The Viennese Cafe and fin-de-siecle culture
Lead Research Organisation:
Royal College of Art
Department Name: History of Design
Abstract
The Viennese cafe was a key site of turn-of-twentieth century modernity. It functioned as both home and workplace, affording opportunities not only for leisure but also for intellectual exchange. This multi-disciplinary project explores the social and artistic interactions that took place in Adolf Loos's Cafe Museum (1899) an icon of modern design, as well as archetypal Viennese coffee-house. It will result in an international conference and a major publication. We also hope to arrange an exhibition at the Royal College of Art, London. There will be an exhibition broadsheet; as well as a series of musical and literary performances.
Publications
Arthur Girling (Author)
"City of Dreams" season.
Cheti Nicoletti (Author)
(2006)
'Cappuccino Conformity'
Jeremy Aynsley (Author)
Staging the Interior
Kirstine Hansen (Author)
Anglo-Austrian Society entitled "Vienna Café 1900".
| Title | "The Psychopathology of Everyday Café Life: an imagined encounter with objects and subjects in Freud's Vienna." |
| Type Of Art | Creative Writing |
| Title | Concert by the Kreutzer String Quartet Peter Sheppard Skræved |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Title | Concert: A Musical Wiener Mélange |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Title | Concert: Mezzo-soprano Hermine Haselböck |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Title | Film Screening: Café Elektric (1927) by Gustav Ucicky |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Title | Film Screening: The Illusionist (2006) by Neil Burger |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Title | Film screening: "Letter from an Unknown Woman" |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Title | Klimt (2006) by Raoul Ruiz - film screening |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Title | Literary Evening as part of the Vienna Café Festival |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Title | The Third Man (1949) by Carol Reed - film screening |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Title | Vienna Café 1900 |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Title | Vienna Café 1900 |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Description | The specific case-study of the coffeehouse provides a central point for scholars from visual, intellectual, social and cultural history to meet and explore the similarities, differences and shared points of interest relating to their recent research into Vienna around 1900. Though the coffeehouse has been recognised as a site of importance in Vienna at this time, there has as yet been no in-depth scholarly investigation of how this site functioned in relation to the broader culture of the city. The outcomes of the project, in particular the book and conference, formed the bases for the mapping of a new area of study, raising both new questions and finding new points of contact between different fields of research. This way of relating physical space and design with intellectual, social and cultural trends within a specific historical context will have implications for research and the development of appropriate methodologies in the broader field of histories of metropolitan culture.The results of the project were of significant value to the research community in the subject are of Vienna 1900 studies. Inter-disciplinarity is an important theme in this field, but one that is difficult to manifest institutionally. The project provided through its exhibition, events, conference and book, a framework for researchers in different disciplines to pool their knowledge and reflect on the research approaches and achievements of different fields. In particular, by providing a forum for bringing the different approaches of these researchers together, the project was able to generate a fresh perspective on what the implications of this Jewishness might be for Jewish writers of the time and their relationship to Viennese modernism and the city of Vienna. |
| Exploitation Route | The project contributed to an on-going reassessment of Viennese and Austrian culture around the turn of the last century. Its findings informed and were extended by, for example the AHRC research project: Madness and Modernity: Architecture, Art and Mental Illness in Vienna and the Habsburg Empire, 1890-1914 and the international conference, From the Ausgleich to the Jahrhundertwende: VIENNA 1867-1890 -pre-modernism and change, St Hilda's, Oxford, 2-4th April 2008. |
| Sectors | Creative Economy Culture Heritage Museums and Collections |
| Description | Design Discourse: Jewish Contributions to Viennese Modernism in Vienna |
| Organisation | University of Applied Arts Vienna |
| Country | Austria |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Dr Tag Gronberg participated in the MAK symposium 'Design Discourse: Jewish Contributions to Viennese Modernism in Vienna,' October 13-14, 2016. Gronberg's paper 'Myths of the Viennese Café: Ephemerality, Performativity and Loss' dealt with the 1920s afterlife of the archetypal 1900 Kaffeehaus. The symposium paper will be published as an essay in an edited collection based on the symposium contributions, Böhlau Verlag. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The symposium paper will be published as an essay in an edited collection based on the symposium contributions, Böhlau Verlag. |
| Impact | As above, a forthcoming publication, details to be confirmed. |
| Start Year | 2016 |
| Description | Exhibition and publication, Julius Klinger Poster Designer for the Modern Age |
| Organisation | Florida International University (FIU) |
| Department | The Wolfsonian |
| Country | United States |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Aynsley was invited to act as guest curator for an exhibition about the Viennese poster designer, Julius Klinger (1876-1942) for the Wolfsonian Museum of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, FIU. Klinger's career is contemporary with the research field of the Vienna Café research project and Aynsley was invited to undertake this research in part because of his contribution to the AHRC-funded project. He conducted research in the Graphische Sammlung, Museum für Angewandte Kunst (MAK), Vienna as well as the Graphische Sammlung, Kunstbibliothek, Berlin. He has worked with and advised the internal team of curators and exhibition designer at the Wolfsonian. The exhibition will be shown at the Wolfsonian from October 2017 - March 2018 and is expected to travel to New York and Essen. Aynsley will write the accompanying book (to be published by the Wolfsonian), the exhibition texts (labels and storyboards) and deliver lectures. |
| Collaborator Contribution | No former partners are involved in this project. |
| Impact | It is too early to provide confirmed details - these will be available in October 2017. |
| Start Year | 2016 |