Frank Lloyd Wright has been considered by many one of William Morris’s Arts and Crafts followers in America, but his lecture discussing the Arts and Crafts of Machine was not well accepted by society during the beginning of the new century. Everyone has this opposition towards change and Wright was trying to show that in his lecture. He wanted society to be open and embrace the machine, manipulating its potential and emerging a new architecture design on the basis of sensitivity. Wright shows his displeasure and states, “Nine out of ten public buildings in almost any American city are the same”(367). Then he goes even further by trying to notify others of the machine by showing his understanding with the opposition people have for machines …show more content…
The Arts and Crafts movement was going back to the basics and using new machinery was disliked, many felt it took away from beauty of art. Wright counters their idea that machinery can be used in art and design just as well as using hand crafted tools, and by giving examples of craftsman tools ruining the design and material such as woodcarvings in furniture. “...Outside mechanical genius for mere contrivance we are not good workmen, nor beyond adventitious or propitious respect for property, we are as good citizens as be, nor are we artists at all,” is said by Wright (365). Thus by stating this he has caused issues by accusing artist of craft not truly being artists because their artwork is “imitations of imitations”(365). The artwork style Arts and Crafts uses is already a style people used before, so it creates a frustration of whether or not we are truly using the beauty and design by reusing old art styles without any purpose of meaning. He even takes a jabs at The Chicago Art Institute, discussing students being taught as artist being blind and not truly being taught to be artist, but instead use the innovative ideas that other artist created centuries ago. Wright wanted people to accept modern tools now created with machines and start a new revolutionary modern design and art. Also, there is some issues with what Wright discuses because the Illinois people are accused of old fashion designed building, but Wright in the past used these ideas of old fashion architect design for the Milwaukee Public Library, seen