Louis Sullivan: The Poetry of Architecture - Hardcover

Menocal, Narcisco G.; Twombly, Robert; Menocal, Narciso G.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393048233 ISBN 13: 9780393048230

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000

Synopsis

Louis Sullivan believed that art should reveal the creative method of nature. The greatest artist was the poet, whose understanding of nature spurred social change.

This volume is both a tribute to Sullivan’s poetic genius and a catalogue of all his graphic work. The authors discuss the social implications of Sullivan’s theories of architecture, with visual proof of his vision in illustrations of his work on paper and in three dimensions. A translation of 'Etude sur l’inspiration,' Sullivan’s seminal and heretofore unpublished credo in verse, is further testimony to his vision. Included is an illustrated catalogue of all extant Sullivan drawings, some never before published. 428 illustrations

About this title

About the Author:

Narciso G. Menocal teaches architectural history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His books include Architecture as Nature: The Transcendentalist Idea of Louis Sullivan.

Robert Twombly teaches at the Spitzer School of Architecture, The City College, New York City. He lives in West Nyack, New York.

From Publishers Weekly:

While Sullivan's skyscrapers proclaimed Chicago the biggest and best city, he saw himself as an architect of the people, interpreting the popular will in a distinctly American style. This pathbreaking biography reveals how original Sullivan was, how much his own man. It also probes the tragedy of an innovator who, famous by age 30, nevertheless died poor and neglected in a cheap Chicago hotel in 1924. Sullivan was a compulsively serious man with missionary zeal, an immaculately groomed recluse whose aristocratic demeanor was meant to compensate for his poor Irish roots. His ideas about organic architecture took full shape in the works of his pupil Frank Lloyd Wright. Twombly, who teaches at City University of New York, ponders whether Sullivan's decline was the fault of the Classical Revival, his break with his partner, refusal to compromise his artistic standards or his emerging homosexual proclivities. The answer seems to lie in a mixture of all these factors. Many photographs and drawings are interwoven with the text.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0393048233
• ISBN 13: 9780393048230
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416