Review: Silent Revolutions in Ornament: Studies in Applied Arts and Crafts from 1880–1930, by Lada Hubatová-Vacková and Adolf Loos: The Art of Architecture, by Joseph Masheck

Abstract

Silent Revolutions in Ornament: Studies in Applied Arts and Crafts from 1880–1930 Prague: Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design, 2011, 288 pp., 256 color and 112 b/w illus. $38.00 (cloth), ISBN 9788086863184, by Lada Hubatova-Vackova. Adolf Loos: The Art of Architecture London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2013, 290 pp., 52 b/w illus. $29.00 (paper), ISBN 9781780764238, by Joseph Masheck. In a short autobiography from 1915, Adolf Loos (writing in the third person) described his great struggle against ornament: “Adolf Loos is the philosopher of the architects of our time, and through his declaration of a vendetta against the proliferation of ornament has assumed a special place among [all] artists. … Already seventeen years ago, [he] preached in favor of simplicity, truth to materials, and quality work, and today he can savor the triumph that his opponents have largely accepted his demands.”1 Here, as elsewhere in his writings, Loos depicted himself as a solitary crusader against the evils of ornament, a lone knight errant bent on its eradication. But Loos was only one of a number of figures at the time pondering the problem of ornament, questioning whether it still had meaning, purpose, and validity. In the period just before Loos wrote his famed assault “Ornament and Crime,” in late 1909 or early 1910, the German-language design press was filled with pieces decrying or defending ornament. Loos, far from being a single voice, in fact, had a great deal of company.2 The issue of ornament and its relation to modern architecture and design, though, had a much longer history, extending back some three decades. It is a story that until now has been strangely neglected or passed over in silence. Recently, a young architectural historian in Prague, Lada Hubatova-Vackova, who teaches modern art and design history at the Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design, cast a scholarly eye on the history of ornamental theory and practices during the early years of modernism. Her excellent and thoroughgoing book in Czech, Tiche revoluce uvnitř ornamentu: Studie z dějin uměleckeho průmyslu a dekorativniho uměni v letech 1880–1930 , has now been translated into English as Silent Revolutions in Ornament: Studies in …