| Frank Lloyd Wright abandoned his family in 1909 to live in Europe with Mamah Borthwick Cheney, the wife of a client, and to publish his designs for the German art press of Wasmuth. The conventional view is that Wright's work had peaked, that only in Europe did he receive subsequent recognition, and that his creativity faltered after his return. This dissertation challenges that view by examining Wright's experience of Europe in 1910 and by defining 1910-1922 as a transitional period in Wright's life and work.;The dissertation shows how the Viennese sculpture of Franz Metzner and Emile Simandl affected Wright's work at Midway gardens in Chicago and the Imperial hotel in Tokyo; how European artists' emulation of primitive and exotic art rekindled his long-standing interest in exotic forms, resulting in a series of experimental designs after his return. Wright adapted the motifs of the Secession to his designs of ornament, and he developed from these experiments the diagonal axis as a compositional force while elevating the circle and triangle as design elements over the use of the square.;Finally, this study asserts that regardless of personal struggle, Wright's creativity flourished and the social program of his art persisted. Included are seven appendices of biographical material, unpublished letters, drawings, documents. Three catalogues describe selected building projects, Wright's European art collection, and drawings selected building projects, Wright's European art collection, and drawings from the collection of Taylor Woolley, Wright's draftsman.;Motivated by theories of reception and influence, this study establishes that Wright's Wasmuth publications, Ausgefuhrte Bauten und Entwurfe von Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Lloyd Wright: Ausgefuhrte Bauten, were intended to be a set of models for a democratic American architecture, that his audience was young architects of the expanding American West, and that acclaim in Europe was unexpected. It proposes furthermore that while in Europe Wright found in the writings of Swedish feminist Ellen Key a justification for love outside the social conventions of marriage. Upon their return to America, Wright and Cheney published Key's work on moral relationships. |
