Josef Hoffmann believed in the power of the aesthetic and generated artistically fully composed, finely crafted environments in architecture and household items. Adolf Loos, by contrast, devoted himself to evolutionary and emancipatory ideas and believed that the purpose of architecture and design was to create a lasting and unobtrusive background to allow individuality to emerge. He viewed established types of household items and architecture that did not need to be artistically redesigned as the best means to this end. Hoffmann and Loos owed their success to the artistic and intellectual milieu of the metropolitan culture of Vienna around 1900 and a synergy of like-minded groups: culturally open and economically powerful new social classes came together with a young, avant-garde, and internationally well-connected community of artists. 

In this environment, Hoffmann and Loos’s oeuvres went on to make influential contributions to the heated international debate on the “right” direction for the modernist movement. The Vienna Secession invited prominent English, French, German, and Belgian artists to its exhibitions. Along with the Wiener Werkstätte, Hoffmann created the Stoclet House (1905–1911) in Brussels, one of the most prominent works of the international art nouveau movement. After living in the United states for three years, Adolf Loos brought a completely new image of modern culture back to Vienna, which he spread in polemical newspaper articles and demonstrated in the famous Looshaus (1910–1911) on Michaelerplatz. His brilliant writings continue to be read and regarded as the “Old Testament” of modernism. 

In five chapters, the exhibition WAYS TO MODERNISM: Josef Hoffmann, Adolf Loos, and Their Impact shows how these successful, modern theories of civilization and living emerged on the path to greater individual freedom, and how their influence continues to be felt today.
With a selection of key buildings, furnishings, household items, and writings, the exhibition begins by outlining the achievements of forerunners to the modernist movement, including Theophil Hansen and Otto Wagner. Their work formed the foundation upon which the artists of the Vienna Secession, which was co-founded by Josef Hoffmann, and Adolf Loos, the group’s antipode, built their oeuvres. As examples, the exhibition includes the work of the architect Theophil von Hansen for Archduke Leopold at Schloss Hernstein in the 1870s. The focus of this introductory segment to the exhibition is on architects’ reactions to the crisis in the applied arts in the wake of industrialization as well as the development of a genuinely modern language of form. 

The second chapter of the exhibition, Otto Wagner, is entirely devoted to the “father of Viennese Modernism.” The essence of Wagner’s strategy of design is presented with a selection of his most important works, including the reconstruction of the facade and the interior of the “Die Zeit” dispatch office (1902), numerous original pieces of furniture, and design drawings for his most important buildings. WAYS TO MODERNISM highlights Wagner’s pioneering achievement of defining the prototype for nearly every type of building of the modern city for the first time in Vienna as an expression of the modern lifestyle. 

Modern Lifestyles, the third and central chapter in the vast MAK Exhibition Hall, covers the high point of Viennese modernism in the years between the founding of the Secession in 1897 and the completion of the movement’s most important works around 1910. Hoffmann and Loos initially took similar approaches, but soon developed in divergent directions, as evidenced by reconstructions and models that illustrate their contrasting interpretations of important building commissions. These include unique pieces of furniture as well as the modern city building as exemplified by the residential and commercial “Loos building” (Vienna, 1910–1911) as well as the Stoclet House (Brussels, 1905–1911), a mansion designed by Hoffmann for the banker Adolphe Stoclet. 

A catalog will accompany the exhibition: WAYS TO MODERNISM: Josef Hoffmann, Adolf Loos, and Their Impact, edited by Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, Matthias Boeckl, and Christian Witt-Dörring, in German and English, including numerous essays by international experts, 336 pages, MAK, Vienna/Birkhäuser, Basel, 2015. Available at the MAK Design Shop and online at MAKdesignshop.at for €39.60. 
See the Catalogue on the Book pages>

AUSTRIA
VIENNA
MAK - Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art
Stubenring 5
A-1010 Wien
www.mak.at