In the last few years, the boundaries between interior decoration, art, and design have begun to blur. Within this trend, each discipline contributes its own unique qualities. This direction has resulted in a combination of presenting individual artistic vision and adjusting to the demands of the market. One can describe this phenomenon as a kind of product-building exchange between the senders and the recipients - for which, in our case, the model rooms serve as the means of communication.

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The history of Viennese model rooms goes back several centuries. The beginnings of example-setting ideal spaces were already emerging in the second half of the seventeenth century. The first attempts focused on the careful selection of materials, then furnishings were added gradually, such as furniture and lighting. Industrial development, economic progress, and improved quality of living cleared the way for individual expression. more »

In 1908, Adolf Loos published a polemic modern architecture pamphlet titled “Ornament and Crime”. Ornamentation, he argues, is redundant, cost-intensive kitschy decoration, and an expression of the cultural backwardness which can be found in primitive cultures, and which is not representative of modern man. “The barbarian era,” the architect concludes, “is finally past.”

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Only a few years later, Siegfried Kracauer showed that even the modern era, which strives for practicality and rationalization, produces ornaments on its surface. He argues that these ornamentations are an expression of modern mass society, visual representations of modern life and its realities. The ornamentation is not taken into consideration by the masses who produce it. It develops without their knowledge. They do not produce it consciously or on purpose, which is why it resembles “the aerial shots of landscapes and cities”, in which patterns only emerge for the distant viewer. more »

It was an artistically exceptional time, an era of extraordinary creative density during the transition into the twentieth century. Originating from the artistic and intellectual circles of Vienna, works in painting, literature, science, philosophy, music, architecture, sculpture, and design developed in this time which remained relevant to the evolution of taste and knowledge far into the twentieth century.

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The Leopold Museum in Vienna, based on the collection of Rudolf and Elisabeth Leopold, has one of the most extensive and most varied collections of art from this period. Under the curatorial management of the art historian Peter Weinhäupl, Diethard Leopold, and his parents, Rudolf and Elisabeth Leopold, the presentation of these works has been recently reconsidered and newly conceived. more »

“He was discovered at an exhibition. Since then, he has been the outsider who routinely gets slammed by the critics. He is the only “modern” in Vienna. He sees ghosts, secretly suffering souls. He loves to rub salt into wounds. He will end up going mad. These are all compiled from my reviews…” —Oskar Kokoschka to his friend in Berlin, Herwarth Walden, in 1911. He had become acquainted with the publisher of the expressionist magazine, Der Sturm, through the writer and journalist, Karl Kraus. He had been occasionally working with Walden for a year already.

Alfred Weidinger - Oskar Kokoschka’s Expressive Art, Interview Part 1

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Alfred Weidinger - Oskar Kokoschka’s Expressive Art, Interview Part 2

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Alfred Weidinger - Oskar Kokoschka’s Expressive Art, Interview Part 3

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Kokoschka, who wrote this letter when he was just 25 years old, had already gained success in recent years. He was “expressive”—as a painter and writer, as an up-and-coming artist, as well as as a lover. His unbridled expression, his distancing from art nouveau, his bluntness polarized and provoked the artistic establishment and society in Vienna and elsewhere—often to violent reactions. Die Presse called him the “Oberwildling von Wien” (“The Wild Child of Vienna”); in 1909, the opening of his drama, “Mörder - Hoffnung der Frauen” (“Murderer - Liberator of Women”), led to his expulsion from art school. more »