.

Bonaparte Crossing the Alps, 1848,
Paul Delaroche, how it really happened.

Much more impressive is Titian's magnificent equestrian portrait of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (above, large) painted in 1548. The effect was very much intended to revive the glories of the Roman Empire and the painting seems to have been patterned after the famous equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius on the Capitoline Hill in Rome. This work underscores the importance of propaganda in the depiction of kings and rulers. He carries a long, Roman spear and wears the armour in which he fought in his greatest victory, the Battle of Muhlberg the year before over the German Protestant princes. This painting, in turn, was to serve as a thematic model for Jacques-Louis David's extremely propagandistic Bonaparte Crossing the Alps (above, right) painted in 1801. It portrays the French leader (not yet an emperor) melodramatically astride his rearing steed, red robe flowing majestically in the wind, pointing the way for his army to follow him over the Alps on his way to conquering Austria. In fact, Bonaparte crossed the Alps some three days behind his army while riding a mule as depicted more accurately some fifty years later by Paul Delaroche (above, left). On the rocks at the base of David's painting is carved "Bonaparte" along side the names of Hannibal and Charlemagne, who had also led armies across the Alps. The original painting was done for Spain's royal palace while four copies went to France where their idealized vision of an idealized leader was instrumental in Napoleon's rise to First Consul of France and finally emperor.



George Washington (Athenaeum Portrait)
1796, Gilbert Stuart

But not all leaders wanted or needed artist to glorify them to the point of deification. Although George Washington was, at times, depicted as a general, the more familiar portraits by Gilbert Stuart depict him more in line with his favored role as a well-to-do Virginia planter. Stuart's final portrait of Washington (there were three attempts) is the famous unfinished Athenaeum painted in 1796 (long since cut down). Despite a very modest pose, the painting was still to play an important function in the Washington legend mill. It's the basis for his likeness on the one-dollar bill and exists in some 72 copies by Stuart himself, as well as countless others by lesser artists.

Windsor Castle in Modern Times, 1845, Edwin Landseer, humanizing the ruler.

And across the sea, Edwin Landseer was Queen Victoria's choice to paint a warm family portrait even though the artist was primarily famous as an animal painter. However, given the menagerie of royal pets depicted in Windsor Castle in Modern Times, from 1845, he may have been a good choice. Though set in baronial splendour, this interior scene bears no crowns, no robes, not even eye contact with the viewer as Victoria and Albert preside, not over a kingdom, but a return from the hunt. It's a domestic scene not aimed at glorifying the royal image but in humanizing it. Yet even if not blatant propaganda, it still stands as an example of subtle image making very much akin to that we see when feature photographers are today invited into the private quarters of the White House to polish the image of the man, in place of the politician.

Replacing the portrait painter today, the official photographer is never
far away, whether recording history or humanizing those making it
(not to mention the Easter Bunny).

 

Howard Pyle

Scan by Phillip V. Allingham

In the White House, 1890, A.B. Frost

There's hardly a story about any American illustrator that sooner or later doesn't mention the name of one man--Howard Pyle. One might even go so far as to call him the father of American illustration. But it's hard to get a grasp of the importance of this man without looking at what came before. One of his best predecessors was A.B. Frost (right). Before Pyle, there was a staged quality to American book illustration, as if actors were drawn from a point of view "front row centre" with a theatrical set, props, and costumes. Pyle brought to illustration a writer's perspective, because he enjoyed writing and was probably as good at that as he was at illustration. In fact he illustrated several of his own books and stories, among them, The Adventure of Robin Hood (below, left) and The Story of King Arthur and His Knights. Armed with a writer's imagination he poured the same unique qualities into his drawings. They never seemed staged, but instead evoked a kind of dynamic drama, with unusual angles, dark backgrounds, action, adventure, human emotion--the work of a writer who could draw. 

The frontispiece illustration for Pyle's
The Adventures of Robin Hood



Pyle's home and studio in Wilmington, Delaware, ca. 1906

Pyle was born in 1853 on the outskirts of Wilmington, Delaware. His home (above) still stands today, though it's now well within the city. His father was a leather worker, his mother a woman who saw to it her son had an idyllic childhood, nurturing his bookish tendencies; his enjoyment in reading, writing, and drawing. His first successes came in blindly sending samples of his work to leading New York magazines where, to everyone's surprise, they were immediately accepted. Scribners was one of his early outlets. A trip to New York by his father, who dropped in on Scribners ended with his son being invited to move to New York, with the assurance that there was plenty of work for him there. Pyle did move to New York, but quickly discovered the work was slim, menial, and his artistic skills woefully lacking. Studies at The Art Students League and later Drexel Institute in Philadelphia sharpened his knowledge of the human figure, color, and the technical needs of the engraver.

The Battle of Bunker Hill, ca. 1897, Howard Pyle

Book of Pirates, 1921, Howard Pyle

Howard Pyle came to illustration at a most opportune moment. It was at a time when nationally circulating publications were on the rise, printing techniques allowed for the move from woodcuts to metal plates, and when colour printing was in its infancy. Pyle developed his skills to match the best the printing industry had to offer, catering to their needs while allowing their best efforts to mingle with his own vivid imagination. After a stint in New York with Scribners, Harpers, and the children's magazine, St. Nicholas, Pyle moved to Philadelphia where he taught at Drexel Institute for two years, before moving back home to Wilmington and starting a kind of free graduate school for top illustrators. There, from a list of some 1,300 applicants, he chose twelve, sharpening the skills of the next generation - N. C. Wyeth, Frank Schoonover, Thornton Oakley, Maxfield Parrish, Jessie Wilcox, Stanley Artherus, Ida Daughtery, Harvey Dunn, and others. The school lasted only from 1900-1903, although Pyle continued helping his former students for several years while his work itself came to influence dozens of others whom he didn't actually teach. Late in his career, he took up the challenge of mural painting (bottom), gaining a whole new level of fame, respect, and financial success.

Marooned, 1910. Pyle pioneered the dramatic use of open space in illustration.

For many years, Pyle resisted the common practice of finishing off one's art education in Europe. He was fifty-seven before he finally succumbed to the temptation to visit Europe. Moreover, during most of the trip he was ill. He hated Rome, visited Siena and Genoa, before falling in love with Florence where he remained for several months. It was in Florence he changed his mind and decided that maybe the European masters actually did have something to offer American art. Ironically, it was there, in 1911, where he died of a kidney infection. And it was there too, that this greatest of American illustrators was buried on foreign soil.

The Landing of Carteret, 1906, Howard Pyle, Essex County Courthouse, Newark, NJ

Prairie Style Architecture

The Winslow House, 1894, Frank Lloyd Wright,  River Forest, Illinois

Many of us heard of them, but few of us have seen them...or if we have, we didn't realize it. I'm talking about America's first home-grown, native housing style, born and bred in the U.S.A., inspired by our indigenous landscape, created by an indigenous architect, nurtured, and brought to full flower in the heartland of suburban America. I'm talking about the Prairie style house and its founder, Frank Lloyd Wright. And even though his first, original manifestation of this style, the Winslow House (above) in River Forest, Illinois, dates from 1893, it is quintessentially a 20th century housing style that, in this case, arrived a few years early. Wright's initial offering is simple, foursquare, symmetrical and pure. In other words, it's not typical of the style. The Winslow House was the seed--a massive ground floor (below), a central chimney, large, heavily accented ground floor windows, and a low, hipped roof, widely overhanging a minimized second floor. It was so starkly different from anything its owner or any of his neighbors had ever seen in this Chicago suburb, one of Wright's later clients, while admiring the architect's talent and skill, specifically ordered that his own home by Wright not look like the Winslow House lest he be laughed at by all his neighbors.

Winslow House, ground floor plan (notice the tiny kitchen in back).
Despite the modern style, there was still a lot of 19th century thinking in the details.

Perhaps the most immediately noticeable departure of the Prairie style, as it developed in the Chicago area, from anything that had ever gone before was the de-emphasising of the entrance. For centuries in all forms and styles of architecture, the entry had been the focal point of the entire front façade. And Wright's Winslow House was no exception. But as Wright, his associates, and his imitators cultivated the style, though the front porch sometimes remained, the entrance itself moved to the side, often all but invisible from the street. And though their designs were invariably two-story, the use of broad, intensive, extensive horizontal lines throughout often gave the impression of a single level, at least at first glance. Their look was wholesomely "modern" (in an era when the word still had real meaning), even if somewhat intimidating.

Robie House, 1909, Frank Lloyd Wright, Chicago

If the Winslow House was the seed, Wright's Robie House of 1909, in nearby Chicago, was the fully matured, architectural masterpiece to evolve. And if the neighbors thought the Winslow home looked funny, they found the Robie House downright hilarious. Some called it the aeroplane house. The running joke was that if you'd attach a propeller, the house, with its extremely flattened hip roof and wing-like, cantilevered eaves, would literally "take off." Even though the visual effect is that of a single level, the house, in fact, has three floors. The ground floor entrance is from a walled, side courtyard containing an attached three car garage (a totally new element in domestic architecture at the time), the laundry, boiler room, a billiard room, children's playroom, and a walled, sunken garden, bearing Japanese influences, which Wright thrust up hard against the sidewalk in front. The second floor is thus the main level with living room, dining room, kitchen, broad, roofed verandas, a guest room, and servant's quarters. The master bedroom, and all others, are on the hardly noticeable third level.

Robie House drawing and main floor plan. As with many examples of urban architecture, urban congestion often interferes with conceptual ideals only apparent in drawings.

It might surprise you to realize, despite what I've described, that most of us have seen the popular manifestation of the Prairie style. In fact, I'd venture to say every town or city in the U.S. has hundreds, maybe thousands of them, built in the first twenty or thirty years of the 20th century. But don't look for anything remotely resembling the Robie House. This and similar forward looking designs by Wright and others were hybrids. The popularization of their designs was much more traditional, boxy, symmetrical, and plain. The entrance once more moved to the front, off a somewhat simplified, but still fairly traditional, raised porch; and whereas Wright and others had favored brick and stone masonry, the plan book equivalents usually resorted to wood construction to save money. Eventually, all that remained of Wright's original Prairie style features was the broad eaves, the hipped (often pyramidal) roof, similar dormers, and a somewhat more horizontal emphasis than before. As with many 20th century styles, this one was fairly short-lived (1900-1920 in its pure form). Although today enjoying a modern revival, in the case of the style's plan book bastardizations, few were built after 1930. And by that time, they had become so common, people had long since stopped laughing.


Wright's Prairie style is so timeless it remains alive and well in many suburban settings as
seen here in this fairly authentic (yet compact) adaptation to the quarter-acre lot common in many subdivisions today.