Frank Lloyd Wright Poem by gershon hepner

Frank Lloyd Wright would have preferred
to make the Guggenheim museum red,
but S.R.G. refused, so Frank concurred
that yellow marble might be used instead,
and thought that black would work as well as white.
Though red seemed best, the color of creation,
to push for it seemed hardly worth the fight;
so flexible was his imagination,
he’d even have been happy using pink,
however shocking, peach or green. Whenever
your patron asks for something that you think
is stupid, and you do it, you are clever.

Christopher Gray points out that Frank Lloyd Wright wanted the Guggenheim Museum to be Cherokee red (“Fifth Avenue Shocker: The Building Wore Red, ” NYT, June 26,2009) :

Historically, New York’s colors have been red brick and the white and buff of marble, limestone and, in the 1960s, glazed brick. Indeed, we often complain bitterly when someone violates the norm. Thus, the 1962 blue-glazed brick apartment house at Madison Avenue and 65th Street was a target of indignation, as if the ubiquitous white glazed brick was somehow preferable. The building became brown in 2004, ending the argument. Although most attention focuses on Wright’s shapes, he had a strong sense of color. He wanted the concrete of his 1937 house Fallingwater, in southwestern Pennsylvania, to be gold-leafed, and the Fallingwater Web site, www.fallingwater.org, describes “his signature Cherokee red.” Anyone who visits Wright’s Johnson Wax Building in Racine, Wis., comes away with the warm orangey glow of the same color, which is also used for the floors and furniture. Hilla Rebay was the art adviser to Solomon R. Guggenheim, the mining entrepreneur, and in 1943 she approached Wright to design a museum. Several of the architect’s early proposals are shown in “Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward, ” organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, and on view at the museum through Aug.23. Dating is uncertain for many of the early drawings, but in 1944 Wright proposed a polygonal structure, partly in blue. He also made designs in pink, peach, red and a sort of ivory. These are illustrated both in the exhibition and in Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer’s new book, “Frank Lloyd Wright, Complete Works 1943-1959, ' published by Taschen and the first of three volumes. Joan Lukach, in her 1983 book “Hilla Rebay: In Search of the Spirit in Art, ” quotes a number of letters between Wright and Rebay. In January 1944, Wright described his choice of color and material as “exterior: red-marble and long-slim pottery red bricks.” Wright recommended that he make a model “completely furnished and in color — a type of model for which we are famous.” Rebay’s reply was crystal-clear: “Red is a color which displeases S. R. G. as much as it does me, ” she wrote in a 1945 letter. She suggested “yellow marble, and if not, green.” The book says the model was red — “the color of creation, ” Wright informed Rebay. He also suggested black marble. But the usually intransigent architect backed off, perhaps keen on a plum commission in New York City. He wrote that any color would be acceptable, and the entire matter dropped away. Had Wright been so accommodating with other clients, his reputation would be quite different.



6/26/09