"Norman Brosterman discusses the history of kindergarten and its influence on such modernist giants as Frank Lloyd Wright, Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus school.
In his book Inventing Kindergarten, Brosterman argues that within this lost world of women and children we can locate the seedbed of modern art. With its emphasis on abstract decomposition and building up from elemental forms, the original kindergarten system of the mid-nineteenth century created an education and design revolution that profoundly affected the course of modern art and architecture, as well as physics, music, psychology and the modern mind itself."

"Nineteenth century Japanese popular cultural phenomena, most notably the Japanese woodblock print and painting, ukiyo-e, have made significant contributions to modernist artistic movements, in particular the Arts and Crafts movement, Art Nouveau, impressionism, post-impressionism, and fauvism. In addition, it is worth mentioning the influence of Japanese architecture on Frank Lloyd Wright, who also loved ukiyo-e.[1] These influences are primarily the result of applying Western values, specifically, aesthetic values to the interpretation of Japanese culture.<br />
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However, this interpretation has had the tendency to be one-way, and there have been relatively few attempts to applying non-Western ideas to Western culture. Is this because it is futile to do so? Or because it is impossible?"

"a thoughtful argument against the excesses of "designer" architects and urban-planning utopians." "Pei's pyramid at the Louvre...was a deliberate act of cultural vandalism"