The Film
Louis Sullivan: the Struggle for American Architecture is dedicated to one man’s vision of enriching American culture, and the people who came after him who valiantly fought to preserve his art.
After months of research that began in early 2007, director Mark Richard Smith began traveling throughout the Midwest and East Coast to view first hand most of Sullivan’s surviving works. The experience shaped his commitment to presenting as vividly as possible the stirring, profound beauty of Louis Sullivan’s architecture. Much of the footage is made up of moving shots that trace building details and ornamentation not readily seen by the naked eye.
The film shows Sullivan as a master artist who conceptualized his buildings and drew much of their ornament in freehand, and the director worked with several prominent institutions to present many of Sullivan’s drawings in glorious detail.
The historical context of Sullivan’s aesthetic reaction to a society undergoing massive technological, cultural and social change at the end of the nineteenth century is an important theme explored in the film.
Much of the documentary is also dedicated to telling the story of people like Richard Nickel, (above right) who dedicated their lives to saving Sullivan’s work from neglect and destruction during the days of urban renewal in the 1950s and 60s.