Adolf Loos : the art of architecture
Widely regarded as one of the most significant prophets of modern architecture, Adolf Loos was a celebrity in his own day. His work was emblematic of the turn-of-the-century generation that was torn between the traditional culture of the nineteenth century and the innovative modernism of the twentieth. His essay 'Ornament and Crime' equated superfluous ornament and 'decorative arts' with tattooing in an attempt to tell modern Europeans that they should know better. But the negation of ornament was supposed to reveal, not negate, good style; and an incorrigible ironist has been taken too literally in denying architecture as a fine art. Without normalizing his edgy radicality, Masheck argues that Loos' masterful "astylistic architecture" was an appreciation of tradition and utility and not, as most architectural historians have argued, a mere repudiation of the florid style of the Vienna Secession. Masheck reads Loos as a witty, ironic rhetorician who has all too often been taken at face value
Criticism, interpretation, etc
1 online resource (290 pages) : illustrations
9780857721952, 9780857733214, 9781299639997, 085772195X, 0857733214, 1299639992
844361305
Loos and fine art
Loosian vernacular : an American case
Loos and imperial New York
Critique of ornament
Architecture and ornament in fact
Everybody's doric
Architecturelessness and sustainable art
The Wittgenstein house as Loosian
Loos and minimalism