Wiener Werkstätte Hardcover – 1 Jun. 2022

Got this for my birthday and love it! Very interesting.

OMG this book is a wonderful work of art in it's own right, authoritative and a joy to own.

As Part of Liverpool Capital of Culture O8 Celebrations, I went to see the Klimt exhibition at the Tate Liverpool. Why is this relevant... well they also to augment the exhibition had paintings, clothes and other products from the Wiener Werkstatte which started my interest. This book is great, it presents some of the best that was produced at the Werkstatte and is great for anyone interested in finding out more about Klimt, Josef Hoffman and the Vienna Secession.

Taschen books, I find, do not invest much in good texts, though they have splendid images. Unfortunately, that holds for this beautiful book: Fahr-Becker essentially only describes the most minimal historical and even cultural context for each chapter, adding almost nothing to the spectacular pictures. This is less a criticism than a warning and simple acknowledgement of the Taschen style.For text, the first chapter is the best. Towards the end of the Belle Epoque, Europe is in ferment with the rise of the middle classes and industrialization. There is great, new wealth and so art, architecture, and furnishings are no longer available only to the aristocracy. Meanwhile, the artists and artisans themselves are rebelling against these standards. On the one hand, they hate the staid Bric-à-brac of the neoclassical and rococo, the overly ornamental junk that cluttered living rooms. On the other hand, the cheaper alternatives were industrial goods that appeared completely denuded of character, i.e. ugly and plain.The rebellion took on a number of forms. You got Art Nouveau, with its elaborate naturalistic forms and Gesamptkunstwerk, or total art as applied to every aspect to entire rooms or buildings. Then there was the Secession in Vienna and Impressionism in France, both of which threw out the conventions of painting - subject and method - that had been established in the Renaissance. Another movement was arts and crafts in Britain, which sought to bring beauty back to the home.Into this ferment stepped the Wiener Werkstätte, which was an incorporated business group of artists and artisans set out to create furnishings and buildings as individually designed Gesamptkunstwerke. This was of course beyond the reach of most consumers, so was a mere extension of the aristocratic privilege though this time the market was the rising bourgeois industrialists and bankers. As such, the movement was in perpetual financial crisis.What disappointed me about book was how little it explained regarding how and why the particular aesthetic of the Wiener Werkstätte evolved. What bound them together? What distinguished each artist? So far as I can tell, they pursued wildly disparate personal visions: not Art Nouveau as the lines were simple and straighter, yet still highly ornamental so not yet modernist. This leaves a gaping hole that I need to fill elsewhere.Recommended for the images.