Otto Wagner

The architect Otto Wagner may justifiably be called the father of Viennese Modernism. By 1890, he had already formulated his discomfort about the ruling artistic practice of his day of borrowing from historical styles for architecture and the design of everyday articles. In his opinion they no longer  represented technological and social progress, nor the actual status quo of the time. For him, modern life was the only criterion on which to base artistic creativity in architecture. As alternative to outmoded historicism he conceived a practical style duty-bound purely to function, which, in addressing the individual stages in design, must logically lead to a modern solution.

As in a recipe, he set out the analytical procedure for this in his programmatic book “Moderne Baukunst” (Modern Architecture), which if applied honestly would automatically and unavoidably dictate the new language of forms:

I. Extremely precise grasp and complete fulfilment of the purpose (down to the smallest detail).

II. Felicitous choice of materials (i.e. easily attainable, readily adaptable, lasting, economical).

III. Simple and economic construction

IV. Only after consideration of these three main points, the form that evolves from these premises (which flows as though of its own volition from the pen and is always readily comprehensible).

For him, the beginning of a design process is not the artistic idea, but considerations that best comply with the purpose of the set task and its economic implementation. What mattered to Wagner was not the development of a formal, aesthetically defined modern style, such as was being propagated by the Vienna Secessionists, but a basic disposition faced with the needs and potential of modern everyday life. It is not the artist’s patronisation of the craftsman that leads to modern form, but knowledge about the material and constructional properties, and the appropriate practical use of such knowledge. Here Wagner takes first place as trailblazer of Modernism in the spirit of an Adolf Loos. “He is able to shed his ‘architect’s skin’ and slip at will into a ‘craftsman’s skin’”, Loos remarked in a rhapsodic discussion of Wagner’s bed and bathrooms shown at the Jubilee Exhibition in 1898.

The two rooms were part of a small pied-à-terre furnished by Wagner in the house he had designed and built on Köstlergasse 3 in the sixth Viennese district. His main residence at the time was in the Villa Wagner I, also of his own design, on Hüttelbergstrasse 26 on the outskirts of Vienna. The dining room – which contained the armchair discussed here – of the Köstlergasse apartment must have been furnished and ready by 1899, only a year after the exhibition. Wagner quickly published his interior design in the following year in Ver Sacrum, the magazine of the Vienna Secession. It is impossible to exaggerate the significance of this piece of seating furniture. It represents a completely new approach in Wagner’s oeuvre, standing out sharply from his previous seating furniture, until then strongly influenced by the Renaissance and Louis XVI styles. The significance attached by Wagner himself to this piece of furniture is manifest in his using it as initial vignette in 1900 for his article “Die Kunst im Gewerbe” (Art in Industry). Furthermore, he illustrated the armchair in the central chapter “Die Konstruktion” of the fourth (illustrated) edition of his book “Baukunst unserer Zeit” (Architecture of our Time) as a detail from the dining-room view with the programmatic caption “Construction, the origin of the art form” (Die Konstruktion, das Entstehen der Kunstform). Here Wagner refers to the text section highlighted in capital letters in the aforementioned chapter “Every architectural form has arisen in construction and has successfully become an art form.”