“Review of *Louis Sullivan*, by Albert Bush-Brown; *A System of Architectural Ornament*, by Louis Sullivan; and *Democracy: A Man-Search*, by Louis Sullivan, edited by Blaine Hedges”

AboutA triple book review assessing three then-recent Sullivan publications. Of Albert Bush-Brown's short critical biography, Gebhard praises its perceptiveness but disputes Bush-Brown's claim that Frank Lloyd Wright substantially shaped Sullivan's ornament during their years together at Adler & Sullivan, arguing instead that Sullivan's mature style — visible in works from the Charnley House through the Wainwright and Schiller Buildings — developed continuously from his own pre-1887 designs, with George Elmslie's later presence a more plausible stimulus than Wright's. Of the facsimile reissue of Sullivan's *A System of Architectural Ornament*, Gebhard finds the twenty folio plates a weak sample of Sullivan's actual ornamental achievement, valuable chiefly for the philosophy in its accompanying text (rooted in Bergson and William James). Of the first publication of *Democracy: A Man-Search*, edited by Blaine Hedges, he finds the prose pompous and derivative of Nietzsche's *Thus Spake Zarathustra* but notes flashes of Sullivan's characteristic critique of property and institutional power.

PURL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0037-9808%28196212%2921%3A4%3C194%3ALS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Q