An article by CRAACE Principal Investigator Matthew Rampley, ‘Myths of Modernism: Austrian Art after 1918,’ has just been published in the journal Art History.
Tag: Vienna
Artwork of the Month, October 2022: Cover of Moderne Welt by Carry Hauser (1934)
In August 1934, the Austrian illustrated magazine Moderne Welt featured a bright cover of a couple in folk dress, which appeared to stand in full contradiction with the modernity emphasised in its title. Yet the cover perfectly illustrates a shift in modern Austrian culture towards what we might call ‘alpine modernity’. Representing a trend embracing the country’s alpine geography and folk traditions, it had begun to develop in the 1920s but gained special importance during the reactionary Dollfuss-Schuschnigg regime of the 1930s. With its peculiar mix of technological progress and rural life, Austria’s ‘alpine modernity’ reinvented the country as a tourist-friendly, German, Catholic country, whose most remarkable features were ‘cosiness’ (‘Gemütlichkeit‘), natural beauty, and the celebration of folk traditions and religious life. International tourist advertising aside, this image also circulated widely in the national press, and encouraged city dwellers, especially, to venture out and explore their home country. Thus, even though the folkloric naivety of the image appears to represent the very opposite of the modern world proclaimed in the magazine title, the two poles were not as far removed from one another as the cover may initially suggest. Moreover, the cover was designed by Carry Hauser (1895–1985), a painter, stage designer, printmaker, and writer, who was closely involved in efforts to rejuvenate Austrian culture after the First World War. Contextualising the Moderne Welt cover in relation to Hauser’s work as well as the magazine, this Artwork of the Month essay shows that Austrian modern culture maintained strong ties to rural culture throughout the interwar years and promoted it at home just as much as abroad.
Creativity from Vienna to the World: New online project
We are pleased to announce that Professor Megan Brandow-Faller (City University of New York) and CRAACE research fellow Julia Secklehner have been awarded an events grant from the Botstiber Foundation for Creativity from Vienna to the World, an online project that includes lectures, a blog and an online exhibition. The project connects aspects of design and women’s history, pedagogy, migration history and cultural transfer to trace the achievements of migrant women designers who moved to the United States from Central Europe in the first half of the twentieth century.
New book: Erasures and Eradications in Modern Viennese Art, Architecture and Design
Artwork of the Month, July 2022: Head by Vally Wieselthier (1928)
This striking ceramic head, nearly 28 centimetres in height, depicts a young woman wearing a slanted fashionable cap, counter-posed with a green flower in her hair. It was executed by Vally Wieselthier (1895–1945) and is one of many female heads she produced for the Wiener Werkstätte in the late 1920s. Indeed, not only did Wieselthier produce distinctive ceramic heads of this kind; many other artists associated with the Wiener Werkstätte, such as Gudrun Baudisch (1907–1982), Hertha Bucher (1898–1960) and Erna Kopriva (1894–1984) made similar heads. Baudisch, in particular, executed a number that are sometimes difficult to distinguish from those by Wieselthier.