Frank Rakoncay [1935-1998]
[From the Community Collection, a public trust in Agincourt, Iowa]
RAKONCAY, Frank [1935–1998]
Dream State
date unknown
etching with hand coloring / 7.5 inches by 10 inches
Chicago artist Frank Rakoncay graduated from the city’s Art Institute in 1975 and maintained a studio in Chicago for many years before relocating to Florida. He died in 1998 at the age of sixty-three.
“Dream State” is one of two Rakoncay works in the collection. This is an etching enhanced with hand coloring.
FCCH
The earlier version of the courthouse elevation was wrong on several counts, but especially on the proportion of the elements. I’ve fixed that [that is, the elevation now agrees with the plan, though both of them may need further work]. Rendering cylindrical forms in flat elevation has never been my strong suit. Here I seem to have had more fun with window placement and their relationship to masonry bonding patterns. It’s getting there.
Next I’ll try some color.
The Richardsonian Romanesque
The Fennimore County courthouse, Agincourt, IA / 1888-1889 / William Halsey Wood, architect (ostensibly)
William Halsey Wood
You might think I’d have completed at least one Agincourt project by now. You’d be mistaken.
The Richardsonian Romanesque is a style of the late 19th century named for the great Boston architect H. H. Richardson [1838-1886], a curious connection because, in my view at least, Richardson’s own work became less and less “Richardsonian” toward the end of his truncated career. Were I designing the Fennimore County courthouse in the style of the man himself, it would look very different – and not nearly good enough. Indeed, it would be a far more difficult exercise than working in the idiom that bears his name, and might just be inimitable. Why? Because inspiration is more challenging than imitation — by a long shot.
It’s a curiosity that Halsey Wood’s projects of the mid to late 80s aren’t influenced as strongly by Richardson as are those of Wood’s contemporaries, architects we can blame for the parody of Richardson’s style which followed the great architect’s death in 1886. I sat down recently to consider which of HHR’s buildings WHW might actually have seen, studied, and drawn inspiration: there’s no evidence Wood ever penetrated very far into New England; Richardson’s practice was situated in suburban Boston.
There were Richardson imitators in NYC, however, but if Halsey happened to see an actual HHR design, he’d probably have found it in, of all places, Pittsburgh, where Richardson had two important buildings: one very large and one quite small, but both admirable works. Wood did three projects in P’burgh and could easily have seen the Allegheny County courthouse and jail; less likely the petite Emmanuel church across the river.
For overt Richardsonianisms (spell check doesn’t like that one bit) among Wood’s designs, the most obvious are St Paul’s Passaic, St John’s Wellsboro, and without question Peddie Memorial First Baptist in Newark. They all issue from about the same – circa 1890 – time and each incorporates some of the earmarks of a Richardsonian (rather than a Richardson) design. Witness Peddie Memorial:
HHR, for example, would not have done those entry arches as Wood has done here (at left), that is a single arch produced with just five voussoirs: the impost block and three very large stones for the voussoirs. Looking at Peddie one day, I understood that a closer parallel, by far, was the Finnish work of architect Lars Sonck. But Sonck was an architect of the early 1900s, so if there was any connection here, it would have from Wood to Sonck. So my observation is merely a coïncidence.
It’s not an exact parallel but Sonck’s telephone company building in Helsinki bears some of the same brooding mass as Peddie. Richardson’s arches were low and “Syrian” — with a spring line well below waist level — but both WHW and Sonck increase their visual weight and carrying capacity several times over. 
It’s a psychological rather than a physical thing.
PS [26OCT2020]: An updated version of the Fennimore courthouse elevation:
Fennimore County Court House, Agincourt, IA / William Halsey Wood, architect / 1888 / elevation drawing 26OCT2020
Fennimore County Court House, Agincourt, IA / William Halsey Wood, architect / 1888 / elevation drawing 31OCT2020
Rudolf Kügler [1921-2013]
[From the Community Collection, a public trust in Agincourt, Iowa]
KÜGLER, Rudolf (1921–2013; German)
“The Dock”
color etching / 15.5 inches by 19.5 inches / #167 of 200
1961
“Marble Quarry”
color etching / 15.5 inches by 19.5 inches / #194 of 200
1958
Once again the mid-century modern taste of the Bendix family has brought us these fine etchings by German artist Rudolf Kügler. Of his career and work, the internet has little to say, which is unfortunate:
Rudolf Kügler, painter, printmaker, and sculptor, was born in Berlin, Germany in 1921. He studied at the University of Applied Arts in Berlin from 1946 to 1947 with Hans Speidel, and then at the Academy of Fine Arts under Max Kaus until 1954. During this time he studied abroad throughout Spain, Greece, Egypt, and stayed extensively in Rome and Paris. He took a position as a professor of art at the Berlin Academy of Art in 1956 where he taught until 1986.
And from another source, on the 1958 print specifically:
Kügler’s eye finds the pace and rhythm of industry in “Marble Quarry”, contrasting the angular, sharp-edged machinery of human development against the wild patterns of exposed geological history.
Abstracted depictions of civilization dominated Kügler’s early to mid-century work before he moved solidly into a non-representational style. Cities, villages, and sparsely populated natural landscapes were equally vibrant with life. His sculptural handling of the matrix to coax forth scenes of humankind’s footprint from the plate creates a nearly three-dimensional illusion, as seen in the sharply-outlined, rigid shapes containing the freeform textures of this etching.
M. J. Hamblin Smith [1871-1936]
[From the Community Collection, a public trust in Agincourt, Iowa]
HAMBLIN SMITH, M. J. (1871–1936; British)
The Goatherd
four-color woodcut / 10.5 inches by 9 inches / #6 of 50
ca1920
Some of the collection’s artists seem to come in pairs. Such is the case with British artist M. J. Hamblin Smith. But this also forms an interesting pair with the goats rendered by Kay Nixon (Kathleen Irene Blundell-Nixon).
“The Preface” by Edw. Taylor
The Preface
Stephen Brook [born 1957]
[From the Community Collection, a public trust in Agincourt, Iowa]
BROOK, Stephen (born 1957)
“Night Diner”
acrylic on board / 12 inches by 12 inchs
2020
In the spirit of Edward Hopper (and, perhaps, our current situation), contemporary British artist Stephen Brook depicts the self-imposed social isolation represented in Hopper’s work and, perhaps without intention, that of our own time and place.
This was an anonymous gift to the Collection.