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Paul T. Frankl: Autobiography Edited by Christopher Long and Aurora McClainLos Angeles: DoppelHouse Press, 2013.251 pp.; 83 b/w ills.Cloth $29.95ISBN 9780983254027

2017; University of Chicago Press; Volume: 24; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1086/693803

2153-5558

Gerald W. R. Ward,

Art History and Market Analysis

Previous articleNext article FreeBook ReviewsPaul T. Frankl: AutobiographyEdited by Christopher Long and Aurora McClainLos Angeles: DoppelHouse Press, 2013.251 pp.; 83 b/w ills.Cloth $29.95ISBN 9780983254027Gerald W. R. WardGerald W. R. Ward Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreThe Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is proud to own one of Paul Frankl’s most iconic designs: a Skyscraper desk and bookcase of about 1928 (2011.1647), formerly in the collection of John Axelrod. We recently had occasion to examine this important object in detail, taking it apart and looking at its construction carefully, as one would (for example) with an eighteenth-century Boston desk and bookcase or a seventeenth-century chest with drawers. It was an interesting exercise that revealed an object made in an expedient fashion, but with higher-quality materials and in a more sturdy manner than I, for one, expected of a piece better known for its innovative design than for being an example of the cabinetmaker’s art. Although it has a few crayon and pencil shop marks used to locate joints, guide the construction of drawers, and so on, it bears no other maker’s inscriptions. Since Frankl’s design was so popular that its fabrication had to be farmed out to several contractors, we had hoped to find some indication of a maker’s mark or shop inscription by looking at it upside down and backward. Somewhat unusually for a form ostensibly used for writing and typing, as well as for storage, it bears little evidence of its use—wear marks, ink stains, and so on—during the decades that it was presumably in private hands before a Los Angeles dealer acquired it about 1981, only some fifty years after it was made. Perhaps our notes recording the fine points and methods of joinery will eventually be of some help in building up a set of diagnostic features that will help scholars identify and distinguish between the products of Frankl’s various subcontractors.Such attention to detail is warranted because Paul Frankl is one of the major “names” in international twentieth-century design. In this new publication, edited by Christopher Long and Aurora McClain, we now have his life story told in his own words. Long drew many insights from this autobiography in manuscript form when preparing his monograph Paul T. Frankl and American Modern Design (Yale University Press, 2007), and everyone can now benefit from this carefully edited and illustrated version in print form. The editors have sprinkled the text with a healthy selection of black-and-white images, and also included a judicious number of endnotes that provide brief information on individuals mentioned in the text, glosses on various subjects, and many helpful insights. They tell us, for example, that Frankl glossed over some of the more unfortunate aspects of his early education (209), and along the way give the reader much good contextual background.Frankl’s text is measured and dignified in tone, and largely free of any sort of “no-holds-barred” revelations or opinions. He was very aware of his own importance in transforming the built environment of the United States, his adopted country. When he arrived in America in 1914, he “discovered the greatest country in the world, unaware of its own greatness, copying the meaningless, outworn forms of architecture of bygone days and bygone countries, a giant, slumbering, waiting to be awakened to lead the world” (33). Americans were “deeply entrenched in the traditional styles of the past and deathly afraid of modern” (60), and Frankl saw himself as the prophet who would lead the country out of the depths of historical revivalism into the world of clean, functional designs worthy of the new age.Frankl was, by all accounts, a great salesman, and much of his success can be attributed to this characteristic. He traveled widely and frequently, to New York and California and throughout the United States, and to China, Mexico, Japan, the Philippines, and elsewhere. (Indeed, one is struck by just how much Frankl traveled around the globe in the period 1915–50.) These journeys, often undertaken for various types of business pursuits, provide the structure for the fourteen chapters of the autobiography. Along the way, we learn the particulars of Frankl’s career, of course, but also some interesting details. We learn, for example, that in the 1920s he made substantial sums of money selling imported color-head matches in quantity. Many stories, such as the one about his short-lived but briefly popular venture into designer-designed hot-dog carts, enliven the text and make this an enjoyable as well as essential primary source. We also learn about the varying appearance and working methods of shops staffed by woodworkers of different backgrounds—Filipino, Chinese, and Japanese—in the Philippine Islands, an appealing passage to anyone interested in the nature of shop-floor behavior. Frankl’s narrative stops in 1952 or so, several years before his death (as all autobiographies must do), and the editors have added a brief postscript to complete the story. Paulette, Frankl’s daughter, has also included an appreciation of her father as an afterword. She deserves enormous credit for preserving the manuscript for many years and now making it available to a wide audience.The text contains many important passages, including Frankl’s retelling of the “eureka” moment in the summer of 1925 when the concept behind Skyscraper furniture sprang into existence. He had chosen to skip the art deco show in Paris in favor of spending the summer in Woodstock, New York. While there, Frankl was confronted with “an assemblage of books, littered all over the house, amongst them profusely illustrated architectural tomes, large in format, some coverless, awkward to handle, impossible to fit into any existing space” (73). Gathering a few boards and nails, he took a DIY approach to the problem and created what would become one of the more important and distinctive types of furniture made in modern America.During what amounted to roughly a forty-year career, punctuated by two world wars and the Great Depression, Frankl accomplished an extraordinary amount. It seems like he met and knew everyone of importance in the modern art and design fields during his long years as a designer for companies and individual clients. Throughout, he pens thoughtful, interesting sketches of many of these personalities, enhancing the book’s usefulness for scholars interested in the wider context of the times. He captures Elsie De Wolfe’s essence as a designer par excellence, and he devotes an entire chapter to his friendship with Frank Lloyd Wright. Frankl and Wright had much in common, Frankl notes, including their love of Japan, the use of natural materials, and a fierce sense of independence in their work. As Frankl puts it, “We were both determined not to trim any Christmas tree but our own” (101).Frankl visited both Taliesin East and Taliesin West, and he recounts many anecdotes about his interactions with Wright and his prickly personality at both locations. He captures Wright perfectly in a passage describing the architect as a venerable man in his eighties: “[H]e is an awe-inspiring figure—younger than springtime, older than God, in full possession of his faculties, an eagle eye, a keen ear. And his tongue still holds its edge.” He goes on to describe Wright’s contributions more formally, in a summary that could apply to Frankl himself: “His genius … has recognized that this changing world called for new expressions in architecture, and he was amongst the first to create new forms expressive of our age. Undaunted and unwavering, he stood and fought alone for his ideas and ideals that he recognized as paramount with progress” (110).The editors and publishers have treated this important text with the high production values that it deserves. Designed in Vienna by Peter Duniecki and put on press in Austria, where Frankl was born and trained, the autobiography is set in Acorde, a modern typeface designed in 2010 for a wide variety of corporate uses by the Austrian Stefan Willerstorfer, and printed on a high-quality Munken Lynx paper. DoppelHouse Press is a small, independent publisher in Los Angeles, founded only a few years ago, dedicated to exploring issues of Central European modernism and its influence upon the world. Their first book, published in 2011, was an English translation of Adolf Loos: A Private Portrait (1936) by Claire Beck Loos, an intimate look at the architect’s last years by his wife.The Frankl autobiography under consideration here is a worthy contribution to DoppelHouse’s goal of disseminating key writings to a broad audience. The publication of this beautiful volume, timed to coincide with a retrospective of Frankl’s work, organized by Long and Laura McGuire, at the Kiesler Foundation in Vienna, makes this essential text widely accessible. Notes Gerald W. R. Ward is the Katharine Lane Weems Senior Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture Emeritus at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by West 86th Volume 24, Number 1Spring–Summer 2017 Sponsored by the Bard Graduate Center, New York Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/693803 © 2017 by The Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture. 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