“The Whole Bad Taste of Our Period:” Josef Frank, Adolf Loos, and “Gschnas“

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article addresses the confrontation between notions of kitsch and modernist ideas about “good design” that marked twentieth century debates. It examines the notion of “Gschnas” (frippery, fancy dress), an Austrian dialect term employed by Josef Frank and Adolf Loos. The complexities and sometimes contradictions of the positions of these two architect/designers are addressed in the context of more recent debates on kitsch. Frank's stance is examined as both a critique of orthodox interwar modernism and as defining an alternative and more complex version of modernism that embraced (rather than rejected) the decorative and the popular. Frank's interpretation of “Gschnas” is considered as an essential element of this wider and more generous vision of modernism, and the notion of a “modernist kitsch”—ostensibly a contradiction in terms—is assessed. Recent cultural analyses of kitsch typically examine this as a phenomenon of self-representation by members of social groups who do not belong to the professional art and design community, and do not live in houses or designed interiors commissioned from architects and designers. In contrast, by drawing on the writings and work of Frank and Loos who produced designs for both the middle classes and for the working-class clients of social housing, the relation between notions of kitsch and ideas of “good design” is examined with the aim of questioning accepted views about the opposition between modernist theory and practice and popular taste in the early twentieth century.