Irish Arts Review

Adolf Loos
Author(s): Sanda Miller
Source: Irish Arts Review (1984-1987), Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring, 1986), pp. 58-59
Published by: Irish Arts Review
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20491861
Accessed: 21-02-2016 19:08 UTC

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Adolf Loos
When Adolf Loos began his architect
ural career in Vienna at the turn of the
century, the Art Nouveau movement
was at its peak. Loos rebelled against its
baroque exuberance exemplified in
Otto Wagner's 'Majolica House' or
Joseph Maria Olbrich's newly built art
gallery in the Viennese variation of the
Art Nouveau - the Secession
crowned with a gloriously capricious
pierced dome of floralmetalwork. In a
famous polemical article 'Ornamentand
Crime', written in 1908, he declared:
"... the evolution of culture is syn
onymous with the removal of ornament
from objects of daily use."
Loos proceeded to implement his
theories by translatingthem into archi
tecture in theMichaelerhaus, a building
commissioned byGoldman and Salatsch
'Gentlemen's Tailors and Outfitters',
opposite the former ImperialPalace, in
Michaelerplatz. Little wonder that its
unadorned facade, stripped of every
possible non-functional detail, became
so offensive that a compromise
be made with the outraged authorities
and flower baskets were produced to
decorate the windows. Until that time,
Loos, already forty years old, had
achieved some fame only among the
intelligentsia and with the exception of
the elegant littleKarntner Bar, still very
much a choice venue for the fashion
conscious Viennese, he had done only
interiordecorating.However, in spite of
the hostile press, Loos began to receive
substantial commissions; the first one
was the Steiner house inVienna.
It was at this point that he began
to develop the key concept of the
raumplan (plan of volumes) which
radically changed the hitherto tradi
tionally rigid division of an interior
space by replacing it with
whereby level, height, dimensions and
disposition, in fact everything, became
flexible. Only the exterior remained
sober, conforming to the geometrical
rigourof the shape Loos most favoured,
the cube, because he felt
exterior should be discreet, like a well
dressed gentleman. "What does itmean
to be well dressed?" he once wrote,
itmeans to be dressed correctly ... It is
a question of being dressed
way thatone is leastnoticeable." own convictions and preferred to pay
The recent exhibition at the I.C.A., the price rather than accept com
IRISHARTS REVIEW
EXHIBITIONS
promise. For that reason, among many
others, theAdolf Loos exhibition at the
I.C.A., the first of his work since 1934,
came not a minute too soon. Perhaps
Tzara'swords at the time of the 1934
exhibition best sum up the courage of
the man. "... I join in the homage
which you address today toAdolf Loos
who through uneasiness has seen a
human possibility of clarity."
- and
SandaMiller
James Coleman
At the same time, at the I.C.A.,but in the
Upper Gallery and in complete contrast
to the scholarlyAdolf Loos exhibition,
thework of the Irish artist JamesCole
Chair designed byAdolf Loos.
man was shown.
Better known abroad, especially in
London, was dedicated primarily to Italy where he studied and lived for
Adolf Loos the architect, but it also many years,Coleman is now beginning
attempted to bring to life thewriter, the to establish himself inBritain.
critic, and especially the man himself, The piece shown at the I.C.A., first
the man who was admired and praised seen in original form in 1983 at the
by some of his famous contemporaries Whitechapel Gallery, is entitled Living
such as Wittgenstein, Kokoschka, and Presumed
Dead. It is, in a way, a
had to Schoenberg, Berg, von Hofmannsthal, work which functions at a dual
level,
and Freud to name but a few. These
consisting of a visual and an auditive
were the people who made Adolf Loos's element which
intertwine, overlap and
Vienna, of which he was so much a mingle
without ever becoming one; in
part, one of the world's most brilliant fact they preserve
their specific charac
intellectualcentres. ter to the extent of interferingwith
Nine of his architectural projects, concentration
by making it impossible
both public and private commissions, to follow
them separately.
were represented in the exhibition The visual element consists of slides
through drawings, photographs and from three projectors
which show a
specially commissioned models, com frieze of about twenty characters in
plemented by an impressivenumber of fabulous period
garb, continuously but
other objects such as furniture, glass, subtly
switching place, changing posi
metal, woodwork, and the inevitable tion, varying attitude. This
imparts the
Loos 'Memorabilia'.There were several magic of
children's mischievous games
portraits of the man including a print to the
dramatis personae, an in
by Kokoschka and a photograph taken distinguishable mixture
of actors and
by Man Ray in Paris.
mannequins. Meanwhile, the soothing
Loos became disillusioned with voice of the narrator tells a
complicated
a system Vienna, where his appointment as chief tale full of mythical
heros with mythi
architect of the housing department of cal names: Capax,
Boras, Abbas ...
the city, between 1922 and 1924 ended Somehow it does not matter that the
in failure because of his socialist ideas story,
continuing to unravel with the
regardinghousing for working people. implacability of the
passing of time,
In 1925 he left for Paris, where he was
seems unintelligible, nor that the frieze
that an commissioned by theDadaist poet Tris of characters seems to be in a kind of
tan Tzara to build his house.
perpetuummobile.What does matter is
Loos' name is still so little known and
that JamesColeman envelops you in his
". . . his importance in the development of very private
wonderful and unique
modern architecture is only beginning world; as long as you
choose to, you are
in such a to be fully appreciated. He stood by his its willing prisoner.
SandaMiller
-58
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 IRISHARTS REVIEW

EXHIBITIONS

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