"It is terrible and unbearable to an artist,' he said, 'to be encouraged to do, to be applauded for doing, his second best.' He said: 'Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me leave to my utmost!"
Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) in Babette's Feast
"The alert reader will spot that, as early as 1963, Prip-Buus had his suspicions od Arups as engineer on the project - `they've been out to steal the honour`. With the fall from power of the Labour goverment in New South Wales in 1965, the politics of the project came further into view. The Ministry of Public Works, more willing to listen to Arups that Utzon, edged its way towards taking control of the project."
"These letters are presented raw and unedited, without any historical context. Utzon admirers will delight in them, but no one should pretend that they tell the whole story. They may settle a few old scores, but the continuing argument about responsibility for this astonishing building isn't over yet."
Review by Robert Thorne
The Danish architect Mogens Prip- Buus, b. 1932, was appointed to Jørn Utzon's studio in Hellebæk in 1958. In 1962, he and his family travelled to Sydney in Australia on board the M/S Flavia. Prip-Buus had previously worked for Vilhelm Wohlert on the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, which opened in 1958, but he was now to face the greatest challenge of his life. Letters from Sydney contains the accounts Prip-Buus sent to his parents of four years in the everyday life of a young architect whose supreme ambition was to realise the Sydney Opera House as it could have been.
As is generally known, Jørn Utzon and his colleagues, among whom Prip-Buus counted himself, were only allowed to half-finish the task. Even in spite of this, the Sydney Opera House was finally proclaimed the most important work of architecture in the 20th century, and was seen by many as a symbol at the start of the new millennium. Prip-Buus' letters and diary, written immediately before the breach forced on Utzon by the Australian Government in 1966, offer a unique account of the day-to-day problems faced by architects who now work in a world over which they can exert even less influence. But despite all the difficulties, the experience in Sydney was not to be missed.
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