University of Virginia Library

7. FRANK LOYD WRIGHT

Frank Lloyd Wright: Architecte américain is the only volume of the extraits not
listed in Valdras, despite the certainty that it was published within the time period
it covers; its dating is therefore the most speculativeof the collection. The work
was originally published in the Summer 1930 fascicule of l'Architecture Vivante,
three copies of which were sent to Wright on November 17 of that year. 49 On
January 9, Wright telegrammed Badovici requesting twenty additional copies,
and again eleven days later requesting another thirty. The fifty copies were sent
to Wright, along with an invoice, and for the remainder of 1931 Wright and
Morancé haggled over the cost, with Wright's office arguing that the use of his
drawings and photographs "for free" should entitle him to some type of discount.
Morancé and Badovici, with Wright's drawings in hostage, threatened to send a
collection agency. That the yearlong discussion concerned individual fascicules
of l'Architecture Vivante, and not the extrait, is clear from both the prices quoted
by Morancé, and Wright's office referring to them as "magazines." The earli-
est references I have found for Frank Lloyd Wright: Architecte américain appear in
1932, in the bibliography of The Museum of Modern Art's Modern Architecture:
International Exhibition, and in Édition Albert Morancé's own catalog of that year,
neither of them providing a date other than that of their own publication; the
former waspublished in February of 1932, the latter printed sometime in 1931. 50
Henry Russell Hitchcock, Jr., who wrote the nine-page essay on Wright for the
MoMA publication, himself owned a copy of the extrait, now in Avery Library
at Columbia University. I am placing the publication of the extrait in 1931: any
earlier, and Badovici would have been negotiating with Wright over copies of
the extrait rather than the l'Architecture Vivante fascicule; any later and it would not
appear in these publications.

The design of the cover follows the Russian prototype, with FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT
hand-lettered in black and superimposed on a white L'AVand a yellow
background. The rear cover has the lotus version of the EAM emblem, further
reinforcing the 1931 publication date. Inside, the front matter has been recast
to include thenew title, page and plate numbering has been revised, and a new
table of contents has been composed to reflect these changes (fig. 7.1, plate 10).

A second, later version exists, with a revised cover design that borrows from
various extrait designs. The L'ARCHITECTURE VIVANTE placed vertically in a black
band on the right edge originates from the fourth volume of the Le Corbusier
and P. Jeanneret series; this device also appears in two titles by Paul Nelson, to
be discussed later, from the late 1930s, and possibly concurrent with this version.
A large black rectangle at the bottom is all that remains of the arrow on the
original cover (fig. 7.2). The title and publisher's name have been redrawn in a
less dynamic arrangement, as with the later cover from the Freyssinet title. The
interior, as is the case with other reissues, appears to be made up of overstock
of the originating l'Architecture Vivante issue: the page numbers begin at 49 and the
plates at 26, and the table of contents is for the Spring/Summer 1930 volume,
and so refers to articles, drawings, and plates not included in the book at hand. 51
The first signaturesomewhat corrects this last anomaly by eliminating the half-
title, making room for a sommaire, like the one issued with the original fascicule
covering only the items to follow.

Whether Wright ever obtained a copy of the extrait is not clear. He inscribed
a copy of the original version for his friend Walter Agard, but it may have been
brought to Taliesin by Agard himself. 52 On 27 September 1946, Wright wrote to
Éditions Albert Morancé asking if they had any copies for sale; the response from
Albert Morancé was that they had not had any for several years. 53