Ralph Rapson: Sketches and Drawings From Around the World
Forward by Caesar Pelli
Edited by Joel Hoekstra
Afton Historical Society Press
$29.95
Reviewed by Mike Nardine originally in Reader Weekly
Thirty bucks might seem like a lot to pay for a small book of colored pen and ink drawings of buildings from around the world, but its bright cover makes for a heck of a nice coffee table book and the tales of Rapson’s travels make interesting reading. Ralph Rapson was head of the Architecture Department at the University of Minnesota from 1954 until 1984. He covered a lot of ground (no pun intended) during his tenure, traveling across the globe sketching everything he saw from the magical Taj Mahal to whimsical creatures like a Greek Orthodox monk with a pink parasol riding a donkey.
Along the way he met a number of famous architects like Eliel and Eero Saarinen, Le Corbusier, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Apparently he and Wright didn’t hit it off: Wright…seemed to realize that we didn’t have sufficient money to attend Taliesin and made my friends and I the butt of a screed on the perils of architectural education. Years later, whenever I encountered him at Cranbrook or the University of Minnesota, he would look me up and down and say, “So this is where you ended up.” Rapson might also have had a problem working with the great Sir Tyrone Guthrie while designing the theatre named in his honor; he refers to him as “Sir Tyrant” and sketched a clever picture of the man with devil’s horns and a big scowl (At a party shortly after the Guthrie’s opening, this reviewer asked the famous director for an autographed playbill and failed to get it because neither he nor Guthrie had a pen; “Well then,” the great man said, shrugging and turning his back. Alas, immortality denied.)
The illustrations in this book are rough drawings, no attempt was made by the author to render a photographic likeness of the many buildings and people he saw; still, there is something about these sketches that captures the look and feeling of a building or personality in a way no photograph could. In fact you get the feeling you would recognize the building or the face anywhere after seeing it in these pages. Some of the sketches, like Chinese New Year, San Francisco on page 85, with its colorful view of floating dragons in China Town, would make a wonderful wall hanging or framed picture.
No, at thirty dollars this book is a bit of a steal. Book can be purchased at the publisher's website WWW.AftonPress.Com