Frank Lloyd Wright's Humanism - documentary on the architect

Humanist, May, 1999 by Tim Sandefur

Burns' documentary, like many commentaries, insists that Wright was "not a very nice man" and that "you wouldn't want to know him." But as Bronowski said, "The ascent of man is not made by lovable people. It's made by people who have at least two qualities: an immense integrity and at least a little genius." Like every great artist, the force of Wright's personality--of his soul--lies at the very core of his work. As he himself said:

   Man takes a positive hand in creation whenever he puts a building upon the
   earth beneath the sun. If he has a birthright at all, it must consist in
   this: that he, too, is no less a feature of the landscape than the rocks,
   trees, bears, or bees of that nature to which he owes his being.... The sum
   of man's creative impulses, we find, took substance in architecture as his
   creative passion rose and fell within it.... Of what use to us are
   miraculous tools until we have mastered the humane, cultural use of them?
   We do not want to live in a world where the machine has mastered the man;
   we want to live in a world where man has mastered the machine!

Timothy Sandefur has a B.A. in political economics from Hillsdale College in Michigan, where he was editor of the Restoration.