16-B Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater, 1935–1939

16-B Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater, 1935–1939
- Why is this house called Fallingwater? The house extends over a waterfall.
- Which exterior materials on this house are natural and which are man-made? The stone is natural, and the concrete, glass, and metal are man-made.
- Notice how the textures of these materials contrast with each other. Describe the textures of the different parts of the house. The glass is smooth and shiny and the rock is very rough. The concrete is gritty, but not as rough as the stone, nor as smooth as the glass.
- How did Wright preserve the natural beauty of this site? He made the house blend into the natural landscape by echoing the shape of the cliff and boulders. He built a large portion of the house from rock quarried on site. He did not plant large expanses of lawn, bulldoze the site to make it level, or cut down many trees.
- What parts of Fallingwater are cantilevered? The horizontal balconies are cantilevered.
- What part of the building appears to create the weight to hold them in place? The vertical stone column fulfills this function.
- Why might a city dweller enjoy this house? Imagine being on one of the balconies. What would you hear?
A retreat in the country would be a change of scenery for those who live in a city. From the balcony you hear the sound of the waterfall.
- The Kaufmanns wanted a vacation home on their land. Why was the location that Wright chose for the house a surprise to them? Where would most architects probably have located the house to take advantage of the natural waterfall? Most architects would locate the house to have a view of the waterfall instead of placing the house on top of it.
- How is Fallingwater like a piece of contemporary abstract art from the twentieth century? It’s been simplified into basic, essential shapes without added ornamentation.

The Guggenheim Museum in New York City

 


 














La Miniatura - Most people do not know that the famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, was commissioned to design and construct a home that resembles a “Mayan temple set in a jungle ravine”. Even more extraordinary is that it still stands in Pasadena, California. Frank Lloyd Wright enjoyed creating “La Miniatura” so much, he was quoted as saying, “I would rather have built this little house than St. Peter’s in Rome.”

E. Fay Jones 1921-2004
Euine Fay Jones was probably Frank Lloyd Wright’s most famous apprentice. Jones and Wright had an immediate rapport when they met while Jones was a professor. Jones’s entire family visited Wright in his winter workshop, Taliesin West, near Scottsdale, Arizona. Later, Wright invited Jones's entire family to his home and design institute Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin. Jones returned to both sites numerous times as both friend and apprentice and became a Taliesin Fellow.

A quiet, unassuming intellectual (also a strong Christian!) who taught Architecture at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Jones’ most well-known buildings are chapels and residences in his home state (as opposed to ego-driven skyscrapers). Thorncrown Chapel, a small, breathtaking glass chapel nestled in the Ozarks, pays tribute to the beauty of nature created by God.


(Top to bottom: Cooper Chapel, Pinecone Pavilion, Spock at the Ministry...aka  Skyrose...in the new Star Trek movie, Thorncrown Chapel)

15-B William Van Alen, The Chrysler Building, 1926–1930

15-B William Van Alen, The Chrysler Building, 1926–1930

- Locate triangles, squares, rectangles, and semi-circles on the Chrysler Building. Geometric shapes were important to Art Deco-style architecture.

- Why did corporations and architects race to build tall skyscrapers in the 1920s? The economy was flourishing, corporations needed more office space, and Chrysler wanted to own the tallest building in New York City.

- Why do you think the spire was added to the top? It was added to make it taller than all the other buildings.

- What happened in 1929 to halt this building spree? The stock market crashed.

- New York City building codes required that tall buildings such as this step back their upper stories. What were the benefits of making tall buildings smaller near the top? This allowed more light and air to reach the streets and made the buildings look even taller than they really were.

13-B Louis Comfort Tiffany, Autumn Landscape– The River of Life, 1923–1924

Art Deco was a popular international art design movement from 1925 until the 1940s, affecting the decorative arts such as architecture, interior design and industrial design, as well as the visual arts such as fashion, painting, the graphic arts and film. At the time, this style was seen as elegant, glamorous, functional and modern.

The movement was a mixture of many different styles and movements of the early 20th century, including Neoclassical, Constructivism, Cubism, Modernism, Art Nouveau, and Futurism. Its popularity peaked in Europe during the Roaring Twenties and continued strongly in the United States through the 1930s. Although many design movements have political or philosophical roots or intentions, Art Deco was purely decorative.

The structure of Art Deco is based on mathematical geometric shapes. It was considered to be an eclectic form of elegant and stylish modernism, being influenced by a variety of sources. The ability to travel and excavations during this time influenced artists and designers, integrating several elements from countries not their own. Among them were the so-called "primitive" arts of Africa, as well as historical styles such as Greco-Roman Classicism, and the art of Babylon, Assyria, Ancient Egypt, and Aztec Mexico. Much of this could be attributed to the popular interest in archeology in the 1920s (eg, the tomb of Tutankhamen, Pompeii, the lost city of Troy, etc). Art Deco also drew on Machine Age and streamline technologies such as modern aviation, electric lighting, the radio, the ocean liner and the skyscraper for inspiration.

13-B Louis Comfort Tiffany, Autumn Landscape– The River of Life, 1923–1924

- How are stained glass creations made? See a brief video here

- What do you see first in this window? The sun in the center.

- Why is our attention drawn to this area? It is the lightest part of the window and contains the strongest contrast of light and dark.

- How would this window feel if you ran your fingers over its surface? It would feel rough in some areas and smooth in others.

- Where do you see rough textures? These are found in the trees and rocks.

- Where do you see smooth textures? They are located in the pool and the light sky.

- Tiffany used a variety of techniques to create special textures and colors of glass.

Mottled glass: It is located in the dark parts of the sky.

Confetti glass: We see it in the foliage.

Marbleized glass: It is found in the boulders.

Rippled glass: It occurs in the closest pool.

- What time of the day is depicted? Because the sun is near the horizon, it is early morning or late afternoon.

- Why will this art look different at different times of the day? The light shining through it will be different depending on how high or low the sun is in the sky and whether it is a bright or overcast day.

- Stained-glass windows are commonly seen in churches, but this window was created for a stairwell in a man’s private home. Why would someone rather have a stained-glass window in a house than clear glass? The window is beautiful, and provides privacy or blocks unsightly views.

- How would this landscape make the space of a small stairwell feel larger? Instead of a wall at the top of the stairs, the window would open up a deep vista and make the inside space look as if it continues outside into the landscape.

- Because the man who commissioned this window died before it was installed, it seemed like a memorial for him. Why are autumn scenes and sunsets often featured in memorials to the dead? Sometimes a year is a metaphor for a lifetime. The autumn of a person’s life refers to a later stage of life and the sunset marks the end of a day.

Harry Clarke (1889-1931) was an Irish stained glass artist and book illustrator. Born in Dublin, he was a figure in the Irish Arts and Crafts Movement. He illustrated collections of stories such as fairy tales of Anderson and Perrault and Edgar Allen Poe.

Stained glass is central to Clarke's career. His glass is distinguished by the finesse of its drawing, unusual in the medium, his use of rich colors (inspired by an early visit to see the stained glass of the Cathedral of Chartres, he was especially fond of deep blues), and an innovative integration of the window leading as part of the overall design (his use of heavy lines in his black and white book illustrations is probably derived from his glass techniques).

Visual Arts of the United States

Visual arts of the United States refers to the history of painting and visual art in the United States. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, artists primarily painted landscapes and portraits in a realistic style. A parallel development taking shape in rural America was the American craft movement, which began as a reaction to the industrial revolution. Developments in modern art in Europe came to America from exhibitions in New York City such as the Armory Show in 1913. Previously American Artists had based the majority of their work on Western Painting and European Arts. After World War II, New York replaced Paris as the center of the art world. Since then many American Movements have shaped Modern and Post Modern art. Art in the United States today covers a huge range of styles.

Art History Timeline

As we are on the brink of studying Modern Art, it will be helpful to review past art movements as well as get a brief introduction to the many art movements associated with Modern Art.

14-B Joseph Stella, Brooklyn Bridge, c. 1919–1920

14-B Joseph Stella, Brooklyn Bridge, c. 1919–1920

Find these objects:
- Towers of the Brooklyn Bridge: They are at top, center.
- Traffic signal light: It is at the lower center.
- Bridge cables: They run from the edges to the center of the composition. Note in particular the two curving pieces connected to the bridge tower.
- What time of day is it? It is night. The sky is dark; there are deep dark shadows and shining lights.
- Are there any cars on the bridge? Perhaps. Some of the lights look like headlights.
- Do some objects seem close and others far away? Why? The thin white buildings seem farther away because they are placed higher in the painting and are smaller than the traffic light at the bottom. The cables also get smaller and several angle toward each other as though they were parallel lines converging in the distance.
- How does Stella suggest the complexity of the modern machine era? How has he indicated its dynamic movement? He jumbles the thick and thin lines, showing bits and pieces of forms as though they are glimpsed only briefly; he blurs the colors and adds diagonal and curving lines that suggest movement.
- Identify some vertical lines in this painting. How do they affect the dynamics of the composition? They give some order to the chaos.
- Imagine what Stella heard as he stood on this bridge at night. The bridge is over a river. He might have heard tugboat horns, sirens, subway trains, and cars and trucks rumbling over the bridge.
- What do you think Stella found fascinating about the bridge? He was intrigued by its huge scale, the complexity of the cable lines, and its dizzying angles. When you drive over the bridge, things are seen as fragments; headlights flash here and there, and you hear traffic in the water and on the bridge. For Stella the experience was urban, modern, and a bit frightening.

(To give you a sense of scale, here are several of Stella's paintings on exhibit)

13-A Walker Evans, Brooklyn Bridge, New York, 1929

Modern art: refers to artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of experimentation. Modern artists experimented with new ways of seeing and with fresh ideas about the nature of materials and functions of art. A tendency toward abstraction is characteristic of much modern art.

13-A Walker Evans, Brooklyn Bridge, New York, 1929
- Would you recognize the image in this photograph as a bridge if it were not titled? Is this the shape you visualize when they think of a bridge?
- Why not? It’s from a different viewpoint than the one from which we usually see a bridge.
- When most artists create a picture of a bridge, what view do they show of it? Most photographs show a side view. (Below is a print of the bridge from 1883, when the bridge was completed. Notice how the perspective is very different.)

- Where was the camera when this photograph was taken? It was down low, looking up at one of the bridge’s two towers.
- Locate the point to which all the cable lines seem to lead. It is near the top center of the bridge tower.
- Is this point centered in the photograph? No, it isn’t.
- Is the balance in this picture symmetrical or asymmetrical? It is asymmetrical.
- Have you ever seen windows that were shaped like the arches on this bridge. Where did you see these? These pointed arches resemble Gothic arches usually found in medieval churches and architecture. Students might have seen pointed arches in a church.
- Gothic cathedrals were the great engineering achievements of medieval Europe. What might the presence of Gothic arches in the Brooklyn Bridge have symbolized? The reference to Gothic architecture might have symbolized that the Brooklyn Bridge was an American marvel of engineering, equivalent to the Gothic cathedrals of Europe.
- Evans wanted his photographs to show the national character of America. How does this photograph satisfy his aim? The Brooklyn Bridge, in America’s largest city, was a structure that Americans were proud of. It was a modern feat of engineering and architecture. Evans’s photograph shows the beauty of a structure that thousands of Americans used every day.
- Until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, photography was primarily a means of documentation and was not considered art. The photographer who took this picture considered photography to be an art form. Do you agree with him? Use this photograph to support your reasoning.
- Evans used a modern medium (photography) to create a modern image of a famous structure. When he had studied art in Paris, he saw modern European art that featured abstract, simplified forms. How is this photograph like abstract modern art? Its unconventional viewpoint makes the shape of the bridge seem abstract and not easily recognizable. The stark dark shape against the plain light background with the explosion of lines leading to it makes it seem like a contemporary geometric composition.