| Title |
A Critique of the Separation of Art and Architecture in Adolf Loos' Theory |
| Keywords |
Adolf Loos ; Art Nouveau ; Useful Object ; Art ; Ornament ; Chicago Tribune Tower ; Red Vienna ; Karl Marx Hof |
| Abstract |
Adolf Loos' architecture is valued especially in postmodern era when architectural styles are consumed as a commodity like a fashion. He tends to be considered as an alternative to both utopian modernism and stylistic postmodernism. Unlike his comtemporary Art Nouveau artists and architects who attempted to create a new style reuniting art and craft, and art and everyday life, Loos accepted the separation between art and craft in modern industrial society and put architecture in the realm of useful objects. He argued that its style is to be developed by modern cultural life and that the removal of ornament in useful objects is the natural outcome of progress of modern culture. This attitude obviously made his architecture more realistic than that of other modernist architects. However, his theory of radical separation between architecture and art, between useful objects and monuments had contradictions and could not be sustained in reality. Even his positivistic architecture has aesthetic quality which denounces his principle of pure rationality. The fundamental limitation of his theory was manifested in his two projects at diametrically opposite direction: Chicago Tribune Tower and Housing design for Red Vienna. The former was a monument, the latter being architecture without ornaments. However, both examples faced difficulty and could not play out in reality. |