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The textile as structural framework: Gottfried Semper's Bekleidungsprinzip and the case of Vienna 1900.(Critical essay) - Textile | HighBeam Research

The textile as structural framework: Gottfried Semper's Bekleidungsprinzip and the case of Vienna 1900.(Critical essay)

Textile September 22, 2006 | Houze, Rebecca

Abstract Gottfried Semper, the nineteenth-century German architect and art historian, influenced a generation of Central European followers at the turn of the twentieth century with his notion of the textile origins of building. His theories were particularly resonant in Vienna, where the movement to reform the applied arts centered on textiles in a variety of ways. Textiles were at the heart of Austria-Hungary's imperial legacy in the form of richly embroidered court costumes and ecclesiastical vestments as well as in the traditional needlework produced throughout the diverse Habsburg lands. Modern architects and designers were motivated not only to design cloth and clothing, but to express characteristics of the textile in their buildings and interior designs as well. While architects such as Otto Wagner in Vienna and Odon Lechner in Budapest "dressed" their buildings in decorative textile-like facades, younger modernists, including Josef Hoffmann and Adolf Loos, interpreted Semper's ideas more broadly, understanding their application to the design of interior spaces in innovative ways. This paper posits a new methodological approach to the study of Viennese art and design during this period--one that uses the textile, as it was understood by Semper, as a structure, or theoretical framework, for sifting through the modern movement's many puzzling contradictions, seen for example in the opposing views of Hoffmann and Loos. ********** The textile is a powerful medium, rich with symbolic meaning and aesthetic significance. Textiles had a particularly special place in the artistic and intellectual culture of Central Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period that witnessed the final flourishing and eventual collapse of the AustroHungarian Empire. There, textiles represented the Habsburgs' imperial heritage in the form of richly embroidered court costumes and ecclesiastical vestments. They also represented the burgeoning middle classes, grown wealthy from the success of their
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The textile as structural framework: Gottfried Semper's Bekleidungsprinzip and the case of Vienna 1900.(Critical essay) - Textile | HighBeam Research

textile factories in Bohemia and Moravia, and their purveying of fashions and fashionable accessories in Vienna, Budapest and Prague. Finally, and more complexly, textiles provided a map of the multi-ethnic, multinational political body of Central Europe. Colorful weavings, embroideries, and costumes, produced according to traditional customs in the furthest reaches of the empire--Alpine, Slovakian, Galician, Hungarian, Romanian and costal Balkan lands--signified its diversity. Textiles could perhaps be seen as the metaphorical "architecture" of that time and place. In fact, however, they had a much more literal presence in the development of architecture and theories of design that dominated the modernist transformation that took place there. Vienna was the center of the applied arts reform in continental Europe following the London Great Exhibition of 1851, which sparked many critical reactions to British industrial design, and which had initiated the first royal collection and school of decorative art, the South Kensington Museum, just a few years later. The German architect and art historian Gottfried Semper, who designed some of the installations for the Great Exhibition and observed firsthand the many objects on display in London, wrote his influential treatise, Wissenschaft, Kunst and Industrie (1852), in response to the central problem of contemporary industrial design, the diminution of aesthetic worth brought about by new materials and means of production. Subsequently, Semper was called to Vienna, where his ideas were used as the basis for the departmental structure of the k. k. Oesterreichisches Museum fur Kunst and Industrie (1864) and the curriculum of its affiliated Kunstgewerbeschule (1872) (Semper 1852; Franz 2000: 41-51). Semper's unusual theories of architecture, especially his notion of architecture's origin in the textile arts, were extremely influential on the development of Central European architecture and design in the second half of the nineteenth century, and, as we shall see, may be understood as a "structural framework" for understanding the origins of the modern movement in Austria-Hungary, which relied heavily on cloth as both a conceptual and physical building material. The concept of cloth as a symbolic building material is contained in Semper's enormous, unfinished compendium, Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts; or, Practical Aesthetics (2004 [1870-73]). The first and longest volume of this text is devoted to a detailed analysis of the textile arts. Architecture, according to Semper, originated in the primordial need to demarcate interior and exterior spaces with dividers--fencing made of branches, for example, or hanging tapestries of woven grasses. Some of the earliest built structures were temporary tents of real cloth stretched over scaffoldings, often festively decorated with garlands, ribbons, and other kinds of soft ornament that today we might characterize as "fiber art" (Semper 2004 [1870-3]; Wilson 1995: 42-8). For Semper, this type of decoration was the manifestation of a primal artistic urge, a fundamental human need for play that relied upon symbolic representation. Over the centuries, he believed, building types retained the symbolic forms of their earlier architectural predecessors: the geometric
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The textile as structural framework: Gottfried Semper's Bekleidungsprinzip and the case of Vienna 1900.(Critical essay) - Textile | HighBeam Research

patterns produced in brick and stone walls, for example, were an active memory of the ancient weavings from which they were derived. The most compelling, and most frequently discussed aspect of Semper's theory was his concept of the Bekelidungsprinzip (principle of dress), by which he understood a building's aesthetic, symbolic, and even spiritual significance to reside in its decorative surface. Architecture's decorative cladding, or "dress," was at the center of debates among Semper's many followers, including such prominent Viennese architects as Otto Wagner, Josef Hoffmann and Adolf Loos. Semper's theories were influential upon architects in other parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as well, including Wagner's contemporary and friend, Odon Lechner, in Budapest. (1) Although the older architects (Wagner and Lechner) applied Semper's theories primarily to their treatment of the building's exterior surface, the younger designers (Loos and Hoffmann), turned to the building's interior space, which they defined with real textiles--such as draperies, carpets, upholstery fabrics, and decorative linens, and textile-like constructions--such as screen walls, and painted motifs. This increasing orientation towards the dressing of interior spaces among the younger modernists was likewise derived from Semper's Bekleidungsprinzip. Although the ramifications of Semper's theory are ultimately much farther-reaching than this particular study suggests, I would like to use the modern movement in art and design in Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century as a case study for examining the textile as a structuring principle that lends itself well to a new methodological approach. "Vienna 1900" is a well-studied topic, nearly a discipline unto itself, which has been analyzed from numerous points of view over the past century. (2) We are all familiar with Vienna as the home of Sigmund Freud and Gustav Klimt, and studies of Wittgenstein, Schonberg, and Mahler continue to generate interest and significance. Is this because questions remain about the nature of Vienna's artistic flourishing and stylistic transformation from a shimmering, fashionable art nouveau capital, to a place of simmering, expressionist rage? How did Viennese design shift from the ornamental style of its Secessionist circle,
COPYRIGHT 2008 Oxford International Publishers Ltd. Dba Berg Publishers. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights or concerns about this content should be directed to Customer Service.

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