Stanisław Szukalski, 1980
In 1916 at the Art Institute there was a new show, one of the Chicago Artists' works, in which I had never participated. The local societies were bolder with each public exposure until the public saw the same enlargements of the microscopic slides of samples of degeneracy smears that we see today. The moronic simpletons, encouraged by the Modernist sanction to take advantage of the Democratic equality with the inspired creators of the Art of the Ages, blazoned out their smearings. (This should be classed with the smearing of excrement of infants on walls and furniture, as psychotic.)
The "liberated" Trustees and some members of the nouveau-cultured meatpackers, forming the new elite, would donate new awards as "high" as fifty dollars, one hundred and "even" two hundred for the best portrait, for the best landscape, but each would stress the sanctific phrase "in oil". To the newly culturetouched a painting, no matter what was wiped on canvas, achieved real Art only when it was "in oil." I was galled by this unthinking babble, so I decided to contribute something that would puzzle the local Jury as to what to do with it.
I painted an "abstract" (something one does not know what he blotches), framed it, signed with the Russian name Niezdieshnyi (not-from-here, a foreigner) and placed it in a large goldfish aquarium. A friend contributed some cheap machine oil for pouring into it. This was taken by another friend to the shipping department of the Institute.
I knew one member of the Jury who agreed to do all possible to have the work of a fool accepted. He voted for it, so did others, until the aquarium was exhibited. Beneath it and in the catalogue stood the name of the Modernist Russian and his "Improvisation in Oil". It was given an award and caused for a few days a sensation that could happen only in provincially sophisticated towns, where hoaxes are fallen for. Then the aquarium's metal frame, containing the glass plates, sprang a leak and the machine-oil smelled to heaven. The masterpiece was sorely missed by the nouveau-cultured Elite and the leaky sample of Modernism was not bought by some humorless Patroness of Art, to be eventually willed as an addition to the permanent collection of the Institute's Museum. What a pity!
After returning to my studio on Wabash, I began to work. It was on the piece, Birth of Thought. I had barely stood my cane behind the door when I heard the running steps of someone in a hurry. The door was flung open and my friend Schindler appeared, breathless.
"Who in the devil chased you so hard? What has happened, Schindler? Some lady is rubbing her legs together for love of you?"
"Much, much better! You are being chased! You are wanted!"
"If she is beautiful, how can you wish me to have her?"
"All fooling aside. I've come with some wonderful news for you!"
"At the Institute they want to fry me in that oil, then award you for the contribution to local Culture!"
"Frank Lloyd Wright wishes you to decorate the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo," Schindler said. "He sent me for you!
Will you come right now?"
"This would enable me to see the Diabotsu of Kamakura and see the cuddly girls of Japan. Hurry up, let's go!"
Right there stood Wright before me, the man I joined in discussing with my friends some time ago. He was graying and erect, a little taller than I. I was struck by his chronic expression of face that was intent on giving you the impression he was doing you a great favor in descending from Olympus to talk to a mere human. There was an air of the operatic hauteur in the way he looked at people. From the highest peg he could boringly took with complete condescension. He was an aging man of monumental vanity, to which attested the fluffy folds of his face from too many massages. He looked more like a lesbian dressed in a tailored suit. Besides the permanently raised eyebrows in a pinched arch of impatient sufferance, he pursed his lips so they looked prim and prissy. The right hand, constantly returning into his right trouser pocket, gave him the desired air of a nineteenth century beau vivant. His hair was not as long as mine but painstakingly and prettily shaped around his face in ringlets.
I immediately sized up the man before me and took a dislike to him. Aside from his great virtues as a somewhat creative architect, I detected by his assumed physiognomy a shade of a dignified sham. For a man to whom I granted a considerably greater size, I suspected he had a way of not becoming that stature.
From what I had seen of his architecture in books and periodicals, I thought he could afford to be more humble. Such posing would have been consistent with an adolescent who wishes to impress people by play-acting the role of an important man. And his manner was not intended only for my benefit. This was a chronic case of actorship, such as little girls playing grandmamas on high heels and lorgnets on their noses. His facial expression lines were as if picked in the middle of the forehead by a fish-hook and pulled up while the corners of the eyes and mouth drooped down.
"Mr. Szukalski, I asked Schindler to bring you here, for I would like to consider you to decorate by Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. I have seen your works at the Art Institute and in the Press. Schindler has been so enthusiastic about you as a person of intellectual integrity that I have been won over."
"However," he continued, "there remain some matters to be talked over so there would be no misunderstanding. You know that Architecture is the Mother of Art, and the prime concern of an artist should be to enhance the Architecture. If an architect has a building to be decorated by a sculptor or a painter, he must wholly submit to the decisions of the maker of that structure. He cannot conflict with the architectural intent or introduce any new elements that would be detrimental to the whole architectural scheme. Do you agree?" "Yes, completely," I answered. "But there are also a few things I would like to stress. What you just said Mr. Wright, I knew before coming to see you, for these are the elementary things we are told in textbooks and schools. These views are orthodox. There if I disagree, it will be not with you, sir, but with the rubberstamp rules of the artistic credo, established by dull minds. If we discuss, I assume you grant me the privilege of talking with you on your par and not as one who is told how matters are in Art."
I had made an opening, and continued. "I think that John Ruskin, who is responsible for the phrase of Architecture being the Mother of Art, should be counterposed by my claim that long before the first shacks were erected out of sticks, the priestly artists painted mammoths, bisons, horses and anthropomorphic, magic creatures of poetic concepts on the rock walls of caves. Long before any attempts at architectural planning, there were those who, in their anticipation, were capable of foreseeing these and such structural schemings could have been done only by those who were in the habit of imaging things unseen, unforeseen namely the artists, the poets, philosophers, no matter how primitive". "Very good," Wright responded. "We have no disagreements on that. If I had stopped to think on the subject, I too would realize the inconsistency of our commonplace phraseology that we inherit from our professors, and they from theirs," he offered in unexpected generosity.
"But," I went on, "perhaps you will not agree with my other views. You said that before anything can be done, we must understand one another. You are a known quantity, for you are older and your views are well publicized. Mine are not. If you will be patient, I will make myself known to you by exposing my views."
"It is of the utmost importance, Mr. Wright, that the sculpture harmonizes with your or any architectural structure. Since the buildings have to be there first, before they are decorated, I would be the one to fit into the existing architectural circumstances and fit your style. That goes without saying." "However, sir, here comes the matter of taste or aesthetic choice. Architecture is not the Mother of Art but the background, the canvas, the bulk, upon which an artist may impose a decoration that may enhance or totally efface the structural beauty of the builder's intent. An architect at best can only give a mood of solemnity, frivolity of brooding gloom, of religious adoration or of an imprisoning machine, of good or bad taste, which we call styles. On the other hand, Art, through sculpture or painting, may give to these massive structures the Expression by superimposing the warmth of life, passion, exaltation, glory, historic Apocalyptism of Revolutionary Againstism. Therefore a sculptor may breathe into its nostrils the soul of eloquent thought into the dead, but susceptible-to-life, stone or concrete bulk. Thus the horizontally pressing rock-pile may become an aspiration, made perceivable by being turned into pulsing flesh by the addition of carved stone or modelled bronze, as did the Gothic sculptors. But as that Art is superimposed, or to say it more correctly loaned by thought-pregnant, expressive sculpture, so that Architecture can take a place among the Arts as equal, so can it be effaced, deceptively altered, so that it becomes ridiculous. It can be made as prayerful as a temple, though it may have originally been a military citadel or an Inquisitional factory of lamed, crippled angels merely by the superimposition of Art, as many a church was turned into a prison by the denudation of its Art."
"These are things I do not like to hear" Wright inserted, as your phrase of "Art loaning life to Architecture. However, I am completely won over by the general scheme."
"If I may take advantage of your patience and come to another point, sir, I believe that Architecture belongs to the inarticulate crafts. I do not regard it as Art unless it was conceived by articulate artists like Giotto or the Gothic stone-cutters. The vast dimensions do not alter the fact that any given structure is no different than a wooden table, a magnificently conceived and carved throne or any elaborately composed furniture, as I regard architects as artistic artisans. An armor is an architectural piece, so is an airplane and a battleship, all of which are the works of a Craft, but never Art."
Wright impatiently and repeatedly shaped the curly hair on the back of his head and rushed in with, "Now in these words I find no logic, no sense! Architecture is an Art. It is the most important of all the Arts!" "Yes," I said, "that is what Ruskin told us to think and you would like it to be so. It's importance is in its dead weight, its size. If there is only the bare structure, then it merely is a pile of neatly joined stones, a gigantic piece of furniture, but if there is added some Art to its surface it may be smuggled in as one of the Arts." I spoke quickly as I was eager that he did not explode right in my face. He was so flabbergasted that he was stymied, fidgety and kept on pursing and unpursing his lips.
"Allow me, Mr. Wright, to come to my last point and from there on I shall submit to a needed lecture. Let me explain my view on the matter of taste, for without an agreement on this point you will not wish me to decorate the Imperial Hotel. "In my opinion, Frank Lloyd Wright is the greatest and the first-to-reappear architect since medieval times. You have surpassed your teacher, Sullivan, in better taste. Your most momentous contribution as an architect is in your large masses, the counterposition of mass-blocks. As with all creative men, not all works are on the same level of worth. But we must consider the most important structures. In characterization of your specific style I would describe it as a combination of Navajo-Zuni pueblo time-improvised buildings and the Japanese wooden temples. There is no one or was there any in a few centuries who could compare with what you have contributed to the succession of great architectural styles. The Renaissance was a rehash of the GrecoRoman epoch. The Baroque was a decomposing Limberger cheese. Now, Mr. Wright, is all this best praise, given you in a concisely small teaspoon, not a proof of how much I think of you as an Architect?"
I waited.
"Yes, I believe what you say and take the praise, for now I, too, see that you do not give meaningless compliments. These were the Szukalski sledge-hammer definitions. I have heard and read about your frankness and respect it." The compliment mitigated him. My appeasement worked. He took my logic lying down.
"Then will you listen to my critical views on some aspects of your work? I know in advance that these will not have any effect on you, but, having come to my own opinion as to your personality, I see no possibility of you wishing me to do any sculptural work on your Imperial Hotel, as by now you have taken a cognizance of my personality.
"I believe the proper way to enhance Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings is by superimposing on them, in a most judicious way, only very sparsely spaced, very thickly carved sculptures that would act as a surprise. Surprise is an element of decoration. When a cake is delicious, one might place a few surprising pieces of sugared fruit here and there. But when a cake is bad and tasteless, the architect resorts to covering the whole structure with a super-abundance of whipped-cream, sugared almonds, raisins and whatnots.
"Though I have said that Wright's architecture is supreme today in the building Craft, it is afflicted with a malady of bad taste by the so-called decorations, where every manner of wallpaper, innocuous gingerbread ornamentation runs like a landscape, seen through an open window of an express train. You, sir, have been afflicted with bad taste of Arabesque flounces by your Master teacher and my dear friend, Mr. Sullivan. Thus the most original and best formed architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright is beset by a smallpox of meaningless, irrelevant jujubees, dangles, laces, that totally misrepresent the fine majesty of your architectural intent.
"While I am being frank, may I mention an earlier work of yours, the Midway Gardens of Chicago. Obviously the intention was to make a sprawling cafe-restaurant, a sort of a banalized paraphrase of the Imperial Pavillion of the Sun in Peking, and you invited the sculptor Yanelli to decorate your elaborate structure and its terraces. In my judgment you could not have made a greater mistake than choosing that ornamental plasterer.
"Now, sir, I wonder if Yanelli is the type of artist that pleases you, for we started our conversation with the matter of agreeing on matters of taste. I believe that all your architecture has been misrepresented by this abominable rash of necklaces, brooches, pins and miles of lace. You excel in dignity, and the Art element of your works, should be, therefore, dignified by a very fine artist, not by a mere artisan or a wallpaper hanger. In the combination of a sculptor and the architect, it is the former who can smuggle your works into the sphere of Art from the lowly craft of Architecture."
He had worked himself to a boiling-over pitch and repeatedly puckered and unpuckered his lips like an old mare after relieving her bladder. Because I had fed him more compliments, which were sincere, he had softened enough to take from the 20 year old sculptor more of the self-born logic that might have been taken for insolence.
I ended my long speech and stood up, putting my hand forward to say goodbye, without waiting for him to regain the pompous dignity that encased his image like the aroma of something obnoxious.
"Mr. Szukalski, I do not think we could work together on the Imperial Hotel", said he, rather coldly in a lofty withdrawal back into his presumptive Olympus.
"Mr. Wright, this was to be expected and I am sure you are not disappointed. I know Mr. Yanelli will be most eager to repeat your Midway Gardens in decorating the Imperial Hotel in accordance with your excellent taste." I clicked my heels, then shook hands with my friend Schindler who, as most Europeans, was somehow in awe of Wright, who was his chief, and remained respectfully silent.
I terminated the visit with satisfaction, for though Wright treated the nation as a herd of morons and in public utterances trampled everyone's feelings, regarding himself as at least a God, my ability to unsaddle his conceit was to him an unprecedented experience. Schindler later told me that he had never suspected that Wright could be so successfully snuffed-out, without asserting himself. He had never seen him take near abuse from another man so silently. "He found someone more than his equal," said Schindler.
The Imperial Hotel was erected and decorated. By what sculptor? Was he able to smuggle Wright's structure among the great Arts? I never found out, nor did I care to.
1980 Stanislaus Szukalski