With a poetic word-setting of a cold winter morning in Wisconsin, Frank Lloyd Wright, represented by Will Stutts, gives a lecture about his life and work being perpetuated at Taliesin. We are to fancy ourselves prospective students or, fulfilling his theory of education, apprentices before the master architect. It is said that in his later years "at home," Wright often spoke thus, giving center stage to his ego and his theories of organic architecture, for his following, his neighbors, and visitors. Throughout his career, though, he gave numerous speeches as well as media interviews, not always confined to his art or his related vision and opinions. Whether pop culture or religion, politics or law, words on the subject (and its practitioners) flowed from Wright like revelations and condemnations.
Will Stutts captures his tone, moods, flamboyance. To his credit, the white locks on the elder Wright (it's 1959, shortly before his death in April) don't flow wildly from any imposing black hat (in which he was often pictured). No, he's in suit and tie, just a bit hunched. He's not long in from the snow and memory of a talk between nine-year-old boy and his grandfather. This seems to have tempered Wright somewhat. So he's less of a caricature than he might have been.
Considering Stutts' Wright's age, we should perhaps forgive him for rambling at times, for the loose structure of his presentation. Considering he's giving a condensed autobiography (with many important things missing, however) along with his theories and cultural remarks, we wonder why (if we're the audience we're supposed to be) he's revealing so much. Why bring in his first wife so predominantly, if he didn't ever love her and wasn't happy about her bearing so many kids? Why forget one wife altogether? Why did he love Italy so much other than for its light? If he differed so greatly from colleagues, why does he mention only his mentor Sullivan, with whom he disagreed least? Why were skyscrapers antithetical to his organic architecture? If he hated New York City, why did he "insult" it with the Guggenheim?
Stutts would do better to answer such questions than to spend so much time on Wright's opinion of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley. But then, maybe he will, since his presentation seems like a work in progress. At least, we hope it is not yet a finished product. Too dull a finish and on what is not by any standard a drama.
