2. 职称英语
  3. Frank Lloyd Wright is best known as a revolutionary American architect. A ha

Frank Lloyd Wright is best known as a revolutionary American architect. A ha

游客2023-12-02  26
问题     Frank Lloyd Wright is best known as a revolutionary American architect. A hallmark of his work is sensitivity to the natural environment—Fallingwater, the house he built over a waterfall, is a prime example. But Mr. Wright had a second career as a collector of and dealer in Japanese block prints, continuing this business until his death in 1959 at the age of 91. At times, he made more money selling prints than he did from architecture.
    A small but insightful exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, comprising prints, architectural drawings from Mr. Wright’s studio and archival objects, highlights the Japan’s deep influence on his work.
    Mr. Wright was first captivated by Japanese art in 1893, when he saw Japan’s pavilions at the sprawling world fair in Chicago. His interest in Japan’s art and culture blossomed during several trips there starting in 1905. He opened an office in Japan in 1915 and lived there for a few years while building the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. "At last I had found one country on earth where simplicity, as nature, is supreme," he wrote.
    He returned from his first trip to Japan with hundreds of ukiyoe prints, planning to sell them in America. Mr. Wright often sold his clients art to hang on the walls he had built, explaining that they complemented his streamlined interiors. Japanese prints, especially traditional bird and flower images, had easily understandable motifs.
    The prints were a commercial hit but Mr. Wright was also personally enthralled by them. "A Japanese artist grasps form always by reaching underneath for its geometry, never losing sight of its spiritual efficacy," he wrote in The Japanese Print, a slim, 35-page book published in 1912. "These simple coloured engravings are indeed a language whose purpose is absolute beauty."
    According to Janice Katz, associate curator of Japanese art at the Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. Wright favoured prints by Utagawa Hiroshige, a Japanese artist who emphasized environment over human structures. Prints such as Mr. Hiroshige’s Goyu: Women Stopping Travellers show buildings from a wide perspective. The flattened space and naturalistic detail of prints influenced architectural drawings in Mr. Wright’s studio.
    For instance, a vertical scroll-like drawing called Perspective of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Thomas P. Hardy House, Racine, Wisconsin leaves most of the brown page blank except the top right corner where a house perches precariously. A flowering branch, like those in bird and flower prints, pokes into the blank space. The draft was made by Marion Mahony Griffin, who worked for Mr. Wright. An architect in her own right, Ms Griffin later incorporated elements of Japonism in own work. Another drawing, Perspective View of Marion Mahony Griffin and Walter Burley Griffin’s Rock Crest/Rock Glen, Mason City, Iowa, shows clouds and buildings nestled among lush foliage. It is rendered in gouache on a horizontal slice of pale green satin with two side panels that echo Japanese hand scrolls.
    Mr. Wright was also influential in cultivating American interest in Japanese prints. In 1906 he exhibited his collection of Hiroshige prints at the Art institute. Two years later he loaned several pieces to the institute for what Ellen Roberts, associate curator of American art at the institute, reckons was the largest display of Japanese prints in America at the time. Mr. Wright designed the installation for that exhibition, including sleek furniture and special frames reminiscent of screens.
It is unfortunate then that the institute’s current show lacks pointed comparisons between Japanese design and actual Wright buildings. Still, it sheds new light on Mr. Wright’s signature works. The long horizontal lines of the Robie House in Chicago’s Hyde Park reflect the flat landscape of America’s mid-west—yet they also evoke Japan’s minimalist sensibility. Closeness to the earth is the stuff of expansive American prairies but also of traditional Japan. As Mr. Wright wrote in his autobiography: "Why are we so busy elaborately trying to get earth to heaven instead of seeing this simple Shinto wisdom of sensibly getting heaven decently to earth?"  [br] All of the following are features of traditional Japanese block prints EXCEPT ______.
选项 A、conveying spiritual effect through grasp of forms
B、colored engravings with bird and flower imagery
C、abrupt human intrusion into the natural environment
D、flattened space and naturalistic details
答案 C
解析 细节题。根据文章第四至六段可知，日本版画的重要特征有以下几点：通过对形式的把握而达到传神的效果、注重对自然的表现超过对人类建筑物和活动的表现、带有花鸟等传统意象的彩色版刻、扁平的画面空间和画作的自然主义细节等；而第七段在介绍格里芬女士的两幅画作时则进一步阐释了日本版画的风格特点，因此[A]、[B]和[D]的表述正确，故排除；而[C]“自然空间中人的突然闯入”与当时日本版画的创作理念相抵触，故选[C]。
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