disagree with awe

In our narrow-minded fuss over progress -- while displaying an artistic hubris that only listens to its own voice -- we would have already reached complete bankruptcy, despite the short duration of the modern movement, if Japanese art had not served it as a pillar. With few exceptions, every innovation we wanted to achieve in the realm of natural forms here in Europe had already been done as well, or often much better in Japan -- imparted to us with a certain deviation from its national style.

In Japan all the preconditions were at hand for a tendency toward this quasi-naturalistic sort of art: not organically-arranged forms in the manner of Greek art, but rather effects with completely smooth surfaces; instead of monumental structures, playful, simple forms whose only function is to be held in the hand and to be tenderly observed by an individual.

A rich technique, and nonetheless one which at times rests in the quality of handwork. A loving examination of nature, a measured stylization, one that has been practiced for centuries. A sensitivity for color, taken to its extreme, besides a good deal of plain childlikeness, a joy in the bizarre, in the wonderful ways of nature. It is an art from which one can learn an infinite amount and which could just as easily lead one astray.

Whoever is used to see art forms as something not coincidental -- as we should all be, the devotees of Winkelmann's art history -- who ever sees them instead as the necessary historical result of the general development of art, will find it unlikely that our century, which experienced a complete crisis of all views and lifestyles as a result of the appearance of the natural sciences, would be able to create its artistic expression purely from the reserve of the past.

A period that sets itself so strongly apart from the past, must, and will create for itself a new sphere of shapes, which one day will be recognized as the style of the natural scientific age.

Julius Lessing, "What's Modern in Art?" Berlin, 1898

here i offer a few more images from the book/exhibition in my last post, and some extrapolations. we've seen before the design inspirations that were the triangle of glasgow, vienna, and poiret with japan but more is offered: the hoffmann at the bottom left, the moser in the middle, and the japanese on top. was the comb made for expert? we'll never know, but if it was, it might lessen its inspirational value. we'll never answer these questions. as we've seen, people constantly disagreed at the time as well. but nobody can disagree with awe.

see the whole year of 1898 of "ver sacrum" from which many of the images these two posts were taken.

waltz, tango, quickstep, rumba, cha-cha, mambo, samba, swing

...The only change in the creative process I've seen with the dance poems comes with the luxury of writing within a framework -- each dance has a distinct feel, an embedded cadence that will suggest a certain shape or silhouette on the page.... "Fox Trot Fridays" was the first in the group; it wrote itself rather quickly.

After that felicitous birth, I imagined writing a poem about each type of ballroom dance -- waltz, tango, quickstep, rumba, cha-cha, mambo, samba, swing, even paso doble. And then, of course, I couldn't write a word, because I was trying to write about dance, not get inside the dance.

When I began to appreciate the technical intricacies of each style -- not just the pattern "quick- quick with a / heel-ball-toe" but the rise upon tiptoe that occurs between the slow count and the first quick in fox-trot, for example, or the gradual lowering from tiptoe that one executes in the second half of the third beat in the waltz -- only then did "American Smooth" [her most recent book] start to shimmer into being.

My scaffolding was to provide a humble description of the dance technique -- what each part of the body should be doing, measured out precisely, without emotion -- in the hopes of finding the poem's true desire, to achieve flight of consciousness, a lifting of the spirit as well as of the human form. 1

THE MUSICIAN TALKS
ABOUT "PROCESS"

(after Anthony 'Spoons' Plough)

I learned the spoons from
my grandfather, who was blind.

Every day he'd go into the woods
'cause that was his thing.
He met all kinds of creatures,
birds and squirrels,
and while he was feeding them
he'd play the spoons,
and after they finished
they'd stay and listen.

When I go into Philly
on a Saturday night,
I don't need nothing but
my spoons and the music.
Laid out on my knees
they look so quiet,
but when I pick them up
I can play to anything:
a dripping faucet,
a tambourine,
fish shining in a creek.

A funny thing:
When my grandfather died,
every creature sang.
And when the men went out
to get him, they kept singing.
They sung for two days,
all the birds, all the animals.
That's when I left the South.

Rita Dove

© 1999 Rita Dove from On the Bus With Rosa Parks pub Norton

also see more combs!

mackintosh & vienna

i began to notice the similarities between the scottish designs, metalwork, glass, and of course embroidery, and that of the wiener werkstatte. this is not coincidental, as it turns out.

In 1900 Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his group "The Glasgow Four" were invited to show their work at the VIIIth exhibition of the Viennese Secession. Their designs, especially those of Charles Rennie Macintosh, exerted a profound influence on German and Austrian exponents of Jugendstil. Contact with Charles Rennie Mackintosh was crucial for Josef Maria Olbrich, Josef Hoffmann, and Koloman Moser in particular. 1

mackintosh's design, with its nature-based simplicity and breakdown of the separation between art and craft (both things clearly influenced by the influx of japanese arts and crafts), was more appealing to the viennese than was the art nouveau they saw in france and belgium, which they saw as excessive. they, unlike mackintosh's fellow glaswegians, saw him as a genius.

Influenced and encouraged by ... Mackintosh, Hoffmann and Moser realized their dream of founding a workshop for the applied arts to promote the best in design matched by the finest in craftsmanship. In June 1903 the Wiener Werkstätte was established; it "represented a not-previously achieved international high point in the applied arts, and, with its unmatched fine workmanship and exquisite taste, became the educator of the whole civilized world." 2

The Wiener Werkstätte believed that artistic endeavour should permeate all aspects of everyday life; no object was so menial that it could not be enhanced by beauty of form and execution ... [When] Mackintosh and [his wife] Margaret Macdonald had exhibited their work to the Viennese public, Hoffmann and Moser were intrigued with the elegance and sensibility of their creations, which is evident in the puristic simplicity and geometric austerity of their early objects.

The Japanese-inspired components of the workshops’ products were also important. The Secession had dedicated their sixth exhibition (1900) to Japanese art, and in Vienna in 1901 the Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie (now Österreichisches Museum für Angewandte Kunst) exhibited the woodcuts of Katsushika Hokusai. The textile patterns and inlay designs of Hoffmann and Moser share strong similarities with Japanese stencils and prints.

The distinctive trademark of the Wiener Werkstätte included the initials of both the designer and the executing craftsworker. The fine arts and the applied arts were awarded the same level of importance. The primary concern of the group was to respect the inherent decorative and functional qualities of the material used and to work within its natural properties. © Oxford University Press 2007

The story began with a competition launched in December 1900 by Zeitschrift FürInnen- dekoration, an innovative design magazine published in the German city of Darmstadt. European architects were invited to design an Art Lover's House. Mackintosh sent in his entry in March 1901, his one chance to design a house unfettered by financial constraints or a conservative client. But he was disqualified for failing to include the required number of drawings of the interior. He hastily completed the portfolio, which he then resubmitted. Delighted with the designs, the judges awarded Mackintosh a special prize (there was no outright winner).

Publication of these drawings did much to establish Mackintosh's reputation abroad as an original and distinctive architect, particularly in Austria and Germany. The Art Lover's House is an important twentieth-century building because it anticipates the abstract forms of Modernism. At first glance it could be an illustration from the thirties. Artists of the avant-garde Vienna Secession described Mackintosh as “our leader who showed us the way” – an acclaim that he was never able to gain at home. Rich Glasgow businessmen never quite took him seriously. 3

in france, poiret (dufy) and lalique were later to feel the influence of this style, but were, of course, french.

the influence that dare not speak its name

Vienna was a center of cre- ative activity between 1897 and 1932 with the emergence of the Secession and the Wiener Werkstätte.

These artists' associations were intended to challenge the prevailing conservative and historicizing tendencies of many Vienna artists and exhibitions.

Participants also strived to encourage among the public a heightened sensitivity to, and appreciation for, culture and the arts in everyday life.

The line be- tween fine and ap- plied arts be- came blurred, and the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, or unified work of art, was introduced. This resulted in a full range of objects and furnishings being designed for specific interiors to create a unified, harmonious ensemble.

The founding group of young artists who formed the Secession included the architect Josef Hoffmann, the painter Koloman Moser, and the painter Gustav Klimt, who was elected president.

Workshops for painters, cabinetmakers, gold and silversmiths, jewelry makers, leather workers and bronze founders thrived during this era. Wiener Werkstätte fabrics were designed by a multitude of talented designers and were then produced on an industrial basis.

The goal of this intimate, focused exhibition is to examine the artistic values and development of the Secession and Wiener Werkstätte through textiles, one of the most resonant and revealing aspects of artistic creativity of the time and a key element in the realization of Gesamtkunstwerk. .....................................



On view are approximately 50 textiles and related objects including fabric samples, a sample book, fabric covered books and boxes created by Josef Hoffmann, Dagobert Peche, Maria Likarz-Strauss and other textile artists working in Klimt's era. 1

(...and there was an influence they forgot to mention.... textile museum washington dc)