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Fellowship, The: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship

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Author : Array
Binding : Paperback
EAN : 9780060988661
ISBN : 0060988665
Label : Harper Perennial
Manufacturer : Harper Perennial
Number of pages : 704
Publication date : 2007-10-01
Publisher : Harper Perennial
Release date : 2007-10-02
Title : Fellowship, The: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship
Languages : Array
Number of items : 1
Studio : Harper Perennial

Editorial reviews

Product Description

Frank Lloyd Wright was renowned during his life not only as an architectural genius but also as a subject of controversy—from his radical design innovations to his turbulent private life, including a notorious mass murder that occurred at his Wisconsin estate, Taliesin, in 1914. But the estate also gave rise to one of the most fascinating and provocative experiments in American cultural history: the Taliesin Fellowship, an extraordinary architectural colony where Wright trained hundreds of devoted apprentices and where all of his late masterpieces—Fallingwater, Johnson Wax, the Guggenheim Museum—were born.

Drawing on hundreds of new and unpublished interviews and countless unseen documents from the Wright archives, The Fellowship is an unforgettable story of genius and ego, sex and violence, mysticism and utopianism. Epic in scope yet intimate in its detail, it is a stunning true account of how an idealistic community devolved into a kind of fiefdom where young apprentices were both inspired and manipulated, often at a staggering personal cost, by the architect and his imperious wife, Olgivanna Hinzenberg, along with her spiritual master, the legendary Greek-Armenian mystic Georgi Gurdjieff. A magisterial work of biography, it will forever change how we think about Frank Lloyd Wright and his world.

Customer reviews

review by: date: 2008-12-22 rating:

Explains SO much!!
I've read several books about Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship - and after reading THIS book, a lot of things that I previously thought "odd"...now make sense. Like why "architectural apprentices" spent so much time putting on plays and musicals; or why they spent so much time doing menial labor.

I also appreciated the secondary story about Eugene Masselink, Wright's secretary and right-hand-man; few books pay him much heed. He was a brilliant artist who dedicated his life to Frank Lloyd Wright. After reading about his countless duties, it's no wonder he died of a heart attack at the tender age of 52.

review by: Barch623 date: 2008-07-05 rating:

Amazing Book
Absoulutley amazing research the author has put into this book! I have never read a book on Frank Lloyd Wright so well entailed and so complete as this one. The book is very entertaining and could not put it down!

review by: The Forgiver date: 2008-01-12 rating:

The Fellowship of the Ego
I have always been fascinated by FLW's architecture, my favorite styles being the Prairie and Usonian styles. When you read which and how many buildings he had built per year, it hits you as being odd that he built very little during the roaring 20's? How did he survive during the depression? How could he afford to build such elaborate estates on architecture fees?

The Fellowship was the answer. I was amazed to discover from this book that he created a school and named it the FLW Fellowship. Applicants paid yearly tuitions to work there! In the beginning the education was gained by learning how to build Taliesin and doing such things as kitchen details and farming. It was gratifying to know that only rich kids could afford to attend the FLW Fellowship since no one except the rich during the depression had and money left. Rich kids paying to farm and do manual labor for FLW. Ya gotta love that.

During the early phase of the Fellowship, Wes Peters (apprentice) and Svetlana Wright (FLW's adopted daughter) left Taliesin. "Svetlana wrote Wes" about Olgivanna (FLW's 3rd wife, Svet's mother), "When I read her words I feel that a witch sits behind them! And I feel all sort of creepy and unclean!" That is exactly how I felt as I experienced this book............UNCLEAN.

FLW was a person of extreme contrast or shall I say a person that lived a bi-polar existence. He attracted the like into his Fellowship. I always wondered why his "organic architecture" never spread thru America. His ego would not allow it. He simply could not allow the possibility that someone else could progress his work to an even higher level of genius than his ego. His ego would not allow his genius to be "shared". This is the real FLW tragedy. For a genius to live to be 92 years old and not be able to "grow" apprentices to practice organic architecture. Pitiful. What a perfect ego lesson!

FLW's architecture is nothing more than the celebration of the ego. It breaks my heart.

It apparently took the authors ten years to write this book. The source material is amazing. While I doubt all the authors' conclusions are correct, they with their extensive research in my opinion used their best judgments in drawing conclusions. Most judgments are slanted towards being harsh.

I often thought that FLW was cruel to leave his first family consisting of a wife and six children. Now I am convinced that by abandoning his first family, he saved them from even greater cruelty. If you decide to read this book and experience this very dark journey, I am sure you will agree with me that staying away from FLW was one of the best decisions one could make.

review by: date: 2007-08-16 rating:

On a 20th Century Footing
The 20th Century was to have been the era of transformation in which the human race, and indeed human nature itself was to be wholly revised and repaired. There were as many different formulas as there were thinkers and doers. From Lenin to the Ayatollahs, everyone had a plan to bring paradise back from the lost and found. It hardly needs to be said that all of the various visions found themselves at war with each other. More than 100 million people died in the ensuing competition.

Frank Lloyd Wright thought that transformation would be a natural result of living in a dwelling that conformed with his ideas of "organic architecture". The dwelling would be properly sited in a non-urban, highly programmed, planned community. He hated cities.

In the Taliesin Fellowship, Wright had the opportunity to operate his vision the way a model railroad enthusiast operates a miniature transportation network. The results are instructive. The story is a most entertaining read and well told by the authors, Roger Friedland and Harold Zellman. The writing is excellent. The narrative has everything: sex, power, ego, mysticism, a grand vision, vivid characters, tragedy and madness.

Frank Lloyd Wright has been called the greatest architect of the 20th Century. He may be. It will remain an article of debate for as long as people care about 20th Century building. There is no debate that he lived in interesting times. The Taliesin Fellowship is an excellent mirror in which to glimpse both some of the glory and some of the horror of that time.

review by: architect date: 2007-08-02 rating:

the whole story
Like many former apprentices I learned much more about Olgivanna
than I knew from my own contact during the time I was apprenticed at
Taliesin. It never occurred to me that she was indeed cruel--I just thought she was
FLLW's means to keep himself free of the logistics of housekeeping.
He never expressed much liking for the mystic Gurjieff, and Olgivanna set up the school
following Wright's death which spelled the demise of Wright's ideas in favor of the mystic.

I am sorry that the existing remnants of the Fellowship at Taliesin
seem to have prevailed in denying this exposition. The idolization of
Olgivanna persists!

The book reveals it all and is a great read!

Bill Patrick

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