The search for a modern Austrian style during the years between 1890 and 1900 went hand in hand with the emancipation from Historicism. The objects exhibited in this gallery are largely contemporary acquisitions of products from abroad, especially from the United Kingdom, Netherlands, France, and Germany, Japan, where successful steps toward reform had already been taken.
These acquisitions were meant to help disseminate the stylistic line that the museum considered to be worth emulating, especially at the institutions of industrial arts training that had been established throughout the monarchy. The impact of this model function can be seen in individual works by students at these trade schools.
The idea of the unity of the arts, borrowed from England and propagated by the Secession’s founding members, accorded art-status to creatively designed everyday objects; its influence is present here in works by figures including Josef Hoffmann, Koloman Moser, and Joseph Maria Olbrich.
As early as 1899, Otto Wagner made his demand for a functionalist style, pointing the way ahead for the development of Viennese Modernism. This is exemplified here by the first piece of “modern” Viennese furniture, a crockery cabinet he designed for his own home in 1899. Wagner also stands for the path to Modernism on which Vienna was shortly to embark.
Although at first still largely defined by the curvilinear forms adopted from Belgium and France, which represented a conscious reference to the era of Ludwig XV, the period beginning in 1900 saw Vienna recall its own national roots to arrive at geometrically abstracted forms via the local Biedermeier tradition, which at the time was erroneously identified as the first “bourgeois” style. Moser’s buffet The Rich Haul from 1900 marks this change of direction with regard to design. Finally, Adolf Loos’ alternative road to Modernism, opposing the Secession’s idea of a Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art), is shown by a corner seating ensemble from the study of Gustav and Marie Turnowsky’s apartment.
Vienna 1900
VIENNA 1900. Design / Arts and Crafts 1890–1938 adheres to a largely chronological structure: the first room is dedicated to the search for a modern style; the second room features a close look at the Viennese style; and the third room points the way to the International Style. Around 500 collection objects are shown in various thematic combinations that serve to shed light on art-historical and sociopolitical aspects relevant to Viennese modernism.
Vibrant And Manifold: Vienna 1900 In A New Light
The fascinatingly complex cultural epoch denoted by the term “Vienna 1900” has long been the stuff of legend. And the equally multifaceted and momentous output of this period’s artisans and designers is now the focus of a section of the MAK Permanent Collection. At this presentation’s thematic core is the multifarious struggle to arrive at an Austrian, modern, bourgeois, and democratic style. Today, this chapter of design and arts and crafts history—subsumed under the terms of Secessionism and Jugendstil—serves like no other to underpin Austrian identity. But around 1900, the search for a suitable style reflected an identity crisis of the bourgeois class. The entirely contradictory results of this search were tied together by a central characteristic of the modern era: a pioneering desire for expressive individuality.
The MAK invites visitors to engage in a multilayered examination of the “Vienna 1900” phenomenon that covers three rooms. This section of the Permanent Collection, which had gone unchanged since 1993, is the first to have been reconceived. The presentation’s content was developed by Christian Witt-Dörring together with the museums’ collection curators, and the Viennese designer Michael Embacher was responsible for the individual rooms’ design.
VIENNA 1900. Design / Arts and Crafts 1890–1938 adheres to a largely chronological structure: the first room is dedicated to the search for a modern style; the second room features a close look at the Viennese style; and the third room points the way to the International Style. Around 500 collection objects are shown in various thematic combinations that serve to shed light on art-historical and sociopolitical aspects relevant to Viennese modernism.
In several respects, the “Vienna 1900” section of the MAK Permanent Collection deals with Viennese modernism differently than did previous rooms devoted to the topic. Embedded chronologically between the late 19th century’s overcoming of Historicism and the National Socialists’ seizure of power in 1938, this new presentation facilitates a broader historical understanding of the era. It opens up a view on international relationships, illustrating both influences from abroad and developments elsewhere that emerged simultaneously. Furthermore, the presentation highlights formal and/or cultural fallbacks as well as continuities: some objects, for example, hark back to the Biedermeier era or make visible use of patterns from Moravian folk art.
“Traces” Of Central European Modernism
In fact, a great number of innovative designers—in addition to the well-known Moravian-born opponents Josef Hoffmann and Adolf Loos—came from the territory of today’s Czech Republic. So the era of Viennese modernism thus saw the longstanding reciprocal relationship between Vienna, Bohemia, and Moravia remain a fruitful one: many architects and designers who had come to Vienna for their professional training went on to play a significant role in the dissemination of modern design in their home regions. The Permanent Collection rooms on the “Vienna 1900” theme document these mutual effects, making an important contribution towards underpinning a broader understanding of Central European modernism’s development.
The MAK will also be conveying this approach outside its own walls: with support from the EU, the museum will be spending the next few years developing a Central European cultural route between Vienna and Brno entitled “Traces.” This route will link the region’s most influential modern-era buildings and also include locations of significance to Viennese intellectual life around 1900. In order to accomplish this, the MAK will be using its cooperative relationship with the Moravian Gallery at the Josef Hoffmann Museum (run jointly since 2006) in order to have the cultural region of Moravia–Lower Austria–Vienna once again be known as an influential source of modernist impulses.
Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna
The MAK – Museum of Applied Arts is one of the most important museums of its kind worldwide. Founded as the Imperial Royal Austrian Museum of Art and Industry in 1863, today’s museum—with its unique collection of applied arts and as a first-class address for contemporary art—can boast an incomparable identity. Originally established as an exemplary source collection, today’s MAK Collection continues to stand for an extraordinary union of applied art, design, contemporary art and architecture.
The MAK is a museum and laboratory for applied art at the interface of design, architecture and contemporary art. His core competency is dealing with these areas in a contemporary way, in order to create new perspectives based on the tradition of the house and to explore border areas.
The spacious halls of the Permanent Collection in the magnificent Ringstraße building by Heinrich von Ferstel were later redesigned by contemporary artists in order to present selected highlights from the MAK Collection. The MAK DESIGN LAB expands our understanding of design—a term that is traditionally grounded in the 20th and 21st centuries—by including previous centuries, thereby enabling a better evaluation of the concept of design today. In temporary exhibitions, the MAK presents various artistic stances from the fields of applied arts, design, architecture, contemporary art, and new media, with the mutual relationships between them being a consistently emphasized theme.
It is particularly committed to the corresponding recognition and positioning of applied art. The MAK develops new perspectives on its rich collection, which spans different eras, materials and artistic disciplines, and develops them rigorously.