A Century Of Austrian Design

A "Century of Austrian Design” offers a highly accessible overview of Austrian design culture from 1900 to the present against the background of the country’s extremely turbulent industrial history. In the process, the key aspects are explained in essays by celebrated experts. The book attempts to delineate a specifically "Austrian” formal language, citing as examples specific achievements in historical and contemporary design. As it does so, it also sheds light on other defining moments of Austria’s design culture, including the enormous potential of its inventors, the phenomenon of semi-industrial manufacturing, and the innovative design solutions advanced by the Austrian sporting goods industry. A yellow pages section with selected design addresses rounds off the volume.

Filling a critical gap in Vienna 1900 studies, this book offers a new reading of fin-de-si?e culture in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy by looking at the unusual and widespread preoccupation with embroidery, fabrics, clothing, and fashion - both literally and metaphorically. The author resurrects lesser known critics, practitioners, and curators from obscurity, while also discussing the textile interests of better known figures, notably Gottfried Semper and Alois Riegl. Spanning the 50-year life of the Dual Monarchy, this study uncovers new territory in the history of art history, insists on the crucial place of women within modernism, and broadens the cultural history of Habsburg Central Europe by revealing the complex relationships among art history, women, and Austria-Hungary. Rebecca Houze surveys a wide range of materials, from craft and folk art to industrial design, and includes overlooked sources-from fashion magazines to World's Fair maps, from exhibition catalogues to museum lectures, from feminist journals to ethnographic collections. Restoring women to their place at the intersection of intellectual and artistic debates of the time, this book weaves together discourses of the academic, scientific, and commercial design communities with middle-class life as expressed through popular culture.

Filling a critical gap in Vienna 1900 studies, this book offers a new reading of fin-de-si?e culture in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy by looking at the unusual and widespread preoccupation with embroidery, fabrics, clothing, and fashion - both literally and metaphorically. The author resurrects lesser known critics, practitioners, and curators from obscurity, while also discussing the textile interests of better known figures, notably Gottfried Semper and Alois Riegl. Spanning the 50-year life of the Dual Monarchy, this study uncovers new territory in the history of art history, insists on the crucial place of women within modernism, and broadens the cultural history of Habsburg Central Europe by revealing the complex relationships among art history, women, and Austria-Hungary. Rebecca Houze surveys a wide range of materials, from craft and folk art to industrial design, and includes overlooked sources-from fashion magazines to World's Fair maps, from exhibition catalogues to museum lectures, from feminist journals to ethnographic collections. Restoring women to their place at the intersection of intellectual and artistic debates of the time, this book weaves together discourses of the academic, scientific, and commercial design communities with middle-class life as expressed through popular culture.

In Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century the question of what it meant to be modern was a heated topic of debate. Focusing on interior design, fashion and photography, as well as on painting and architecture, this study casts fresh light on the vital role of the arts in these debates. The 'new' art and literature was crucial in defining a distinctive Viennese modernity while at the same time challenging preconceptions about modern urban life. Many artists and writers produced work that questioned and undermined oppositions between city and country, interior spaces and panoramic views, masculinity and femininity. Issues of gender and the representation of the body were particularly important in establishing professional identities for some of Vienna's most prominent figures, including the Secessionist painters Gustav Klimt and Carl Moll, designers such as Adolf Loos and Emilie Flöge, as well as the poet and feuilletonist Peter Altenberg. Intellectual life in turn-of-the-century Vienna has often been characterised as a retreat from the public sphere. This book demonstrates how - even in its ostensibly most private manifestations - Viennese Modernism involved a highly performative set of practices aimed at an international audience.

An examination of the little-understood period of music history in which Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven worked.