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Arthur Erickson: An Architect’s Life (Douglas & McIntyre $34.95)
It must be a dilemma for any biographer of a creative person: How much do you focus on the life and how much on the work?
The problem is magnified in the case of Arthur Charles Erickson, Canada's best-known architect. Because in addition to all that iconic concrete and glass, there's a lesser-known private life that is positively baroque.
In Arthur Erickson: An Architect's Life, David Stouck wisely takes the middle road, a more or less chronological approach that opens and closes with insights into the man and the people he loved, with stops in between at the major events, encounters and works of a half-century career.
The early chapters are a revelation. Arthur's parents, Oscar and Myrtle Erickson, were an ebullient and eccentric pair straight out of You Can't Take It With You. Despite losing his legs in the First World War, Oscar was a dynamo at his dry goods business, a keen sportsman and an amateur painter. Myrtle was an enthusiastic, if not entirely competent, cook, social convenor and arts patron who helped found the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Once, after a quarrel, Arthur's younger brother Don killed all the fish in Arthur's aquarium. The family couldn't afford to restock the tank, so at his mother's urging Arthur painted fish on his bedroom walls instead.
"He began by copying two fish from photographs in National Geographic and then, with growing confidence, covered all four walls of his room with underwater scenes featuring sunken wrecks, seahorses, sharks, shrimp.";
Impressed, his father bought the boy his own set of paints. Arthur then painted his brother's room in a jungle theme, making it a favourite hangout for neighbourhood boys. Then one of Myrtle's friends paid the budding muralist $50 to paint an English hunting scene in her basement.
The book includes strikingly detailed accounts, not only of Arthur's accomplishments and education, but also of his adventures with friends and even of his thoughts.
Stouck says in an author's note that the biography is "grounded"; in a series of interviews with Erickson in the four years preceding his death in 2009. But he has also spoken to dozens of the architect's friends, family and associates, going back to his adolescence in the 1930s. Fortunately, several key figures lived into their 80s with their memories in good shape, as well as Jessie Binning at age 100.
Despite lacklustre UBC grades, Erickson was accepted into the architecture program at McGill thanks to the intercession of Lawren Harris, who was part of his mother's arty set in Vancouver. Erickson was especially taken with Mies van der Rohe's expansive use of glass and Le Corbusier's work with concrete - two media that would dominate Erickson's major designs.
In the summer of 1949 he worked with a Vancouver architect whose commissions included Park Royal in West Vancouver, the first covered shopping centre in Canada. And from this juncture architecture projects become the principal plot driver of Stouck's book, along with the incessant travel that became a constant in Erickson's life.
One of Erickson's first and most celebrated commissions was the Filberg House in Comox, designed for the heir to a lumber fortune, who intended it to be a conference centre for world leaders.
The design incorporated, as Stouck relates, "elements from Andalusian Islamic architecture - delicate filigreed screens to fend off the direct sun, highly polished terrazzo floors, and a reflecting pool.";
It was by all accounts a stunning design that boosted Erickson's reputation, especially after a photo spread in Canadian Architect magazine. Yet Stouck notes that the accompanying text by Abraham Rogatnick (at one time a teaching colleague of Erickson's at UBC) touched on a criticism that would dog Erickson throughout his career, that of pandering to the rich.
"There is a touch of Versailles here,"; Rogatnick wrote. The dramatic lines and flourishes "all culminate in the kind of inevitable formality which fine clothes, epicurean tastes, and a luxurious atmosphere unconsciously impose. This house will be hated by Puritans, as it will be loved by purists.";
But Erickson didn't hit the big time until he and partner Geoff Massey won the competition to design Simon Fraser University. That caffeinated project - just 28 months in the making from design competition announcement in May 1963 to opening classes in September 1965 - would embody the best and worst of Erickson: His bold vision and self-assurance, his defiance of authority and above all his impatience with trifles like leaky roofs.
Stouck insists the leaks weren't a product of Erickson's design but caused by substitution of materials and poor work by subcontractors. But he doesn't mention that a legal wrangle with the university dragged on until a 1976 settlement, the terms of which were not disclosed.
Other Erickson projects, including the courthouse at Robson Square and the Waterfall Building in downtown Vancouver, developed leaks.
In chapter 12 david stouck
introduces us to Francisco Kripacz, "a dark-skinned, handsome boy of about 19"; whom Erickson met at a party in 1961. Within a year they would become "partners"; (for some reason Stouck doesn't call them "lovers";).
Most of Erickson's friends took a strong dislike to him, though Stouck suggests this may have been because it forced them to acknowledge that Erickson was gay.
Stouck himself seems less than fond of Kripacz, but he holds back, perhaps out of respect for his subject.
"I visited Arthur and showed him the biographies I had written of writers Ethel Wilson and Sinclair Ross, and he was especially interested in my handling of Ross's bisexuality,"; Stouck wrote in the Globe and Mail shortly after Erickson's death.
"He wanted to know how I would tell the story of his long friendship with the designer, Francisco Kripacz, and he made it clear that while he didn't want the story to be sensational he wanted it to be frank. He hoped, on the other hand, that I would limit the details of his bankruptcy, but placed no restrictions.";
Ultimately the book is more frank about the bankruptcy than the relationship, although Stouck clearly links the two.
Erickson opened an office in Los Angeles to prepare for a massive downtown renovation project, and he bought a house among the movie stars in Bel-Air.
"Arthur was easily seduced into this good life as Francisco arranged it, and in the 1980s, they lived in extravagant luxury,"; Stouck writes.
As the decade progressed, there were episodes with sheriffs and
bailiffs. Clients' payments to the Toronto office were shifted to L.A., where Erickson and Kripacz tooled around in a Maserati and Lamborghini, respectively, and spent almost $1 million on renovations to an office with a three-year lease.
Stouck acknowledges all this, yet always plays up the humane, even humble character of his subject. That's hard to reconcile with the way Erickson squandered his backers' money on himself and Kripacz while his staff ran out of office supplies.
There is much about hobnobbing with Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, Shirley MacLaine, Katharine Hepburn, Donald Sutherland, Richard Gere, sundry counts and contessas, arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, Prince Charles and Princess Diana.
Charitable works? Not so much.
Eventually Kripacz took up with a teenaged student (identified only as Jan) and Erickson with a young married man named Allen Steele.
By the end of 1990 both Jan and Allen would be dead of AIDS-related illnesses, and in 1992 Erickson declared personal bankruptcy.
Toward the end of his career he worked for a former employee and designed the new Portland Hotel, a public housing project in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. For once he stayed within budget while demonstrating genuine thoughtfulness in designing living spaces that would withstand rough treatment while affording as much privacy and dignity as possible.
Fans of architecture might argue that the discussions of style and design Stouck raises with each project do not sufficiently address some of the biggest criticisms levelled at Erickson's public works - that they are monumental, impractical and cold.
But in the end, the narrative of Erickson's life carries the day,
as is only fair for a book subtitled An Architect's Life. It's an adventure story and a morality play, and David Stouck is smart and skilled enough not to paint the lily. 978-1-77100-011-6
Shane McCune writes from Comox
PREVIOUS BOOKS ON ERICKSON:
The Architecture of Arthur Erickson (Tundra, 1975; Douglas & McIntyre, 1988) by Arthur Erickson examines the career as the man who designed Simon Fraser University, Toronto's Roy Thomson Hall, UBC's Museum of Anthropology and the Robson Square Complex.
Erickson is also the subject of Edith Iglauer's Seven Stones (Harbour, 1981), excerpts of which appeared in The New Yorker.
In 2006, an overview of Erickson's best work was written and edited by Nicholas Olsberg of Arizona for Arthur Erickson: Critical Works (Douglas & McIntyre, 2006), featuring photographs by Ricardo L. Castro of Montreal.
ARTHUR ERICKSON SHORTLISTED FOR THE RBC TAYLOR PRIZE / January 15, 2014
Toronto, ON - Arthur Erickson: An Architect's Life, by David Stouck, has been shortlisted for the 2014 RBC Taylor Prize. Arthur Erickson is one of five titles to be selected for this prestigious award recognizing excellence in literary non-fiction writing.
Three jurors decided the RBC Taylor Prize shortlist: literary scholar Coral Ann Howells, author and professor James Polk, and author and creative instructor Andrew Westoll. The jury considered 124 book submitted by 45 publishers.
Of Arthur Erickson, the jury noted: "Biographer Stouck brings a subtle yet distinct narrative flair to this study of the whirlwind, colorful life of Canada's most famous architect. The genius behind Simon Fraser University, Roy Thomson Hall, and many other private and public gems was a complicated man with more tragic flaws than a Greek drama. Through deeply sensitive portrayals of Erickson's idealistic philosophy of art, his creative and financial troubles, his charisma, his arrogance, and his sexual identity, Stouck demonstrates the empathy and rigour of a truly fine biographer. His full-length portrait also reveals much about the cultural life and personalities of Vancouver in the 1940s and 50s. This book tells all, and in the telling is a work of art in itself.";
Awarded to one author each year, the RBC Taylor Prize consists of $25,000 plus promotional support. The winner will also announce his or her choice for the RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Writer's Award, consisting of $10,000 and the opportunity to be mentored. All runners up receive $2,000.
David Stouck will be in Toronto for a series of celebratory RBC Taylor Prize events in early March. The award winner will be announced on March 10 at The King Edward Hotel in Toronto.
-30-
For more information about Arthur Erickson, or to schedule an interview with author David Stouck, please contact Zoe Grams:
hello@zgcommunications.com
The problem is magnified in the case of Arthur Charles Erickson, Canada's best-known architect. Because in addition to all that iconic concrete and glass, there's a lesser-known private life that is positively baroque.
In Arthur Erickson: An Architect's Life, David Stouck wisely takes the middle road, a more or less chronological approach that opens and closes with insights into the man and the people he loved, with stops in between at the major events, encounters and works of a half-century career.
The early chapters are a revelation. Arthur's parents, Oscar and Myrtle Erickson, were an ebullient and eccentric pair straight out of You Can't Take It With You. Despite losing his legs in the First World War, Oscar was a dynamo at his dry goods business, a keen sportsman and an amateur painter. Myrtle was an enthusiastic, if not entirely competent, cook, social convenor and arts patron who helped found the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Once, after a quarrel, Arthur's younger brother Don killed all the fish in Arthur's aquarium. The family couldn't afford to restock the tank, so at his mother's urging Arthur painted fish on his bedroom walls instead.
"He began by copying two fish from photographs in National Geographic and then, with growing confidence, covered all four walls of his room with underwater scenes featuring sunken wrecks, seahorses, sharks, shrimp.";
Impressed, his father bought the boy his own set of paints. Arthur then painted his brother's room in a jungle theme, making it a favourite hangout for neighbourhood boys. Then one of Myrtle's friends paid the budding muralist $50 to paint an English hunting scene in her basement.
The book includes strikingly detailed accounts, not only of Arthur's accomplishments and education, but also of his adventures with friends and even of his thoughts.
Stouck says in an author's note that the biography is "grounded"; in a series of interviews with Erickson in the four years preceding his death in 2009. But he has also spoken to dozens of the architect's friends, family and associates, going back to his adolescence in the 1930s. Fortunately, several key figures lived into their 80s with their memories in good shape, as well as Jessie Binning at age 100.
Despite lacklustre UBC grades, Erickson was accepted into the architecture program at McGill thanks to the intercession of Lawren Harris, who was part of his mother's arty set in Vancouver. Erickson was especially taken with Mies van der Rohe's expansive use of glass and Le Corbusier's work with concrete - two media that would dominate Erickson's major designs.
In the summer of 1949 he worked with a Vancouver architect whose commissions included Park Royal in West Vancouver, the first covered shopping centre in Canada. And from this juncture architecture projects become the principal plot driver of Stouck's book, along with the incessant travel that became a constant in Erickson's life.
One of Erickson's first and most celebrated commissions was the Filberg House in Comox, designed for the heir to a lumber fortune, who intended it to be a conference centre for world leaders.
The design incorporated, as Stouck relates, "elements from Andalusian Islamic architecture - delicate filigreed screens to fend off the direct sun, highly polished terrazzo floors, and a reflecting pool.";
It was by all accounts a stunning design that boosted Erickson's reputation, especially after a photo spread in Canadian Architect magazine. Yet Stouck notes that the accompanying text by Abraham Rogatnick (at one time a teaching colleague of Erickson's at UBC) touched on a criticism that would dog Erickson throughout his career, that of pandering to the rich.
"There is a touch of Versailles here,"; Rogatnick wrote. The dramatic lines and flourishes "all culminate in the kind of inevitable formality which fine clothes, epicurean tastes, and a luxurious atmosphere unconsciously impose. This house will be hated by Puritans, as it will be loved by purists.";
But Erickson didn't hit the big time until he and partner Geoff Massey won the competition to design Simon Fraser University. That caffeinated project - just 28 months in the making from design competition announcement in May 1963 to opening classes in September 1965 - would embody the best and worst of Erickson: His bold vision and self-assurance, his defiance of authority and above all his impatience with trifles like leaky roofs.
Stouck insists the leaks weren't a product of Erickson's design but caused by substitution of materials and poor work by subcontractors. But he doesn't mention that a legal wrangle with the university dragged on until a 1976 settlement, the terms of which were not disclosed.
Other Erickson projects, including the courthouse at Robson Square and the Waterfall Building in downtown Vancouver, developed leaks.
In chapter 12 david stouck
introduces us to Francisco Kripacz, "a dark-skinned, handsome boy of about 19"; whom Erickson met at a party in 1961. Within a year they would become "partners"; (for some reason Stouck doesn't call them "lovers";).
Most of Erickson's friends took a strong dislike to him, though Stouck suggests this may have been because it forced them to acknowledge that Erickson was gay.
Stouck himself seems less than fond of Kripacz, but he holds back, perhaps out of respect for his subject.
"I visited Arthur and showed him the biographies I had written of writers Ethel Wilson and Sinclair Ross, and he was especially interested in my handling of Ross's bisexuality,"; Stouck wrote in the Globe and Mail shortly after Erickson's death.
"He wanted to know how I would tell the story of his long friendship with the designer, Francisco Kripacz, and he made it clear that while he didn't want the story to be sensational he wanted it to be frank. He hoped, on the other hand, that I would limit the details of his bankruptcy, but placed no restrictions.";
Ultimately the book is more frank about the bankruptcy than the relationship, although Stouck clearly links the two.
Erickson opened an office in Los Angeles to prepare for a massive downtown renovation project, and he bought a house among the movie stars in Bel-Air.
"Arthur was easily seduced into this good life as Francisco arranged it, and in the 1980s, they lived in extravagant luxury,"; Stouck writes.
As the decade progressed, there were episodes with sheriffs and
bailiffs. Clients' payments to the Toronto office were shifted to L.A., where Erickson and Kripacz tooled around in a Maserati and Lamborghini, respectively, and spent almost $1 million on renovations to an office with a three-year lease.
Stouck acknowledges all this, yet always plays up the humane, even humble character of his subject. That's hard to reconcile with the way Erickson squandered his backers' money on himself and Kripacz while his staff ran out of office supplies.
There is much about hobnobbing with Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, Shirley MacLaine, Katharine Hepburn, Donald Sutherland, Richard Gere, sundry counts and contessas, arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, Prince Charles and Princess Diana.
Charitable works? Not so much.
Eventually Kripacz took up with a teenaged student (identified only as Jan) and Erickson with a young married man named Allen Steele.
By the end of 1990 both Jan and Allen would be dead of AIDS-related illnesses, and in 1992 Erickson declared personal bankruptcy.
Toward the end of his career he worked for a former employee and designed the new Portland Hotel, a public housing project in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. For once he stayed within budget while demonstrating genuine thoughtfulness in designing living spaces that would withstand rough treatment while affording as much privacy and dignity as possible.
Fans of architecture might argue that the discussions of style and design Stouck raises with each project do not sufficiently address some of the biggest criticisms levelled at Erickson's public works - that they are monumental, impractical and cold.
But in the end, the narrative of Erickson's life carries the day,
as is only fair for a book subtitled An Architect's Life. It's an adventure story and a morality play, and David Stouck is smart and skilled enough not to paint the lily. 978-1-77100-011-6
Shane McCune writes from Comox
PREVIOUS BOOKS ON ERICKSON:
The Architecture of Arthur Erickson (Tundra, 1975; Douglas & McIntyre, 1988) by Arthur Erickson examines the career as the man who designed Simon Fraser University, Toronto's Roy Thomson Hall, UBC's Museum of Anthropology and the Robson Square Complex.
Erickson is also the subject of Edith Iglauer's Seven Stones (Harbour, 1981), excerpts of which appeared in The New Yorker.
In 2006, an overview of Erickson's best work was written and edited by Nicholas Olsberg of Arizona for Arthur Erickson: Critical Works (Douglas & McIntyre, 2006), featuring photographs by Ricardo L. Castro of Montreal.
ARTHUR ERICKSON SHORTLISTED FOR THE RBC TAYLOR PRIZE / January 15, 2014
Toronto, ON - Arthur Erickson: An Architect's Life, by David Stouck, has been shortlisted for the 2014 RBC Taylor Prize. Arthur Erickson is one of five titles to be selected for this prestigious award recognizing excellence in literary non-fiction writing.
Three jurors decided the RBC Taylor Prize shortlist: literary scholar Coral Ann Howells, author and professor James Polk, and author and creative instructor Andrew Westoll. The jury considered 124 book submitted by 45 publishers.
Of Arthur Erickson, the jury noted: "Biographer Stouck brings a subtle yet distinct narrative flair to this study of the whirlwind, colorful life of Canada's most famous architect. The genius behind Simon Fraser University, Roy Thomson Hall, and many other private and public gems was a complicated man with more tragic flaws than a Greek drama. Through deeply sensitive portrayals of Erickson's idealistic philosophy of art, his creative and financial troubles, his charisma, his arrogance, and his sexual identity, Stouck demonstrates the empathy and rigour of a truly fine biographer. His full-length portrait also reveals much about the cultural life and personalities of Vancouver in the 1940s and 50s. This book tells all, and in the telling is a work of art in itself.";
Awarded to one author each year, the RBC Taylor Prize consists of $25,000 plus promotional support. The winner will also announce his or her choice for the RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Writer's Award, consisting of $10,000 and the opportunity to be mentored. All runners up receive $2,000.
David Stouck will be in Toronto for a series of celebratory RBC Taylor Prize events in early March. The award winner will be announced on March 10 at The King Edward Hotel in Toronto.
-30-
For more information about Arthur Erickson, or to schedule an interview with author David Stouck, please contact Zoe Grams:
hello@zgcommunications.com
Submitted on November 9, 2013 in By David.
