March 19, 2004
March 19, 2004
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Iris Garden at Horikiri, or Horikiri No Hanashobu, by Ando Hiroshige (1797-1858) is one of six Japanese woodblock prints that hang in Fallingwater. These prints were given as housewarming gifts to the Kaufmann family from Frank Lloyd Wright, who on the back sides of the prints signed personal inscriptions to individual family members. This print hangs in Fallingwater's Master Bedroom. In this print, which is a part of Hiroshige's famous series One Hundred Views of Edo , the artist illustrates the Hanashobu Iris cultivated in the village of Horikiri near the mouth of the Ayase River. The gardens of Horikiri grew a year-round variety of flowers, but the fame of the place derived from the iris known as Hanashobu, which is ideally suited to this swampy land. The iris was one of several flowering plants, including chrysanthemums, morning glories and azaleas, which attracted cult-like followings that competed to produce ever more colorful and exotic varieties. Over his lifetime, Frank Lloyd Wright amassed one of the largest collections of Japanese prints worldwide, the volume of which rivaled that of the Japanese imperial family. In addition to collecting, he was also a dealer of Japanese art, which interestingly (but perhaps not surprisingly) made him more money than his architectural commissions. He felt a deep appreciation and respect for the tradition's understanding of nature and “unpretentious” simplicity, which in its use of abstraction played an important role in the evolution of modern art. In his 1912 essay, “The Japanese Print: An Interpretation,” Wright discusses how this artistic tradition so precisely captures the essence of the natural world by seeking to know it on its most primary structural level: Japanese art is a thoroughly structural art . . . The word structure is here used to designate an organic form, an organization in a very definite manner of parts or elements into a larger unity - a vital whole. So, in design, that element which we call its structure is primarily the pure form, as arranged or fashioned and grouped to “build” the Idea. . . Geometry is the grammar, so to speak, of the form. It is its architectural principle. . . A Japanese artist grasps form always by reaching underneath for its geometry. . . By this grasp of geometric form and sense of its symbol-value, he has the secret of getting to the hidden core of reality.Wright, Frank Lloyd. “The Japanese Print: An Interpretation.” 1912. Frank Lloyd Wright: Collected Writings 1894-1930. Vol. 1. Ed. Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer. New York: Rizzoli Publishing, 1992. 116-125.
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