Frank Lloyd Wright and Composition: The Architectural Picture, Plan, and Decorative Design As Organic' Line Ideas

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Frank Lloyd Wright and Composition: The Architectural Picture, Plan,

and Decorative Design as ‘Organic’ Line Ideas
Article in Journal of Architectural and Planning Research · December 1997
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Journal of Architectural and Planning Research
14:4 (Winter, 1997) 271
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND COMPOSITION i THE

ARCHITECTURAL PICTURE, PLAN, AND DECORATIVE
DESIGN AS "ORGANIC" LINE-IDEAS
Kevin Nute
Frank Lloyd Wright's admiration for traditional Japanese art has long been well known . Yet, its
precise role in his work has remained far from generally agreed . It is argued here that although
Wright was by no means immune to the kind of romanticism that characterized much popular 19th
century "Japanism," his particular interpretation of Japanese art differed significantly from the norm
through being underpinned with the ideas of his first employer's cousin , the Harvard-educated
Japanese art scholar Ernest Fenollosa, and that quite apart from molding Wright's views on Japanese
art , this early influence also exercised an important influence on his approach to his own wort
Evidence is presented that when Fenollosa's analyses of Japanese art were translated into a general
system of art education by his erstwhile colleague Arthur Dow, the resulting book, known as
Composition, had a direct impact on several of Wright's early designs . The primary argument
advanced is that the Fenollosa-Dow conception of art in terms of "synthetic line -ideas" appears to
have encouraged Wright to take a similar approach to his own discipline , with the architectural plan,
rendering , and decorative design all being treated as aesthetically pleasing "organic wholes" in and
of themselves, above and beyond their practical implications.
Copyright © 1997, Locke Science Publishing Company, Inc.

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14:4 (Winter, 1997) 272
Frank Lloyd Wright's admiration for traditional Japanese art has long been
role in his own work has remained far from generally agreed. This paper w
Wright was by no means immune to the kind of romanticism that characte
century "Japanism," his particular interpretation of Japanese art also differ
norm through being underpinned with the ideas of the cousin of his first
the Harvard-educated Japanese art scholar Ernest Francisco Fenollosa (1853-
apart from molding Wright's views on Japanese art, this early influence al
his approach to architectural design.
What made Ernest Fenollosa' s view of Japanese art unusual for its time wa
simply understand it as a historian or merely appreciate it as an aesthet
interpret it in terms of general principles that could be practically applied
specifically, in America. In May 1891, he summed up his perception of his r
1st. I must remember that , however much I may sympathize with the p
East , I am in this incarnation a man of Western race , and bound to do m
development of Western civilization .
2nd. I must also remember that my career must not be the narrow one o
antiquarian , or a historian who burrows in the past for mere accurac
[aside] my desire to compete with European authorities as a great sch
Japanese art . I must feel that all my knowledge of art , theoretical and
history , is only so much capital for realizing actual production now in th
the West.
This might well explain why Fenollosa's views on Japanese art, and more es
aesthetic principles that it exemplified, seem to have had a particular appea
later confirmed in his autobiography, openly admired Fenollosa's role in pr
ideals in Japan itself:
Japan (and this is hard for the West to understand) went into hysterical
began to destroy her beautiful works of art, casting them upon sacrificial
places surrounding the palace moat in the capital , Tokio : virtually throw
upon these fires as on a funeral pyre , a national form of that hara-k
incomprehensible to the West. A young American at that time helped sav
of their great culture from this wanton destruction . His name was Ernest
Soon after his return to America from Japan in July 1890 in order to take up
newly-established Japanese department at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts
on a campaign to convince his countrymen of the transcendent aesthetic pr
Japanese pictorial art, the most important of which he saw as an emphasis on
rather than realistically representing subjects. In an early talk on "The Less
explained:
The mere representation of an external fact , the mechanical copying of nature , has nothing
whatever to do with art. This proposition is asserted by all oriental critics , and is a
fundamental canon with all Japanese painters ...
... Lines and shades and colors may have an harmonic charm of their own , a beauty and infinity
of pure visual idea , as absolute as the sound idea in music. The artistic element in form is ...
the pure simple music of a form idea ... The fact that such a line organism may represent
natural fact does not interfere with its purely aesthetic relation as line ... Now such line ideas ,
apart from what they represent ... are exactly what the Japanese conceive to form the basis of
all their art.4
Fenollosa held that the aesthetic appeal of these purely formal ideas was due to their peculiar quality
of "organic wholeness," which derived from the mutual interdependence of each contributing part.
He went on to elaborate:
14:4 (Winter, 1997) 273
When several things or parts , by being brought into juxtaposition , exert

upon one another , such that each undergoes a change , and as the result o
changes each becomes melted down , so to speak, as a new constituent of a
synthesis ... Here the parts are not left behind ; they persist altogether tr
organic relation into which they have entered. Such a synthetic whole is n
of all its parts ; it is that plus the newly created substance which has been
union . Such a whole we cannot analyze into its parts without utterly destr
one of the units , and the light which irradiated it is eclipsed ; it is like a h
lifeless .
... A true synthetic whole cannot have a single part added or subtracted without destroying the
peculiar character of its wholeness , without disturbing the perfect equilibrium of the mutual
modifications. Thus such a synthetic whole is an individual a separate entity , [with] a peculiar
organic nature, an unchangeable possibility , a foreordained unit from all eternity. Now [the]
Japanese feel that every case of artistic beauty is just such an individual synthesis.
Although not inaccurate, Fenollosa' s analysis was nonetheless distinctly occidental. Indeed, in many
respects it reflected the general idealism of late-nineteenth-century Western aesthetic theory, having
derived from a combination of the Kantian concept of the purely formal "aesthetic idea" exemplified
by the organic whole, and Hegel's metaphysical explanation of the unique appeal of the organic
form as the most complete material manifestation of the Spirit or metaphysical "Idea."7
For Fenollosa, then, Japanese art in itself was much less important than what it had to teach about the
nature of art in general. And as if to emphasize this point, large tracts of his early lecture on "The
Lessons of Japanese Art" were transferred verbatim into his general treatise on "The Nature of Fine
Art,"8 in which he expounded a thesis to the effect that artistic beauty was based upon "organic"
form-ideas that stimulated a spiritual resonance in the observer which transcended rational under-
standing - in the same way as our appreciation of music does not rely on any knowledge of its
content. To this effect, Fenollosa concluded his essay by declaring:
By an empirical comparison of the several fine arts , I found that their most fundamental
attribute was their power to express a pure , individual , non-ratiocinative idea in peculiar
combinations of sensuous terms. Musical ideas were its types , groups harmonic and organic ...
We know that Wright's woodblock print-collecting colleague from Chicago, Frederick W. Gookin
(1853-1936), owned a copy of his close friend Fenollosa' s "Nature of Fine Art" essay, which he
valued sufficiently to have bound as an addition to his library. And if anything, Wright himself
would have had even greater reason to take an interest in this treatise on aesthetic idealism, since
Fenollosa had specifically related it to his particular discipline:
In architecture it is the same. Where in nature do we find the model of a fine building? The
lines of construction, the proportions of the members, the masses of the openings , all these say
something to us, indeed, buí they tell us no story about anything beyond themselves. They
compose for us a pure and stately harmony - a music less subtle and fleeting than the
witcheries of sound, an idea asfar removed from mere sense as it is from mere intellect ...n
The analogy between music and architecture was not of course new. Goethe, Schiller, and Schelling
were amongst the many writers who had previously drawn the same parallel. Yet it may well be
significant that Wright justified this analogy on precisely the same grounds as Fenollosa - that music
and architecture were both essentially non-representational arts, and that beyond their "purely formal
idea" they ought not to be expected to "tell a story." As Wright explained in 1908:
Music may be for the architect ever and always a sympathetic friend whose counsels, precepts
and patterns even are available to him and from which he need not fear to draw. But the arts
are today all cursed by literature ; artists attempt to make literature even of music, usually of
painting and sculpture and doubtless would of architecture also ...12
14:4 (Winter, 1997) 274
These qualities [form and color] may be harmonized , arranged , and com
expression of spiritual moods and qualities with no story at all - just whe
music is beginning to feel that it needs a story!13
For Fenollosa, after Kant and Hegel, the art idea was essentially a formal on
declared: "The idea in art does not primarily conceive subjects at all, but th
of their expression."14 Although this kind of formalist approach was centr
the nineteenth-century "Aesthetic Movement" in general, Wright would seem
a view very close to Fenollosa' s when he declared that "ideas exist for us b
The form can never be detached from the idea ..." Indeed, Wright himself
the terms "form" and "idea" as virtually synonymous, suggesting that for h
essentially a form idea, as he apparently confirmed in an early descrip
suggested: "The differentiation of a single ... simple form characterizes the
ing ... From one basic idea all the formal elements of design are in e
together in scale and character."16
For Fenollosa, it was Japanese art that had confirmed the fact that represe
issue in art generally - and one that had been grossly over-emphasized in t
served precisely the same role for Wright, who later suggested similarly tha
is a poetic symbol, much of ours is an attempt at realism, that succeeds only
literal." More importantly, Wright applied this "anti-realistic" approach
cipline, having commented in his 1908 essay "In the Cause of Architecture"
As Nature is never right for a picture , so she is never right for the arc
ready-made . Nevertheless , she has a practical school beneath her more o
a sense of proportion may be cultivated ... It is there that he may develop
that translated to his own field in terms of his own work will lift him far
his art...18
Wright's distinctly "idealistic" attitude to his own work was confirmed by o

Oak Park studio, Charles White, who, in a 1904 letter to his friend Wal
employer's unusual approach to design:
His [Wrighťs] process in getting up a new design is the reverse ofthat us
men outline the strictly utilitarian requirements , choose their style , and
those lines , whereas Wright develops his unit first , then fits his design t
much as possible , or rather , fits the requirements to the design . I do not
ignores the requirements but rather that he approaches his wor
architectural way and never allows any of the petty wants of his client t
architectural expression of his design }9
Wright's apparent lack of concern with the "petty wants of his client" seem
belief that the detailed representation of the subject, i.e., the design progr
expression of a coherent form-idea - an approach that might well explain t
practical aspects of design for which Wright has often been criticized. Yet,
clear, rather than ignoring practicalities, Wright simply did not allow them
form-idea of a design. He would appear, then, to have approached his work
Hegel described the "Romantic" architectural form, as "a triumph over the
ment,"20 which was beautiful in itself - above and beyond the practical pur
In fact, Hegel believed that in the best art the rational and the aesthetic wer
this was also the conclusion of Fenollosa' s investigation into "The Nature o
declared:
The truth of art , the truth which makes true and noble music pure and noble , is the inner
harmony and beauty of a pure idea within whose perfect sphere what is true in subject and
what is beautiful in form have been melted together , and become as one .
14:4 (Winter, 1997) 275
22
When Wright suggested that in organic architecture "form and function
to have been making essentially the same point: that in the organic art-f
form and content - "become as one." Indeed, although it is widely ac
concept of "truth" to the design program was central to Wright's archite
White's account suggests that, like Hegel and Fenollosa, Wright was of th
actually define beauty, but rather these two ideals were equal and comple
only fully reconciled in the organic whole. Viollet had declared: "There ar
truth in architecture: it must be true according to the program of require
the methods and means of construction,"23 and he suggested that purely
subordinate to these "two dominant principles." Although Wright himself
and construction method into account, his own approach would see
Fenollosa's belief that "the aesthetical ideal, beauty, is ... not derived from
third independent ideal which, in a certain sense, reaps the benefits of t
words, although ideally the organic architectural form should be intimatel
means of construction, it also had a purely formal quality in its own righ
any external rational concept.
Wright's rephrasing of Louis Sullivan's famous "form follows function" m

ference in emphasis in his interpretation of the organic form, in which Fe
aesthetic quality of "wholeness" may have played a part. Sullivan himself
the organic form primarily - although by no means only - in terms of H
tion of its rational causes. Spencer had explained that as the various parts
on specific functions, the form grows increasingly differentiated, and at t
organs become ever more dependent on one another to perform those ope
up in order to concentrate on its specialized role.25 Apparently inspired b
explanation of the organic form, during one of his Kindergarten Cha
fictional student:
If we call a building a form, then there should be a function , a purpose , a reason for each
building , a definite explainable relation between the form , the development of each building ,
and the causes that bring it into that particular shape; and ... the building , to be good
architecture , must, first of all, clearly correspond with its function ...26
Wright, on the other hand, although equally aware of this explanation of the functional causes of the
organic form, appears to have concentrated much more on recreating its purely formal effect, aes-
thetic wholeness.
Although aesthetic idealism and the democratization of art were both popular themes in late-
nineteenth-century American art theory, Ernest Fenollosa's particular form of democratic aestheticism
encompassed what at the time was still an unusual synthesis of Emersonian populism, Hegelian
metaphysics, and Japanese art. Moreover, such an overtly "organic" interpretation of Japanese art
would, one suspects, have been of more than passing interest to Wright, combining as it did two of
his own major preoccupations. Indeed, in his book The Japanese Print (1912) Wright specifically
recommended two of Fenollosa's publications on ukiyo-e 27 and his own interpretation of the
woodblock print, stressing that its aesthetic idealism, spiritual significance, democratic credentials,
and essentially "organic" nature, were close to Fenollosa's general analysis of Japanese pictorial art.
And this may be of much wider significance, since Wright often described applying the aesthetic
lessons of the print directly to his own work.
Although Fenollosa played a central role in helping to preserve and develop Japan's traditional pic-
torial art in the face of the widespread westernization of Japan during the Meiji era (1868-1912), in
return it provided him with the basis of a radically new approach to art education in general, based
upon the aesthetic composition of line, tone, and color. And when this theory was translated into a
practical system of instruction by his erstwhile colleague at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the
painter and art teacher Arthur Wesley Dow (1857-1922), it seems it may have had an even more
direct impact on Wright's work.28
14:4 (Winter, 1997) 276
Dow, originally a painter from Ipswich, Massachusetts, had first met Fenoll
on a visit to the new Japanese department at the Boston Museum of Fine Ar
Hokusai. Having returned from Japan the previous summer, Fenollosa was a
general theory of art based principally upon the aesthetic interpretation
described earlier, and Dow was sufficiently impressed to offer his help. Fen
a part-time assistant, and within a short time, Dow was similarly lecturing
thetic lessons of Japanese art. In January 1893, for example, he contributed a
to the Knight Errant , the Boston art magazine co-founded by the Harva
Norton.29 Two months later, Dow addressed Boston's Unity Club on Fenollos
of art, and in the autumn of that year he was appointed Assistant Curator of
at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
Within two years Dow had moved on to take up a teaching post at the Pratt Institute in New York.
But he remained in close contact with Fenollosa, with whom he co-taught several classes, and by
the time Fenollosa himself left the Museum of Fine Arts in April 1896, Dow had already developed a
teaching course based upon his ideas. The following year Dow took over the vacant post of Curator
of the Japanese Department at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and in 1899 he published a com-
prehensive course of art instruction based upon a graphic interpretation of Fenollosa' s aesthetic
theory.
Dow' s book, Composition ,31 which immediately went into the first of numerous reprints, was given a
particularly enthusiastic reception in the August 1899 issue of the Chicago art journal Brush and
Pencil , a publication to which Wright himself occasionally contributed. In March of the following
year Dow lectured at Hull House in Chicago, and later that month he addressed the students of the
Art Institute of Chicago on "Principles of Composition in Decorative Design." A year later, an ex-
hibition of Dow' s work was staged at the Art Institute, and two days after its close, on March 26,
1901, Dow lectured to the Art Institute members on "The Principles of Composition in some of the
World's Great Pictures," after which he gave a further series of lectures to the students of the Art
Institute.3
Through his close links with the Art Institute, it seems likely that Wright would have been aware of
these lectures - and therefore of Composition - from a fairly early stage. Indeed, two of Wright's
fellow Japanese-print collectors associated with the Art Institute, Frederick Gookin and the engineer
Charles Morse of Evanston, knew Dow personally. In August 1897, for example, Gookin had visited
Dow at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and even contributed illustrations to a subsequent edition of
Composition .34 Similarly, in 1900 Charles Morse, a distant relative of the famous Japanologist Ed-
ward Morse, had written several times to William French at the Art Institute of Chicago urging him
to book Arthur Dow for some lectures.3
As Narciso Menocal has suggested, Chicago's architectural community in general would probably
have been well aware of Dow' s ideas, since they were in accord with the concept of "pure design"
then beginning to become popular in American architectural circles, particularly in Boston and
Chicago. 6 Essentially pure design entailed a reduced emphasis on historical styles in favor of a
"neutral" vocabulary of simple geometric forms, and Dow himself was directly associated with this
movement. Although he was unable to attend, Dow was invited to address the third annual conven-
tion of the Architectural League of America held in Philadelphia in May 1901, a conference that was
dominated by the topic of pure design, and at which two of Wright's colleagues from the Chicago
Architectural Club, Robert Spencer and Emil Lorch, both presented papers on the subject.
The concept of pure design began life in Boston, and was at least partially inspired by Dow9 s work.
Emil Lorch, who has been credited with first using the term "pure design" in relation to architec-
ture,38 was certainly well-acquainted with Dow's ideas, and as assistant director of the Art Institute of
Chicago between 1899 and 1901 it seems likely that he would have endorsed Charles Morse's cam-
paign to have Dow invited to speak there. Whatever the case, Lorch was clearly familiar with Com-
14:4 (Winter, 1997) 277
position , and in his address to the 1901 Architectural League of America conv
have been quoting Dow when he declared that the early education of the arch
to be designed primarily to develop "his appreciation of the beauty of Ime, fo
necessity of harmonious inter-relation between these to produce beauty."
Emil Lorch was also a friend of the other leading academic proponent of pure
the Harvard design teacher Denman Waldo Ross (1853-1935), who, like Do
address the 1901 Architectural League of America convention, and with whom
studied before going on to head the University of Michigan School of Archite
who had studied at Harvard, taught design theory there from 1899 onward, giv
in the School of Architecture. He was later to publish a number of books on d
known of which, A Theory of Pure Design (1907), was along similar lines
again, perhaps significantly for Wright, as a fellow admirer of Japanese art,
knew Ross personally.41
In his introduction to Composition , Dow acknowledged his debt to Erne

theory, and he described how he was using primarily Japanese examples to ill
Fenollosa actually considered to be universal principles:
He [Fenollosa] had had exceptional opportunities for a critical knowledge of
Western art , and as a result of his research and comparisons , guided by a br
grasp of fundamental ideas , had gained a new conception of art itself He b
in a sense , the key to the other fine arts , since its essence is pure beauty; t
called "visual music , " and may be criticized and studied from this point of v
new conception , he had constructed an art-educational system radically dif
whose corner-stone is realism . Its leading thought is the expressi
representation . / at once felt the truth and reasonableness of his position
preparation in adapting these new methods to practical use , I began teachin
with Professor Fenollosa's cooperation . Here for the first time in this coun
materials were used for educational purposes.*2
As we have seen, Fenollosa believed that the quality of mutual interdependenc

ness," was essential to the purely formal idea in art, and Dow took this up as
Composition , where he described this concept in relation to simple arrangemen
Every part of a work of art has something to say. If one part is made so prom
have no reason for being there , the art is gone. So in this case; if one line
detriment of the others , there is discord. There may be many or few lines ,
its part in the whole. In a word , wholeness is essential to beauty ; it distin
noised
In the early pages of Composition, Dow illustrated the concept of the mutually interdependent organic
whole in the form of a series of simple line patterns or "synthetic line-ideas," which, while displaying
an aesthetically pleasing general sense of order, or purposiveness, had no actual purpose beyond their
visual coherence as purely formal "organic wholes" (Figures 1, 2).
In accordance with Fenollosa's theory, Dow regarded all the visual arts, including painting, as "space-
arts" concerned essentially with the aesthetic division of space - irrespective of the content that they
might also convey. And to this effect, he declared: "The picture, the plan, and the pattern are alike in
the sense that each is a group of synthetically related spaces." Wright would appear to have taken a
very similar approach to these elements in his own work. Indeed, just as Dow had advised, Wright
treated the plan drawing for example as an aesthetically pleasing organic form in its own right,
independent of its practical implications,4 as he confirmed when he suggested, "there is more beauty
in a fine ground plan than in almost any of its ultimate consequences. In itself it will have the
rhythms, masses, and proportions of a good decoration if it is the organic plan for an organic building
with individual style ..." Such a formalist approach would certainly explain the unusual aesthetic
appeal of Wright's plan drawings, which was noted by his Chicago contemporary Thomas Tallmadge
14:4 (Winter, 1997) 278
IfKjl) ļ=^=
A
FIGURE 1. Arthur Dow's graphic interpretation of the

FIGURE 2. Aesthetic line-ideas, Composition , 1899.
internally purposive organic whole in the form of aesthetic
"line-ideas," Composition, 1899.
FIGURE 3. The tartan grids underlying Dow's aesthetic FIGURE 4. Line-idea A and the plan of the
line-ideas (refer to Figure 1). (Grids drawn by author.) "Home in a Prairie Town" project, 1901 (refer
to Figure 2).
14:4 (Winter, 1997) 279
as long ago as 1927 when he observed that

"many of his plans, like those for the Im-
perial Hotel in Tokyo, even when entirely
divorced from their practical significance,
are exquisite pictures in themselves."47
The appeal of Wright's plan drawings is

clearly connected with their underlying
geometry, although, as Richard MacCormac
correctly sensed, it stems from something
more subtle than merely a regular grid. In-
deed, his suggestion that Wright was using
"tartan" grids as the basis for several of his
early plans was a perceptive one.4 How-
ever, initially at least, rather than employing
such grids directly, it seems that Wright
FIGURE 7. The remnants of
may have begun by using some of Dow' s
line-idea A in the first-floor plan
of the Ross house. aesthetic line-ideas, which were themselves
based on this kind of unevenly spaced grid
(Figure 3).
Dow had made a point of illustrating the rich variety of aesthetically pleas-
ing patterns that could be generated from irregularly spaced grid-lines,
having demonstrated how, as one gradually removed lines from a uniform
grid, the degree of choice, and with it the creative possibilities, progres-
sively increased (Figure 1). The simple uniform grid (1) was seen as
presenting no choice, and therefore as holding little or no artistic potential.
FIGURE 5. Line-idea A
On the other hand, the symmetrical tartan grid (2) was shown to offer
and the plan of the Charles
several alternative design permutations; and finally, it was suggested that
Ross house, Lake Delavan,
Wisconsin, 1902. the asymmetric grid (3) afforded the greatest degree of free play, and
therefore presented the most creative possibilities.
It was shortly after the appearance of Composition that Wright designed his
famous "Home in a Prairie Town" project for the Ladies' Home Journal ,
and having been based on a cruciform of four interlocking rectangles, the
core of this plan seems reminiscent of Dow's line-idea A (Figure 4).
Similarly, the distinctive parti of the Charles Ross house of the following
year could have derived from the same source. In its original form, Dow's
line-idea was hardly practical as an architectural plan, since the rectangular
spaces forming the cruciform were not directly connected. Wright's stroke
of genius appears to have been to achieve this spatial continuity by simply
removing the bounding lines where the rectangles overlapped, so producing
the now familiar effect of apparently interpenetrating spaces (Figures 5, 6).
This is further suggested by the fact that traces of Dow's original pattern
seem to have been left behind in the first-floor plan of the Ross house in
the form of walk-in closets, which, while projecting into the central
bedroom, actually serve the two end rooms (Figure 7). In fact, several of
the plans that Wright produced in the period immediately following the
appearance of Composition would appear to have been similarly inspired,
as for example the Darwin Martin house (1904) (Figures 8, 9), and
likewise the main hall of Unity Temple (1906) (Figure 10).
Dow had described the irregular grids illustrated in Figure 1 as producing

FIGURE 6. The
the kind of beauty seen in "plaids and ginghams." It may have been
interpenetrating forms of
the Charles Ross house. more than merely coincidental, then, that Wright also chose a weaving
14:4 (Winter, 1997) 280
FIGURE 8. Line-idea B and the FIGURE 10. Line-idea C and FIGURE 12. The interpenetrating forms
core of the Darwin Martin house,
the main hall of Unity Temple, Oak Park, of the Edgar Kaufmann house,
Buffalo, New York, 1904 (refer to Illinois, 1906. "Fallingwater," Bear Run, Pennsylvania,
Figure 2). 1936.
FIGURE 9. The inter- FIGURE 11. The interpenetrating FIGURE 13. A transitional space formed by
penetrating forms of the Darwin forms of the Life house project, 1938.
the apparent interpénétration of two incomplete
Martin house. forms.
14:4 (Winter, 1997) 281
metaphor to describe the aesthetic stru

underlying his own plan forms, having
gested for example:
In the main the ornamentation is
wrought in the warp and woof of the
structure . It is constitutional in the
best sense and is felt in the concep-
tion of the ground plan. To
elucidate this element in composi-
tion would mean a long story and
perhaps a tedious one though to me
it is the most fascinating phase of
the work, involving the true poetry
of conception.52
In Dow's interlocking line-ideas, then, it

seems that Wright may have found the basis
for several of his first genuinely "organic"
plans, and in the process, possibly the in-
spiration for the overlapping spaces and
open-cornered forms that came to charac-
terize his mature work (Figures 11, 12, 13).
In fact, if Dow's line-ideas are analyzed ac-
cording to modern scientific criteria, they
are found to exhibit most of the essential
formal characteristics of biological order,
which suggests that Wright's use of these
patterns as the basis of "organic" plan forms
may have been more than simply artistically
justified (Figure 14).
As well as interlocking plan forms, it seems

that Dow's line-ideas might also have in-
spired a number of Wright's decorative
FIGURE 14. The four primary characteristics of biological
designs, as for order
example, the patterns used
reflected in one of Dow's "organic" line-ideas (refer to Figure 2).
on the Storer and Millard block houses,
Illustrations on the left are from Riedl R (Trans. Jefferies RPS,
1978) Order in Living Organisms. Chichester: both of which appear to have derived from
Wiley-Interscience.
a combination of two line-ideas (Figures 15,
16). Likewise, irregular grids, similar to those illustrated in Composition , provided the basis for
several of the decorative window designs that Wright employed in the early Prairie Houses, such as
the Ward Willits' residence (Figure 17).
Dow's central theme in Composition echoed Fenollosa's belief in the essential unity of abstract
design and pictorial art, and to this effect he suggested:
The designer and picture-painter start in the same way. Each has before him a blank space on
which he sketches out the main lines of his composition. This may be called his Line-ideaf and
on it hinges the excellence of the whole ... A picture , then, may be said to be in its beginning
actually a pattern of lines.
Interestingly, Wright described the woodblock print in virtually identical terms, as an abstract "pat-
tern" in its own right irrespective of its subject matter, having explained: " ... these prints are designs,
patterns, in themselves beautiful as such; and, what other meanings they may have are merely in-
cidental, interesting, or curious by-products." In fact, Dow had cited the work of one of Wright's
favorite print artists, Ando Hiroshige, as providing an ideal illustration of the use of simple "rectan-
gular line-ideas" as an aesthetic framework for pictorial compositions, even suggesting that in this
14:4 (Winter, 1997) 282
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= □= NĚHlūrt
%-ļt rinn = □
FIGURE 15. The combination of two line-ideas underlying the decorat
California, 1923 (refer to Figure 1).
0H IhthI fflīĒ
M
FIGURE 16. The combination

Miniatura," Pasadena, C
FIGURE 17. The plaid grid u

drawn by author).
respect Hiroshige had so

that pictorial compositio
textile patterns (see not
the print as being "wove
These drawings are all c
symbolic value , but wi
woof of the weave is bu
The geometric structure

that does not bear this
efficient causes enwoven
14:4 (Winter, 1997) 283
FIGURE 20. Harmonious landscape design,

Composition , 1913.
Dow had illustrated the type of hidden

geometric structure underlying the prints with
several examples of simple landscape composi-
tions of his own design (Figure 18), each based
upon a few irregularly spaced grid-lines, of
which he wrote:
Returning now to our premise that the
picture and the abstract design may
show the same structural beauty , let us
FIGURE 18. Landscape composition based on
seean underlying
how the simple idea of combining
aesthetic structure, Composition.
straight lines , as so far considered , may
be illustrated by landscape . Looking
out from a grove we have trees as verti-
cal straight lines , cutting lines horizon-
tal or nearly so. Leaving small forms
out of account we have in these main
lines an arrangement of rectangular
spaces much like the gingham and other
simple patterns . 8
This, it seems, may have given Wright the idea

of composing his own architectural pictures on
the same kind of aesthetic framework, as for ex-
ample the well-known Wasmuth rendering of
the Como Orchard project, which appears to
have been based on a similar underlying struc-
ture (Figure 19). The presence of such a pattern
would certainly explain the formal appeal of
Wright's renderings, which Arthur Drexler per-
ceptively noted when he described:
The eye travels across these pictures in a
rhythm established by vertical lines
made by features of the architecture . It
is a rhythm inaugurated and often
concluded by a vertical mass at the
extreme right or left of the picture ,
usually a tree trunk augmented by a
single horizontal branch ...
FIGURE 19. The aesthetic structure underlying the that several of

In fact, it seems the best-known
Wasmuth rendering of the Como Orchard project, Darby,
Wasmuth
Montana, 1909 (grid drawn by author).
renderings - in which buildings were
often depicted behind a forest of silhouetted
14:4 (Winter, 1997) 284
FIGURE 21. The Wasmuth rendering of the Ward Willits' house.
trees - may have been inspired by illustrations from Composition (Figures 20
Wright's drawings, then, tell us almost as much about his view of art as his
both his plans and renderings apparently reflecting the same uncompromisingl
each phase of his work as primarily the expression of a coherent form-idea.
toward explaining why, quite apart from their obvious historical significance
are now prized as works of art in their own right, irrespective of the extrao
depict.61
It would seem, then, that the Fenollosa-Dow conception of pictorial art in terms of "synthetic line-
ideas" could well have encouraged Wright to take a similar approach to his own work, the architec-
tural plan, rendering, and decorative motif being treated as aesthetically pleasing organic wholes in
themselves, quite apart from their rational implications. Indeed, in Dow' s interlocking line-ideas
Wright appears to have found the basis for several of his earliest "organic" plan forms, and in the
process, possibly the inspiration for the interpenetrating spaces that came to characterize his mature
work.
NOTES
1. For a fuller account of this personal connection via Joseph Silsbee, see Nute KH (1991) Frank Lloyd W
Art, Ernest Fenollosa: The Missing Link. Architectural History, Journal of the Society of Architectural
Britain 34:224-230.
2. Fenollosa EF (1891) My Position in America, manuscript, 1 May 1891, bMS Am 1759.2 (60), typescript copy p. L
Compositions by Ernest Francisco Fenollosa 1853-1908, the Ernest G. Stillman Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University.
3. Wright FL (1945) An Autobiography. New York: Horizon, p. 452.
4. Fenollosa EF (1891) The Lessons of Japanese Art, manuscript, November 1891. bMS Am 1759.2 (54), pp. 5-7. Composi-
tions by Ernest Francisco Fenollosa 1853-1908, the Ernest G. Stillman Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard
University.
5. Ibid., pp. 13-14.
6. Kant suggested that the aesthetic appeal of forms stemmed from a perception of their wholeness or "apparent" purposive-
ness - an ordered arrangement of mutually interdependent parts that appears purposeful but that can in fact stem either from
genuine adaptation to objective functions or be purely formal. On this basis he explained the special appeal of the organic
form thus: "In such a product of nature every part not only exists by means of the other parts, but is thought of as existing for
the sake of the others and the whole, that is as an (organic) instrument." " ... An organised product of nature is one in which
every part is reciprocally purpose [end] and means." Kant, as quoted in JH Bernard (1892 trans.) Kant's Kritik of Judgement .
London and New York: Macmillan, pp. 277, 280.
7. Lawrence Chisolm describes Fenollosa's approach as "a formal Hegelian interpretation of traditional sino-Japanese artistic
canons." See Chisolm LW (1963) Fenollosa: The Far East and American Culture. New Haven, CT: Yale, p. 201. Hegel had
suggested that when we perceive beauty in a form we are intuitively recognizing its inner idea, its particular manifestation of
the "Absolute Idea" - God. The more of the "Idea" manifested in material form as the "Ideal," the more beautiful the form
14:4 (Winter, 1997) 285
appeared. The particular appeal of the organic form was therefore explained on the basis tha
manifestation of the "Idea." To this effect, Hegel suggested: "The inorganic bodies ... exhibit b
physical properties, which are found equally in any detached particle of the same. The mutua
characteristic of an organic body does not exist ... Such is the first mode of the existence of the
its ultimate and true existence except when all the parts and elements are so united that the w
reciprocal relations, when each element loses the particular existence and is what it is by virtu
idea unity constitutes the organism and thus only in life does the Idea find its realization."
(1892) Hegel's Aesthetics : A Critical Exposition. Chicago: S.C. Griggs, pp. 29-30.
8. See Fenollosa EF (1896) The Nature of Fine Art: I. The Lotos 9:663, and idem (1896a) Th
Lotos 9:753. Part One consists of a process of elimination leading to the identification of the
the fundamental essence common to all the arts. Part Two is an explanation of the metaphysic
"organic," whole. The Lotos had previously been the Women's Club magazine the New Cycle , b
its new title in early 1896 with a more educational content, and with Fenollosa as one of its edito
9. Fenollosa EF (1896) The Nature of Fine Art: I. The Lotos 9:672.
10. A bound copy of Fenollosa's "The Nature of Fine Art" essay was donated to the Art Instit
estate on his death in 1936. See Accessions Book , 1936, the Burnham Library, the Art Institu
not myself had access to it, what remains of Gookin's library is owned by Mrs. Patricia Barnes of
11. Fenollosa EF (1896) The Nature of Fine Art: II. The Lotos 9:668.
12. Wright FL (1908) In the Cause of Architecture. Architectural Record 23, as reprinted in
Cause of Architecture: Frank Lloyd Wright. New York: Architectural Record and McGraw-Hill, p.
13. Wright FL (1917) The Print and the Renaissance, manuscript, Taliesin, 15 November 1
Foundation.
15. Wright FL (1912) The Japanese Print: An interpretation . Chicago: Ralph Flecher Seymour, p. 11. This concept could
have derived mere directly from Hegel, who had declared: "The two elements of idea and form are, in the Beautiful, in-
separable." Hegel, as quoted in JS Kedney (1892) Hegel's Aesthetics, p. 27.
16. Wright FL (1908) In the Cause of Architecture. Architectural Record 23, as reprinted in F Gutheim (Ed. 1975) In the
Cause of Architecture: Frank Lloyd Wright , p. 59.
17. Wright FL (1912) The Japanese Print , p. 15.
18. Wright FL (1908) In the Cause of Architecture. Architectural Record 23, as reprinted in F Gutheim (Ed. 1975) In the
Cause of Architecture: Frank Lloyd Wright , p. 53. In similar vein, Wright suggested: "The photographer and the machine are
doing realism very well now - the photographer and the machine have taken a huge and senseless burden from the artist's
shoulders. He is ungrateful and unemployed ... Realism was his confession of impotence." The Print and the Renaissance,
manuscript, Taliesin, 15 November 1917. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.
19. White to Willcox, May 13, 1904, the Walter R. Willcox Papers, the Knight Library, University of Oregon, as reprinted in
CE White (1904) Letters from the Studio of Frank Lloyd Wright. In HA Brooks (Ed.) Writings on Wright: Selected Comment
on Frank Lloyd Wright. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT, p. 87. Courtesy of the Knight Library, University of Oregon.
20. For Hegel, the Romantic phase in Western architecture was exemplified by the Gothic; however, it was the dwelling that
provided its basis and interestingly his description of this house could almost have been of Wright's mature domestic work: "...
the house, furnishes the fundamental type, while at the same time effacing as much as possible the simple utility. The building
is reared independent of this end, free for itself and beautiful. This triumph over the merely useful requirement is its first
characteristic ... The eye finds a similar satisfaction in the minuter parts, which are repetitions of the fundamental idea, to that
awakened by the entire structure." Hegel, as quoted in JS Kedney (1892) Hegel's Aesthetics, p. 198.
22. Indeed, Wright interpreted Sullivan's famous "form follows function" motto in distinctly metaphysical terms, having sug-
gested for example: "Use both the word organic and the word Nature in [a] deeper sense - essence instead of fact: say form
and function are one. Form and idea then do become inseparable: the consequence not material at all except as spiritual and
material are naturally of each other." Wright FL (1972) Genius and the Mobocracy. London: Seeker and Warbug, p. 99.
23. Viollet-le-Duc EE, translated in H Van Brunt (Trans. 1975) Viollet-le-Duc Discourses on Architecture. Boston: J.R. Os-
good, pp. 474-475, as quoted in D Hoffmann (1969) Frank Lloyd Wright and Viollet-le-Duc. Journal of Society of Architectural
Historians 28:176.
14:4 (Winter, 1997) 286
25. In his famous analogy with societies, for example, Spencer explained "... let us now r
regarding a society as an organism ... As it grows, its parts become unlike: it exhibits inc
simultaneously assume activities of unlike kinds. These activities are not simply different, b
as to make one another possible. The reciprocal aid thus given causes mutual dependence o
pendent parts, living by and for one another, form an aggregate constituted on the same
organism." Spencer H, quoted in S Andreski (Ed. 1969) Herbert Spencer: Principles of So
21-22. Spencer's Principles of Sociology was originally published as part of Spencer H
Philosophy , 3 vols. London: Williams and Norgate.
26. Sullivan LH (1979) Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings. New York: Dover, p. 46.
27. See Steward DB (1987) The Making of a Modern Japanese Architecture: 1868 to th
284, note 42. Wright recommended The Masters of Ukioye and History of Ukioye by Pr
(1912) The Japanese Print , p. 3, footnote. The books in question were Fenollosa EF
Complete Historical Description of Japanese Paintings and Color Prints of the Genre Sch
idem (1901) An Outline of the History of Ukiyo-ye. Tokyo: Bunshichi Kobayashi.
28. Wright's possible awareness of Dow's work was suggested in Moffatt FC (1977)
Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, p. 60, and is discussed in Menocal NG (1983)
Wright's Tree of Life Window. Elvehjem Museum of Art Bulletin 31, note 26.
29. Dow AW (1893) A Note on Japanese Art and What the American Artist May Learn The
30. On Fenollosa and Dow's joint teaching activities during this period, see Moffatt FC (19
31. Dow AW (1899) Compositions: A Series of Exercises Selected from a New System of A
32. See Kay M (1899) A New System of Art Education. Brush and Pencil 4:258.
33. See the letter from William French to Arthur Dow, December 24, 1900, the William M
Art Institute of Chicago. Also see The Art Institute of Chicago Annual Report 1900-1 , the Bu
Chicago.
34. Later in 1897, Gookin visited Dow at his home in Ipswich, Massachusetts. See the letters from Frederick Gookin to Marie
Siebeth Gookin, August 13, 1897, and September 1, 1897, the Frederick Gookin Papers, Midwestern Manuscripts Collection,
the Newberry Library, Chicago. For Gookin 's contribution to the 1913 editions of Composition , see Dow AW (1913) Composi-
tion: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, fron-
tispiece.
35. See the letters from William French to Charles J. Morse, March 4 and November 6, 1900, the William French Papers,
Archives of the Art Institute of Chicago. Although I have not been able to confirm their precise relationship, it seems that
Charles Morse was a distant cousin of Edward Morse. There are several letters from him in the Edward Morse Papers at the
Peabody Museum of Salem, and in 1904, William French asked him to sponsor some of Edward Morse's lectures at the Art
Institute of Chicago. Significantly, during his visit to the Midwest the following year Edward Morse lectured at the Women's
Club in Evanston (February 28, 1905). See the letters from Charles J. Morse to Edward S. Morse, February 23, 1895, and
November 30, 1896, the Edward S. Morse Papers, the Phillips Library, Peabody Museum of Salem; and from William French
to Charles J. Morse, September 7, 1904, the William M. R. French Papers, Archives of the Art Institute of Chicago.
36. See Menocal NG (1983) Form and Content in Frank Lloyd Wright's Tree of Life Window. Elvehjem Museum of Art
Bulletin 31, note 26. Also see idem (1986) Frank Lloyd Wright and the Question of Style. Journal of Decorative and
Propaganda Arts 2:7.
37. The convention was held at the University of Pennsylvania's Houston Hall between May 23 and May 25, 1901. Although
Dow was unable to take up the invitation to address the conference, he did respond by letter, a brief extract of which was
reprinted together with several of the papers presented at the convention in the June 1901 edition of Chicago's Inland Architect.
See Ross DW, Dow AW (1901) Architectural Education. Inland Architect and News Record 37:38. Also see Spencer RC
(1901) Should the Study of Architectural Design and the Historic Styles Follow and be Based upon a Knowledge of Pure
Design?, in ibid., 34; and Lorch E (1901) Some Considerations upon the Study of Architectural Design, in ibid., 34. On the
general interest in pure design at the Philadelphia convention and subsequently amongst Chicago's architectural community, see
Brooks HA (1976) The Prairie School: Frank Lloyd Wright and His Midwest Contemporaries. New York and London: W. W.
Norton, pp. 39-40.
38. On this, and the concept of pure design in Midwestern architectural education generally, see Van Zanten DT (1988)
Schooling the Prairie School: Wright's Early Style as a Communicable System. In C Bolon, et al. (Eds.) The Nature of Frank
Lloyd Wright. Chicago: University of Chicago, p. 75.
39. See Lorch E (1901) Some Considerations upon the Study of Architectural Design. Inland Architect and News Record
37:34. Lorch specifically mentioned the "excellent work being done by Messrs. Ross and Dow," ibid.
14:4 (Winter, 1997) 287
40. Ross DW (1907) A Theory of Pure Design : Harmony ; Balance , Rhythm . Boston and New
see the extract of Ross's letter on the subject of pure design to the secretary of the Architectura
as Architectural Education, Inland Architect and News Record 37:38.
41. In a letter to his wife in 1897, Gookin mentioned lunching with Den man Ross in Cambr
sachusetts in the summer of that year. See the letter from Frederick Gookin to Marie Siebeth Go
Frederick Gookin Papers, the Midwestern Manuscripts Collection, the Newberry Library, Chicago
42. Dow AW (1899) Composition , p. 5.
43. Ibid., p. 38. Fenollosa had earlier made the same point: that it was the aesthetic quality of
music from mere noise. See Fenollosa EF (1891) The Lessons of Japanese Art, manuscript, No
p. 15. Compositions by Ernest Francisco Fenollosa 1853-1908, the Ernest G. Stillman Papers, b
Library, Harvard University.
44. Dow AW (1899) Composition , p. 24. More specifically, in relation to painting, Dow sugges
is concerned with the breaking up of a space into parts which vary in shape, depth of tone, and
45. In this respect, it may be significant that Dow, like Fenollosa, expressly classified archite
art. See for example Dow AW (1913) Composition , p. 49.
46. Wright FL (1928) In the Cause of Architecture I: The Logic of the Plan. Architectura
Gutheim (Ed. 1975) In the Cause of Architecture: Frank Lloyd Wright , p. 153.
47. Tallmadge TE (1928) The Story of Architecture in America. London: Allen and Unwin, p. 2
48. See MacCormac R (1968) The Anatomy of Wright's Aesthetic. Architectural Review (Lond
49. This was illustrated most clearly in the 1913 edition: see Dow AW (1913) Composition , p.
50. See Wright FL (1901) A Home in a Prairie Town. Ladies' Home Journal 18:17.
51. See Dow AW (1899) Composition , p. 16.
52. Wright FL (1908) In the Cause of Architecture. Architectural Record 23, as reprinted in
Cause of Architecture : Frank Lloyd Wright , p. 59. The "woven" nature of Wright's mature d
tively described in Sergeant J (1976) Woof and Warp: A Spatial Analysis of Frank Lloyd Wrig
ment and Planning B 3:211.
55. Dow suggested: "Great architects and designers were not the only ones to use this sim
pictorial art have based upon it some of their best work ... Hiroshige, the best of the later Japan
of inexhaustible inventive power, often uses the rectangular idea ... None of these examples [
Francesca, Giotto, and Whisler] need further explanation. They are beautiful, even when divested
because they are built upon a few straight lines, finely related, and a few delicately proporti
ed.), p. 27.
57. Ibid., pp. 15-16.
59. Drexler A (Ed. 1962) The Drawings of Frank Lloyd Wright. New York: Horizon, p. 12.
60. As several writers have pointed out, many of the renderings prepared at the Oak Park studio, including the famous
Japanese drawing of the Hardy house, were actually executed by Wright's assistants, primarily Marion L. Mahony (1871-1962),
but also Birch Burdette Long (1878-1927), William E. Drummond (1876-1948), and several others. See for example Byrne B
(1963) On Frank Lloyd Wright and His Atelier. AIA Journal 39:109; Brooks HA (1966) Frank Lloyd Wright and the Wasmuth
Drawings, Art Bulletin 48:193; Van Zanten DT (1966) The Early Work of Marion Mahony Grifin, Prairie School Review 3:5.
61. In this connection, it may be significant that in Dow's aesthetic line-ideas Wright's drawings seem to have shared a
common source of inspiration with Piet Mondrian's "Compositions," which both Frederick Moffatt and Ernst Gombrich have
suggested may have been influenced by Dow's patterns. See Moffatt FC (1977) Arthur Wesley Dow , p. 60, and Gombrich E
(1984) The Sense of Order: A Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, pp. 58-59.
14:4 (Winter, 1997) 288
Additional information may be obtained by writing directly to the author a

Department of Architecture, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113, Japan.
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Kevin Nute received his architectural training at the University of Nottingham before going on to work in practices
Kong, London, and Singapore. He earned his doctorate at Cambridge and has been a Fulbright Scholar at the Un
California, Berkeley, and a Monbusho Research Scholar at the University of Tokyo. His first book, Frank Lloyd
Japan , received a 1994 International Architecture Monograph Award from the A.I. A. and is due to be published
next year. While teaching part-time at Cambridge, he was a visiting lecturer at schools of architecture througho
Europe, and Japan, and is currently a visiting research fellow at the University of Tokyo,
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Frank Lloyd Wright and Composition: The Architectural Picture, Plan,

Article in Journal of Architectural and Planning Research · December 1997

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FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND COMPOSITION i THE

Copyright © 1997, Locke Science Publishing Company, Inc.

When several things or parts , by being brought into juxtaposition , exert

Wright's distinctly "idealistic" attitude to his own work was confirmed by o

Wright's rephrasing of Louis Sullivan's famous "form follows function" m

In his introduction to Composition , Dow acknowledged his debt to Erne

As we have seen, Fenollosa believed that the quality of mutual interdependenc

FIGURE 1. Arthur Dow's graphic interpretation of the

as long ago as 1927 when he observed that

The appeal of Wright's plan drawings is

Dow had described the irregular grids illustrated in Figure 1 as producing

metaphor to describe the aesthetic stru

In Dow's interlocking line-ideas, then, it

As well as interlocking plan forms, it seems

FIGURE 16. The combination

FIGURE 17. The plaid grid u

respect Hiroshige had so

The geometric structure

FIGURE 20. Harmonious landscape design,

Dow had illustrated the type of hidden

This, it seems, may have given Wright the idea

FIGURE 19. The aesthetic structure underlying the that several of

FIGURE 21. The Wasmuth rendering of the Ward Willits' house.

trees - may have been inspired by illustrations from Composition (Figures 20

3. Wright FL (1945) An Autobiography. New York: Horizon, p. 452.

5. Ibid., pp. 13-14.

9. Fenollosa EF (1896) The Nature of Fine Art: I. The Lotos 9:672.

17. Wright FL (1912) The Japanese Print , p. 15.

42. Dow AW (1899) Composition , p. 5.

51. See Dow AW (1899) Composition , p. 16.

53. Dow AW (1899) Composition , p. 24.

54. Wright FL (1912) The Japanese Print , p. 12.

56. Wright FL (1912) The Japanese Print , p. 14.

57. Ibid., pp. 15-16.

58. Dow AW (1899) Composition , p. 25.

Additional information may be obtained by writing directly to the author a

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