camouflage / gestalt / design / taoism / bauhaus

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did Frank Lloyd Wright design home for Hilton twins

Mark Sloan. Hoaxes, Humbugs and Spectacles. NY: Villard Books, 1990, p. 41—

Born in England in 1908, Violet and Daisy Hilton were perhaps the most successful of all Siamese twins [conjoined twins]…At the height of their extraordinary career the lived in a house in San Antonio, Texas, designed for them by Frank Lloyd Wright.

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Bexar County Historical Commission Oral History Program. James Moore, as interviewed by Esther MacMillan on June 30, 1978, in San Antonio TX—

JM (James Moore): …from the time they [the Hilton sisters] were very young…they built a home out on Vance Jackson Road [in San Antonio].…it was a very expensive house and a very ornate, elborate house, but a very cold house. It was built on a sort of a Japanese or Chinese style, with the curved-up corner, pagoda type. It was built out of blond, light colored brick.

M (Esther MacMillan): …in one reference, it said that the plans came from Frank Lloyd Wright, not that he built the house, but that they got plans…

JM: I don’t know about that.

M: And somebody said that it just didn’t look like Frank Lloyd Wright. …I never saw the house.

JM: I think that was a little bit of…

M: Fluff?

JM: …they didn’t exactly tell a fib, but they sort of glamorized it.

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Sideshow World website at <https://www.sideshowworld.com/>—

When Mary Hilton died, she willed the twins [Violet and Daisy Hilton] to Edith and Myer [Myers]. The Myers relocated to the United States and used part of the twins' fortune to build a luxurious, Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired home in San Antonio, Texas. Daisy and Violet spent the majority of the 1920s touring the United States on vaudeville circuits, playing clarinet and saxophone, and singing and dancing. The sisters were a national sensation, counting among their friends a young Bob Hope and Harry Houdini, who allegedly taught them the trick of mentally separating from one another.

Art, Design and Gestalt Theory: The New Film Version

Recently completed: Our most popular video talk, titled Art, Design and Gestalt Theory: The Film Version (40 mins). It traces the emergence of Gestalt psychology (c1910), as well as its connections to holism, Taoism, yin and yang, displacements of attention, contrast illusions, color, camouflage, graphic design, and architecture. Ideal for classroom screenings, and library discussion events. Non-monetized, free full online access for anyone at YouTube.

Frank Lloyd Wright | Taliesin West and Camouflage

Mason City poster © Roy R. Behrens

In the following text, the newspaper article referenced is “Architect Wright’s Arizona Home, Last Word in Camouflage, Blends into Landscape of Desert” in The Sacramento Bee (Sacramento CA), May 14, 1940.

In 1911. the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright established a studio near Spring Green, Wisconsin, on a property that had long been owned by his maternal Welsh ancestors, the Lloyd Jones family. He referred to that location as Taliesin, which is Welsh for “shining brow.”

Beginning in 1935, Wright no longer remained in Wisconsin year-round. Instead, he and his students traveled annually to the Southwest, to spend each winter in more compatible weather in a desert setting, twenty-six miles from Phoenix, Arizona. The complex he established there became known as Taliesin West.

In May of 1940, a newspaper article described Wright’s Taliesin West (still unfinished at the time) as the “last word in camouflage.” World War Two was underway (although the US was officially neutral), and the article recommended that “the artists of wartime camouflage could learn a lot from the sprawling, unusual structure” that Wright was then developing in Paradise Valley, near Scottsdale AZ.

Although Wright himself might not refer to his architecture as camouflage, the article goes on to say, it is nothing short of that, since “the building blends so completely with the desert landscape that it is scarcely visible a half-mile away.” Indeed, “were it not for the white canvas roof it would almost be lost in the rugged mountain topography at a distance.”

Proposed book cover (2016) not used

Cedar Rock talk about Wright and Modern-era furniture (2018)

Frank Lloyd Wright Meets Camoufleur Barry Faulkner

Frank Lloyd Wright poster © Roy R. Behrens (2017)

Above Frank Lloyd Wright's City National Bank and Park Inn Hotel in Mason City Iowa. Poster by Roy R. Behrens (2017).

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In the Iowa City Press-Citizen (Iowa City IA), on April 21, 1932 (p. 8), there was an entry in Charles B. Driscoll's column "The World and All," in which he reported on a recent experience in New York with American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Here's an excerpt—

Recently I attended a delightful party in honor of Frank Lloyd Wright at the studio of Barry Faulkner in East Seventy-Second Street. I found the guest of honor one of the most distinguished gentlemen I have met in moons.

Barry Faulkner's studio? Really. Those who know about the origins of the WWI American Army Camouflage will recognize that name. Faulkner, from New Hampshire, was Abbott H. Thayer's cousin. In collaboration with his friend, Iowa-born sculptor Sherry Edmundson Fry,  he co-founded the American Camouflage Corps, comprised of civilian artists and architects.

Driscoll continues—

To Mr. Wright, I ventured to put this question: "Why do your building designs so persistently emphasize the horizontal line?"

I had observed in pictures of the buildings designed by Wright the long roofline, the veranda or porch paralleling the roofline, and other efforts to squelch the vertical.

"Because," he replied, "the horizontal is the restful line, the line of repose and domesticity. It is what we need in this country."

"Then you must not think well of our New York architecture, with its emphasis on the vertical?" I asked.

"Is there architecture in New York?" replied the distinguished guest.

And I went hunting for another sandwich.

Kevin Nute | Embedded Figures in Wright Floor Plans

Frank Lloyd Wright and Mason City

There are few books I would recommend as highly as Kevin Nute's Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan: The Role of Traditional Japanese Art and Architecture in the Work of Frank Lloyd Wright (1994). When I first came across that book, I was researching Gestalt theory in relation to camouflage. It was Nute who showed the embedded figure connections between Arthur Wesley Dow's "organic line ideas," traditional Asian lattice motifs, and Wright's floor plans.

I have learned recently that Kevin Nute will be talking about Wright in Japan at the Architectural Interpretive Center in Mason City IA, at 7:00 pm on Tuesday, July 10, 2018. The event is free and open to the public.

Poster © Roy R. Behrens

Frank Lloyd Wright & William Penhallow Henderson

Frank Lloyd Wright and Mason City (2016)

Until recently, we were unaware of the link between architect Frank Lloyd Wright and an admired but lesser-known painter named William Penhallow Henderson (1877-1943).

Most people think of the latter as an artist who was closely tied to artists who settled in Taos NM around the turn of the century. But he was also a capable architect, muralist and furniture designer, in a style that was in keeping with the American Arts and Crafts Movement.

Henderson was born in Massachusetts, but grew up in the Midwest. In the beginning years of the 20th century, he lived and taught in Chicago, at which time Wright was living there. In 1914, while Wright was completing the Midway Gardens on the city’s southside, he commissioned Henderson to design a mural for that project. But when Wright (apparently) objected to the end result, Henderson backed out and the mural was soon painted over. While remaining in Chicago, he designed the costumes and scenery in 1915 for a theatrical production of Alice in Wonderland by the Chicago Fine Arts Theatre.

For health reasons, Henderson and his wife relocated to Santa Fe in 1916. The following year, soon after the US entered World War I, a new system of disruptive ship camouflage was adopted by the British Admiralty and, soon after, the French and Americans did the same. In 1918, Henderson was appointed to serve as a camouflage artist in San Francisco.

USS Western Star (1918) in dazzle camouflage

There he was part of a team of civilian artists who painted dazzle camouflage schemes on merchant ships. As we have blogged previously, the artist in charge of that particular team was Edgar Walter (1877-1938). But Maynard Dixon was also involved, as were (Swedish-born) Bro Julius Olson Nordfeldt, A. Sheldon Pennoyer, and others.

When Henderson returned to Santa Fe with Nordfeldt, his friend and fellow camoufleur, a brief article appeared in the Albuquerque Morning Journal, on December 22, 1918, p. 2, with the headline CAMOUFLEURS IN SANTA FE—

William Penhallow Henderson, the noted artist, who has served the shipbuilding board on the Pacific coast as camoufleur, has returned to Santa Fe, with O. Nordfeldt, and etcher and artist of fame, who with Mr. Henderson had charge of the camouflage department at San Francisco. They perfected this art to such a point that the camouflage inspectors in the east compared that of the eastern shipyards with that at San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego as standard. Mr. Nordfeldt will remain in Santa Fe over the winter. The two artists brought with them models of camouflaged ships which will be placed on exhibit in the new museum [New Mexico Museum of Art] and will illustrate a museum night talk.

An earlier article about the camouflage efforts of West Coast artists, titled SEEKS TO MAKE ARMY INVISIBLE, appeared in The Daily Ardmoreite (Ardmore OK) on July 11, 1917, p. 1—

San Francisco, July 11—The western division of the American Camouflage [Corps], an organization of artists which has for its object the recruiting of men who can assist in rendering the forces of the United States army and navy invisible to the enemy, was organized here [at the California School of Fine Arts] last night by artists and scene painters.

By the use of color combinations in small squares, map-like patches and other methods, United States battleships have been rendered more nearly invisible than those of any other nation, the members said today…

A month later later, yet another article on SAN FRANCISCO ARCHITECTS AND ARTISTS AS CAMOUFLEURS appeared in Western Architect and Engineer August 1917, p. 58, about which we posted an earlier blog.

Tom Benton, Frank Lloyd Wright and Camouflage

Thomas Hart Benton, Report on Camouflaged Ship (1918)

Above In earlier posts, we've noted the involvement of American Regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton (see portrait below) in World War I camouflage. While he served in the US Navy, he did not design ship camouflage. Instead, his assignment was to travel around the bay at Norfolk VA, and to make visual records of the camouflage designs of any ships that he observed, including those of other countries.The page above is a record of one of those sightings, including full-color renderings of the camouflage schemes on both sides of the SS Alban (dated October 30, 1918).

There's a great story about Benton and American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. It's told in Priscilla J. Henken, Taliesin Diary: A Year with Frank Lloyd Wright (New York: W.W. Norton, 2012), p. 35—

[There is] an amusing story of the [Taliesin] Fellowship's overnight stay at the Benton home in Kansas City, on the way [from Spring Green WI] to camp [at Taliesin West in Arizona]. All the boys [sans F.L. Wright, who made the trip separately], including the short, square, black-moustached Thomas Benton had imbibed freely. While he swung in wide arcs from a swing with 25-foot long ropes, the boys stood on the porch singing to Kansas City till the wee hours Palestrina, Bach, spirituals, and folk songs. Then he and his sons entertained them with chamber music composed of harmonicas and recorders.

Benton Family Musicians

In the new book on Frank Lloyd Wright and Mason City: Architectural Heart of the Prairie (2016), there is a discussion of the connections between Wright's architectural style and Benton's approach to painting.

Frank Lloyd Wright and Mason City (2016)