If you're here, you already know that Louis Sullivan had a deep and lifelong preoccupation with biomorphic ornament and the Germinating Primus, or whatever. Which is very cool and a little weird.

He kept Asa Gray's Botanical Manual in his pocket for easy reference. Evidently he could sit down and draw this stuff out freehand for hours on bar napkins if you'd let him. And he had a genius Norwegian terra cotta craftsman named Kristian Schneider who could do the impossible: translate this into three dimensions for permanent installation.

You're familiar with this, I know you are. Sullivan's "lieber meister" relationship to Frank Lloyd Wright, and his devotion to the Leafy Spiralling Manroot, is all well-trampled ground in architectural history. The story is that Sullivan was the first true modernist, embraced the aesthetic and commercial possibilities of steel (for tallness) and glass (for daylighting), won big, invented the skyscraper in Chicago and St. Louis, shook off the bad old historical styles, had worldwide impact, and almost attained the Modernist purity. He sadly clung to two vices: his preoccupation with patterned bands of terra cotta and his alcoholism.

So it was left to his student, Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Germans, from the Bauhaus, to finish what Sullivan had started and achieve the logical inevitable perfect bare building.

Let's scope out and see if this old story makes any sense.

So, to get more specific, many world architects around 1890 - 1900 - 1910 found themselves tackling the aesthetic problem of how to incorprate the human figure in or with or on their buildings, while doing their best to ignore the old classical solutions.

The European solutions are nutty and cool. The Dutch examples are crazy. The Nouveau apartment houses in Riga, Latvia, designed by Sergei Eisenstein's father, are equally crazy. My single favorite example is above, the bronze "calling women" (gutters heckling) of the 1898-1899 Wienzeile 38 apartment block in Vienna, architect Otto Wagner, sculptor Othmar Schimkowitz. That image is gorgeous, and the gutters heckling strongly define the relationship and psychological distance of building to street.

Back to the point, though.

Louis Sullivan wasn't alone.

Louis Sullivan included the human form on very few of his buildings. The 1898 Bayard-Condit Building on Bleeker Street in New York City is the only Sullivan building blessed by angels. Their placement is interesting. You look up, the physical act of looking up is significant, it does something to your posture and body language from the outside in, and the sight of angels in a row suggests a celestial order.

Reportedly the client wanted angels, and Sullivan did not.

Which brings us to Wright.

Some of the important Frank Lloyd Wright commissions in the teens and early 1920s, like the 1906 Larkin Building, also have integrated sculptural figures.

During Frank Lloyd Wright's mysterious year in Europe from 1909 - 1910, he bumped into members of the Vienna Secession, namely this Austrian sculptor named Franz Metzner. Metzner was a link among multiple continental art movements: the Otto-Wagner-Vienna-Secession thing, the Prague nationalism-and-hermes-everywhere thing, and the politically charged German war-memorial-and-Bismarck-tower thing.

The Wright scholar Dr. Anthony Alofsin looked into the cross-influences between Wright and the European modernists around 1900 in an interesting book called Frank Lloyd Wright--the Lost Years, 1910-1922: A Study of Influence, essentially trying to figure out whether Wright preceeded the European Modernists or vice versa. Alofsin identifies Metzner as an influence on Wright. Of course, Wright would never admit that. This is the same Metzner responsible for the outstanding green humans on top of the landmark Palais Stoclet (below), and the spooky figures in the 1913 Völkerschlachtdenkmal Leipzig memorial, and figures on Berlin's 1913 Volksbühne (New People's Theatre).

So Frank Lloyd Wright developed figural sculpture for a while, with sculptors Lorado Taft and Alfonso Ianelli, but particularly with Richard Bock.

Bock's sculptural work appears integrated into the Susan Dana Thomas house in Springfield, the Isadore Heller house, the Darwin Martin house, the Larkin Building, and the Midway Gardens. Quote from Bock's autobiography:

"One evening we were invited to have dinner with Darwin D. Martin, secretary of the Larkin Company, for whom Frank had designed a home, another of his architectural gems.... I had done two pieces of sculpture for the garden of this home. They were horizontal blocks, five feet long by two feet by two feet. These blocks were articulated by life-size children. One represented Spring with playing children surrounded by dogwood foliage. The other represented Winter with the children asleep under a blanket of snow....Back in Chicago I first made sketches of the two pier terminals (for the Larkin Building) in the shape of globes about seven feet in diameter. In front of each were two kneeling boy figures. On each side of the piers were descending bands. The nature of these designs is impossible to describe adequately. The other pieces were two large panels about eight feet square which were to be placed at the two entrances to the building. Each entrance had a pool with water flowing into the pool in a sheet from beneath the sculptured panel."

Bock's autobiography reprints a photo of one of those two eight-foot square panels, a center tablet with an inscription, flanked by an intaglio relief that included one female and one male figure. One of these stood on the (more popular) Seneca Street facade, and the other stood on the Swan Street facade. The figures were identical on both panels, but the Seneca Street inscription read: "Honest Labor Needs No Master, Simple Justice Needs No Slaves," and the Swan Street side read: "Freedom to Every Man and Commerce with All the World."

(And a note in the back says that the Spring sculpture was donated to the Bock Museum in Greenville, Illinois as of 1975, and the whereabouts of Winter are unknown.)

These buildings are as articulate and emotional as silent films, wordlessly communicating a strong messages of social meaning. The Larkin Building is as articulate as buildings get.

Quote from Jack Quinan's "Frank Lloyd Wright's Larkin Building, Myth and Fact," pages 88-89:

"The sculpture program was essential to the full realization of the Larkin Building. Exterior sculpture consisted of two sets of freestanding putti and globes atop the large piers of the north and south facades; capitals on strucutral piers along the flanks of the building; and intaglio reliefs with fountains alongside the two main entrances. The sculpture program continued inside with twin bas-reliefs on either side of the fireplace in the entrance lobby; and with capitals for the piers defining the light court. Sculpture was used sparingly, but it served important functions: together with a plentitude of related inscriptions it accented the design at crucial points; it provided continuity between exterior and interior; it conveyed elevating message to the Larkin office force about the nature of work, and it declared the aspirations and identity of the Larkin Company."

And on page 96, specifically on those twin interior bas-reliefs:

"Aurora and her counterpart are winged figures in geometrized drapery, standing in cruciform postures with extended hands. They functioned, in part, as directors of traffic: to one entering the building their barrier-like attitudes suggested a turn towards the light court, while to one leaving the light court their arms pointed to the exits. Inscriptions on vertical panels beneath their arms carved inspirations messages intended primarily for the Larkin office force." The inscriptions:

To encourage and reward

PURPOSE - EFFORT - ACHIEVEMENT

To establish and maintain

ORDER - HARMONY - EXCELLENCE

To acquire and cherish

HUMILITY - KNOWLEDGE - STRENGTH

To inspire and diffuse

IDEAS - EMOTIONS - INVENTIONS

(more to come)