“A Problem for Contributors: Source Materials in the Arts”

AboutA methodological note addressed to American Studies scholars, using Louis Sullivan as its central case study to argue that visual works of art constitute a distinct "third category" of primary source material — alongside an artist's own writings and secondary scholarship — that historians outside art/architectural history are often ill-equipped to interpret. Ehrlich uses Sullivan's skyscraper designs (with reference to the Wainwright Building and the earlier Jayne Building in Philadelphia) and the interpretive difficulty of his slogan "form follows function" to illustrate how relying on written sources alone, without close visual analysis of the buildings themselves, produces a superficial or distorted understanding of an architect's actual practice and legacy.

PURL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-0678%28195822%2910%3A2%3C206%3AAPFCSM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-A