“Review of *Louis H. Sullivan: A System of Architectural Ornament*, edited by John Zukowsky and Susan Glover Godlewski, with an essay by Lauren S. Weingarden, and *Louis Sullivan in the Art Institute of Chicago: The Illustrated Catalogue of Collections*, edited by Sarah C. Mollman”

AboutNarciso G. Menocal reviews two Art Institute of Chicago publications on Louis Sullivan. The first is a new folio edition of Sullivan's 1924 *A System of Architectural Ornament*, reproducing for the first time all twenty plates and thirty-six holograph text sheets in full-scale facsimile with a two-color process superior to the original linecut printing; Menocal summarizes and largely endorses Lauren Weingarden's accompanying essay, which reads the plates as a systematic visual-verbal treatise moving from conceptual to perceptual understanding of Sullivan's design philosophy (rooted in Swedenborgian correspondence and Spencerian evolutionary theory), while questioning Weingarden's claims for the influence of Charles Blanc and John Ruskin on Sullivan. The second book, edited by Sarah C. Mollman, is an illustrated catalogue of the Art Institute's Sullivan holdings, organized into five sections: architectural drawings by Sullivan/Adler & Sullivan and successor firms; drawings by Sullivan associates and followers (Dankmar Adler, Parker Noble Berry, Homer Grant Sailor); architectural ornament fragments; non-architectural drawings (including student copies after Ruprich-Robert and Vignola, and early sketches); and a miscellany of correspondence, manuscripts, and medals. Menocal describes the contents of each section building by building. (Note: the JSTOR scan's first ~100 lines are the tail end of an unrelated review, by Leland M. Roth, of two Stanford White biographies that precedes Menocal's review in the same journal issue.)

PURL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0037-9808%28199106%2950%3A2%3C210%3ALHSASO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M