Louis Sullivan: His Life and Work - Softcover

Twombly, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226820068 ISBN 13: 9780226820064

Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr, 1986

Synopsis

A biography of the influential American architect analyzes his designs, writings, and decorative schemes, and includes a look at his influence on Frank Lloyd Wright and other architects

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.

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: Univ of Chicago Pr
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0226820068
• ISBN 13: 9780226820064
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 544