Design, Performance, and Media in Modern Vienna

Viennese Modernism is typically identified with Art Nouveau and Modernist architecture and design, as well as Black Romanticism and Expressionist art. Famous architects such as Josef Hoffmann and Adolf Loos designed interiors and fashion, collaborated with leading artists, and encouraged colleagues to create ceramics and children's toys to help shape a revolutionary culture that is crucial to understanding Viennese art and design around 1900.

This course explores the relationship between design, performance, and media in early twentieth-century Vienna. It examines how prominent and lesser-known figures such as the architect Otto Wagner, the designer Koloman Moser, the journalist Berta Zuckerkandl, and the dancer Grete Wiesenthal positioned themselves and developed their professional careers in the modern city of Hoffmann and Loos. How were their social and cultural identities formed in museums, theaters, coffeehouses, and private homes, and how did photographers contribute to their media presence? Our class will closely study their networks and works.

The course will include the following topics:

• Vienna's Ringstrasse: Building the Imperial Ringstrasse - Historical Visions as part of a European cultural project.
• "Modern People" and Urban scenery: the birth of mass media; new shopping and entertainment centers in the city.
• The Wiener Secession: Otto Wagner's railway stations and modernist buildings; Joseph Maria Olbrich and the Secession building; Gesamtkunstwerk (Total-Art-Work).
• Josef Hoffmann and the Wiener Werkstätte: Hoffmann’s villas; Sanatorium Purkersdorf; modern design and women's fashion; illustrious female and male patrons and how they lived.
• Women in the City: photographers, artists and designers; Women’s magazines in Vienna around 1900.
• Adolf Loos and his modernist architecture: Cultural criticism and liberal newspapers; te scandal of the "Loos House"; architecture and men's fashion
• Excursion "Rebellion in the Coffee House": the role of the coffee houses in shaping the culture of the modern city.
• Design and Orientalism: Japonisme, colonialist fantasies, art, and advertising
• Avant-Garde Performances: Grete Wiesenthal and modern dance, Richard Strauss and the Opera Salomé, and Oskar Kokoschka's expressionist drama

Requirements: Attendance and participation in class discussion constitute 30%, presentations 20%, and a written final paper 50% of the grade.