Wright, Frank Lloyd

11 typed letters signed ("Frank Lloyd Wright," "Frank"), with numerous autograph additions, 12 pp. (various sizes), most on Taliesin and Taliesin West letterhead, Phoenix AZ, New York City, Spring Green WI, 30 April 1928–19 October 1955, to Lewis Mumford (one regarding Mumford to Nathan G. Horwitt); light horizontal and vertical creases. One letter matted, glazed and framed  — 3 pamphlets inscribed to Mumford, vd.

Condition as described in catalogue entry.
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"IT HAS BEEN SAID THAT LEWIS DISCOVERED ME. IF HE DID I AM PROUD OF HIS COMPANY." FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT'S LETTERS TO HIS LONG-TIME FRIEND AND ALLY LEWIS MUMFORD.

Frank Lloyd Wright's professional relationship and friendship with Lewis Mumford (1930–2013) began in the 1920's and continued to the end of the architect's life.  In a letter written from Phoenix, 30 April 1928, Wright complains to Mumford about a new architectural study by Fiske Kimball: "… a well written brief for the 'Classic' bracketing McKim, Meade and White's thought in Architecture with Lewis [sic] Sullivan's. God save the mark! And this is 'History'." Wright then goes on to encourage Mumford to write something on American architecture himself: "I am heartily sick of the historical falsification of the real course of ideas in the Architecture of our Country, unconsciously done as most of it is. A true concept of 'modernism' in origin or effect is so far almost wholly lacking. Why don't you record it? No man has yet stood up to this task, learning anything further West of Manhattan, the commercalized monstrosity, than Buffalo, New York.

"Why not you? Come afield and see for yourself the healthy undergrowth coming through this rank obscuring growth of pseudo-classic weeds. A healthy undergrowth rising from seed planted in the prairie soil thirty years ago. Pseudo-Classic has only been a 'corn-crop', as the farmers say, for that future harvesting! You will write what you please, as you please, but until you have 'come' afield 'led by myself', you will not write with more than the artist's instinct which is dangerous in a historian, unless based upon the fundamental acts contributing to the subject he views and records. Pardon the seeming attempt to 'preach'. It is perhaps uncalled for and an egotistic assumption on my part, but I am just smarting from Fiske Kimball's well-meant 'obituary'. Why allow Corbusier et al to 'beard us' in our own den?"

In April 1932, Wright wrote a tribute to Mumford to be read at a "bon voyage" gathering in his honor. Wright is unstinting in his praise: "I should be 'sitting in' to add my best to the laurels he already wears were there any money left in the World I inhabit — because I see in him the foremost constructive critic of American culture. His is the nearest mind to Emersons [sic] that we possess and the mind most likely to interpret to our country its own neglected ideals.…It has been said that Lewis discovered me. If he did I am proud of his company. I should have more faith in myself discovered by him than by any pilot that sails the uncharted seas of our troubled twilight — be it dawn or be it eve."

On 10 January 1952, Wright complains in a four-page letter, about a new book for the University of Chicago Press, The Rise of the Skyscraper", which he characterizes as "sodden with fact and false in spirit because there is an axe to grind …. The truth of the whole affair is so encrusted with Bauhaus, Museum of Modern Art, [Henry Russell] Hitchcock and [Philip] Johnson, provincial imports of culture from abroad and commercialization of the original ideas that any post mortem held by anyone (except one in the know by experience like yourself) is phony or bogus."

In spring 1953, the New Yorker published an article by Mumford on the U. N. General Assembly building and Wright wrote from Taliesin West to congratulate him, "Better than ever! Your Skyline — U. N. Assembly — conclusion (last lines) is prophetic criticism for which you will be remembered. The courageous conviction I admired in you from the first. Vive the New Yorker! What other magazine would have dared. But the court-jester always spoke what other courtiers never dared utter." To this, Wright adds an autograph postscript: "Emerson would put his hand on your shoulder and say 'my son'?"

Also included are three pamphlets by Wright, designed by him and printed in black and his favorite color "Cherokee red": In the Cause of Architecture: The "International Style". February 1953. Inscribed, "To LLewis — The battle is 'joined' — Frank — Taliesin West. Apr. 20 53" — Taliesin Square-Paper 16. The Language of Organic Architecture. February 1953. Inscribed, "To Llewis. Taliesin West — Apr 20 - 53. Frank" — Taliesin Tract Number One: Man. Christmas 1953. Inscribed "FLLW. To Lewis. Enough said."

A FINE AND COMPELLING ACCOUNT OF A FRIENDSHIP THAT LASTED ALMOST FIFTY YEARS.