Claire Beck Loos - The Private Adolf Loos: Portrait of an Eccentric Genius

THE PRIVATE ADOLF LOOS

The Private Adolf Loos

Claire Beck Loos

Translated by

Constance C. Pontasch

Nicholas Saunders

Carrie Paterson Editor

DoppelHouse Press | Los Angeles

The Private Adolf Loos: Portrait of an Eccentric Genius

By Claire Beck Loos

Translated by Constance C. Pontasch and Nicholas Saunders

Edited by Carrie Paterson

DoppelHouse Press, 2020 All rights reserved.

Adolf Loos Privat by Claire Beck Loos

Johannes-Presse, Vienna, Austria

1936 Claire Beck Loos

Book design: Carrie Paterson

Cover design: Carrie Paterson and Janet L

Publishers Cataloging-in-Publication data

Names: Loos, Claire, author. | Pontasch, Constance C., translator. | Saunders, Nicholas, translator. | Paterson, Carrie, 1972-, editor.

Title: The Private Adolf Loos : portrait of an eccentric genius / by Claire Beck Loos ; translated by Constance C. Pontasch and Nicholas Saunders ; Carrie Paterson, editor.

Description: Los Angeles, CA : DoppelHouse Press, 2020.

Identifers: LCCN: 2020931079 | ISBN: 9780997003482 | 9781733957939 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH Loos, Adolf, 1870-1933. | Loos, Claire. | Architects--Austria--Biography. | Architects--Czechoslovakia--Biography. | Architects--Europe--Biography. | Architecture--Austria--Vienna--History--20th century. | Architecture--Czech republic--History--20th century. | Vila Mller (Prague, Czech Republic) | Jewish authors--Biography. | Jewish women--Biography. | Photographers--Czechoslovakia--Biography. | BISAC BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Artists, Architects, Photographers | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Historical

Classification: LCC NA1038.L6 L62 2020 | DDC 720/.92/4--dc23

Dedicated to Charles Paterson in memorium

CONTENTS

by Claire Beck Loos

PREFACE REFLECTIONS OF A FEMALE PROTG

An inscription by the author on a found second-hand copy of her 1936 book, Adolf Loos Privat [The Private Adolf Loos], is revealing: In memory of a feverish time. Claire Beck Loos.

What follows is Claires documentation of this passionate moment in culture, as well as her short-lived but impactful marriage to one of the great minds of the early-twentieth century. Through a penetrating view of her ex-husband, the architect Adolf Loos, she offers a dramatic and personal understanding of what it is to have spent time with a genius, an older mentor, and retain some of the creative psychic residue impressed by that experience.

Claire comes away from her time with Loos a changed person, and like anyone who has thrown himself or herself with abandon into a new mode of thinking in rebellion or out of necessity her struggle to integrate this moment into her life requires a generative act: this book. Through the unique form of her writing we learn not only about Loos and his work, but also about the role of emotional connections in forging new times.

CARRIE PATERSON, EDITOR

Adolf Loos in the living room of his apartment in Vienna, Giselastrasse 3, now Bsendorferstrae, Vienna I, 1929.
Courtesy Janet Beck Wilson
PHOTO CLAIRE BECK

ADOLF LOOS
A SHORT BIOGRAPHY

Adolf Loos (December 10, 1870 August 23, 1933) was born in Brunn (Brno, Czech Republic), the Moravian edge of Austro-Hungary. Son of a stonemason and sculptor, Loos studied architecture in Dresden from 18901893. He lived in the United States for three years following his education and then moved to Vienna to practice architecture in 1896. Within Viennas lively fin-de-sicle caf culture he began to formulate ideas on cultural reform and urban development, beginning what was virtually a second career as a writer and lecturer. He published articles in Die Zeit, Die Wage, and the Neue Freie Presse, but also briefly put out his own publication, Das Andere [The Other], which was a journal promoting the introduction of Western Civilization into Austria. Loos writings were later collected in several volumes, including Ins Leere Gesprochen [Spoken into the Void] in 1921, and Trotzdem [Nevertheless] in 1931; a portion have been translated into English as Ornament and Crime, Selected Essays (Ariadne Press, 1998), some of which are reprinted at the end of this volume.

In addition to his written work, Loos gave some sixty lectures from 1910 onward to audiences in Vienna, Prague, Brno, Berlin, Paris, Graz, and Munich.

Loos was influenced both by the Greek architect Vetruvius and Anglophone culture, and he incorporated aspects of classical architecture into his early work. Of these, a notable design was for the Chicago Tribune Tower (1922, unbuilt), a skyscraper in the form of a Greek column. Loos use of iconography was short-lived, as he turned his attention to revolutionizing building practices, valorizing the craftsman and the laborer, opposing the wasteful ornamentation of the Viennese Secession and objecting loudly to mixing art and craft (epitomized by the work of his archenemies Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann at the Wiener Werksttte), as well as pioneering the use of raw materials for their simplicity and beauty.

Loos most radical project in Vienna, his Goldman & Salatsch building (19091911) on the Michaelerplatz, became colloquially known as the building without eyebrows. Its defining distinction is a complete lack of ornamentation on the facade, which reputedly so offended Emperor Franz Josef that he refused to exit the Hofburg Palace on the side facing the Loos Haus. Among Viennas other Loosian attractions are the Caf Museum (1899), The American Bar (or Krntnerbar, 1907), Knie Mens Outfitters (19091913) and his contribution to the Werkbundsiedlung housing project, a duplex (19311932).

During his lifetime Loos designed, built, and remodeled close to one hundred apartments and homes, and undertook a number of large civic projects like schools, government buildings, and workers housing. Dozens of additional works included sanatoriums, hotels, cafs and bars, and shops. Several of Loos projects were not realized but still remain influential, like the black-and-white striped marble house for Josephine Baker (1928) with its dramatic lighting and view underwater into the swimming pool.

Most relevant to this book, with its domestic and intimate qualities, are Loos striking interiors. Using marble and wood veneers, beautiful hardwoods, brightly colored paints, glass block, mirror, photo murals, and even fur (for the bedroom of his first wife, Lina Loos), he transformed and sensualized the experience of space. His revolutionary open floor plans and stepped half-floors, sometimes conceived in a caf and drawn on a napkin, created cubic arrangements; this intuitive method, coined the Raumplan by one of his students, came to full expression during the time period of Claires narrative. Considered one of his most important contributions to Modern architecture, the Villa Mller (192830) in Prague, now a museum, is an excellent example of his highly evolved architectural philosophy.

But his work was neither immediately accepted nor appreciated, and Loos expressed constantly his feeling that he was either ignored or not properly recognized. As noted architecture historian Otto Kapfinger writes in his Afterword to the 2007 German edition of Adolf Loos Privat,

Loos was one of the most important reformers, innovators, and architectural critics of the 20th century. Internationally, the amount of literature written about his lifes work has increased tremendously in recent decades. During the course of his lifetime, Loos efforts in the area of architectural and practical design for everyday application through which he strove to free humanity from superfluous labor generally garnered him more ridicule and misunderstanding than anything else. Only a very few, like-minded people were able, or even wanted to accept this cultural reformer an extremely exacting destroyer of clutter, where ideals and materials were concerned.