The Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship - Hardcover

Friedland, Roger; Zellman, Harold

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060393882 ISBN 13: 9780060393885

Publisher: ReganBooks, 2006

Synopsis

Traces the period in the renowned architect's life from 1932 to 1959, during which he created the Taliesin Fellowship, a sexually fervid and eccentric architectural commune that gave rise to some of Wright's most impressive projects and damaged the lives of scores of apprentices and family members. 50,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

"Compelling." -- Kirkus Reviews

"[A] blockbuster.packed [with] plenty of sex and surprises. .This book has a lot of news." -- Capital Times

"Authoritative and eminently readable.uncover[s] the sometimes strange, sometimes scandalous, always tumultuous atmosphere in which Wright created his pioneering designs." -- Robert C. Twombly, author of Frank Lloyd Wright: His Life and His Architecture

"Fascinating.good history. And a ripping read." -- Architect's Newspaper

Compelling. --Kirkus Reviews

"First to treat the Taliesin Fellowship as a whole -- its origin, its workings and its inner life."--Wall Street Journal

"[A] blockbuster...packed [with] plenty of sex and surprises. ...This book has a lot of news."--Capital Times

"The Fellowship both fascinates and infuriates. You can't top the material for richness: genius, sex, spirituality, madness, money, mania."--USA Today

"Authoritative and eminently readable...uncover[s] the sometimes strange, sometimes scandalous, always tumultuous atmosphere in which Wright created his pioneering designs."--Robert C. Twombly, author of Frank Lloyd Wright: His Life and His Architecture

"A mesmerizing account of the drama that compelled the great architect...to greater accomplishments...and the cost of that success."--Ken Burns, award-winning director of The Civil War, Jazz, and Frank Lloyd Wright

Synopsis:

Frank Lloyd Wright has been canonized as America's greatest architect - the man who gave us the Guggenheim Museum, and dozens of other 19th and 20th century American architectural landmarks. The scandals of his early life - including his multiple marriages and the bizarre axe murder of his third wife and family by an outraged servant in 1914 - have long since become the stuff of legend. Yet by far the most bizarre, prolonged, and fascinating period of Wright's prodigious career - from 1932 through the end of his life in 1959 - involved his founding and stewardship of the Taliesin Fellowship in Spring Green, Wisconsin a kind of academy-cum-architectural-firm-cum-communal living foundation he created together with his third wife, Olgivanna. A devotee and former lover of the legendary mystic Georgi Gurdjieff, Olgivanna Wright saw Taliesin as a potential American outpost for Gurdjieff in the United States; Wright saw it as a kind of miniature society in which he could play feudal lord - dressing his young and willing apprentices in matching uniforms, demanding that they perform endless physical labour, even intruding into their personal lives in unexpected and sometimes alarming ways.

Wracked by dissent, almost constantly bankrupt, the facility nevertheless became the seedbed of some of Wright's most impressive projects - from the innovative Johnson Wax building to the unforgettable Fallingwater. After his death, Wright's widow and remaining apprentices quietly conspired to preserve secrecy about the dark side of Taliesin. Now, in "The Fellowship", sociologist Roger Friedland and architect Harold Zellman have persuaded dozens of former apprentices - and Wright's remaining daughter, long out of the public spotlight - to reveal the truth. The result is a twisted and haunting tale of genius and ego, mysticism and chariatanism, violence, deep sexual dysfunction, and more - a magisterial work of biography, one that will forever change how we think about Frank Lloyd Wright.

About this edition

• Publisher: ReganBooks
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0060393882
• ISBN 13: 9780060393885
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 708