Wright and ukiyo-e: profiting from prints

Art in America, Oct, 2002 by Peter Dailey

The change in the market, resulting in part from the application of modern design criteria to works previously regarded as historical artifacts, required a different set of expedients. Wright acknowledged occasionally "working" on his prints; touching up spots, cleaning surfaces, removing stains, and patching--all practices employed by Gookin and others. Wesley Peters, Wright's son-in-law, assured Meech that while Wright would never have tampered with a print in flawless condition, he apparently had no such inhibitions with those that were less than compelling; and Peters evokes a parting image of Wright happily at work on a sheaf of Hiroshiges with his box of colored pencils, repairing the deficiencies of the original printer by superimposing on the undifferentiated sky and sea at Kanzawa or the pale beams of the watery moon over Miyanokoshi the subtle gradations of color that lend a first-rate Hiroshige much of its emotional resonance.

Although the revamping scandal and several other setbacks (including the loss of Taliesin twice through fire and a serious decline in the number of new architectural commissions) radically curtailed Wright's involvement in the art market, his deep and abiding interest in Japanese art remained. Asian art was an integral part of his work environment: three-hinged Edo-period panels of the Descent of Amida dominated the drafting room at Taliesin III and a Momoyama screen of cranes nesting in a pine tree was fixed over the fireplace. As we see in the photographs of Wright interiors in Meech's handsomely illustrated book, Khmer heads, Song sculpture, a Ming-period Buddha, Han Dynasty ceramics, Chinese carpets and Japanese textiles all evinced Wright's continuing passion. A folio of Hokusai prints was among the contents of his room at the Plaza Hotel in New York, from which he oversaw final work on the Guggenheim Museum. He was still purchasing Japanese art up until his last hospitalization, and when he died in 1959 at the age of 93, he owed money to half a dozen New York dealers. For years it was Wright's practice to stop during the day for a half hour with his prints, from which he invariably emerged refreshed. A familiarity with ukiyo-e and instruction in the elements of connoisseurship were a basic part of the training his apprentices received; Wright seems to have regarded the relevance of these studies in shaping an architect's vocation as self-evident.

Despite Wright's lifelong absorption in Asian art, he was generally unwilling to admit that as an architect he had been influenced by it or anything, ever. "No man who understands Art ever copies it" is yet another of Wright's questionable assertions. Part of his undeniable genius was the facility with which he was able to synthesize ideas, reimagining and reconfiguring them in the process. Although, as Meech notes, scholars have pointed to a number of suggestive resemblances, his appropriation of aspects of Japanese design was so total that such similarities as exist interest us less than the overall radical unlikeness. In every other aspect of Wright's creative life, however, evidence of his immersion in Japanese art and esthetics is abundantly plain. Neutra, visiting Wright at Taliesin II, felt as if he had arrived at a Japanese temple district. And in a deeper sense, Japanese art shaped the way Wright saw and interpreted the world around him. His formal education had been limited, his political views were foolish and biased, and his distaste for almost all "modern" art, loudly and inopportunely voiced during meetings with Guggenheim curators, enlivened the planning for that late-career landmark. Apart from Japanese prints, there were very few things outside of architecture about which he possessed the same sort of clarity and insight.