Criminal skins: Tattoos and modern architecture in the work of Adolf Loos

Architectural History

Volumn 48, Issue , 2005, Pages 235-256

  Canales, Jimena ^a   Herscher, Andrew ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 34250731043     PISSN: 0066622X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0066622x00003798     Document Type: Review

References (100)

1. and Der Sturm, 1, 3 March 1910, p. 8
2. French translations appeared in the Cahiers d'aujourd'hui (June 1913)
3. and L'Esprit Nouveau, 2, 15 November 1920, pp. 159-68
4. It appeared in German in the Frankfurter Zeitung, 24 October 1929. Citations taken from Trotzdem (Innsbruck, 1931), pp. 79-92
5. Le Corbusier's assessment was typical: in his forward to the publication of 'Ornement et Crime in L'Esprit Nouveau, he wrote, 'Loos is one of the predecessors of the new spirit. Around 1900, when the enthusiasm for Jugendstil was high, in the time of excessive decor, Loos began his crusade against the redundancy of these tendencies'. Le Corbusier, L'Esprit Nouveau, 2 (1920), p. 159
6. Friedrich Nietzsche, Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen: Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben, 2 (Leipzig, 1874; citation taken from 'On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life', in Untimely Meditations, ed. Daniel Breazeale, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 58-123 (p. 123))
7. Amongst those who notice a homology between Loos's reading of tattoos and the work of Cesare Lombroso, but who have not analyzed Loos's actual connexions and debt to criminal anthropology are: Stephan Oettermann, Zeichen auf der Haut: Die Geschichte der Tätowierung in Europa (Frankfurt, 1979), pp. 64-65
8. Hildegund Amanhauser, Untersuchungen zu den Schriften von Adolf Loos (Vienna, 1985), p. 29
9. Mark Anderson, Kafka's Clothes: Ornament and Aestheticism in the Habsburg Fin de Siecle (Oxford, 1992), pp. 180-82
10. Michael R. Peplow, 'Adolf Loos: Die Verwefung des wilden Ornaments', in Ornament und Geschichte: Studien zum Strukturwandel des Ornaments in der Moderne, ed. Ursula Franke and Heinz Paetzold (Bonn, 1996), pp. 173-89 (pp. 178-79)
11. George L. Hersey, The Evolution of Allure: Sexual Selection from the Medici Venus to the Incredible Hulk (Cambridge, 1996), p. 123
12. and Hubert Damisch, 'L'Autre "Ich", L'Autriche - Austria, or the Desire for the Void: Toward a Tomb for Adolf Loos', Grey Room, 1 (Fall 2000), pp. 26-41 (p. 40, n. 14)
13. For contemporary interpretations of Loos's views on ornament, see Juan José Lahuerta, 'Reclamación: Nota a favor del ornamento', Architectura Viva, 87, pp. 23-25
14. and the various essays in Crime and Ornament: The Arts and Popular Culture in the Shadow of Adolf Loos, ed. Bernie Miller and Melony Ward (Toronto, 2002)
15. For Loos's theory of ornament in historical context, see María Ocón Fernandez, Ornament und Moderne: Theoriebildung und Ornamentdebatte im deutschen Architekturdiskurs (1850-1930) (Berlin, 2004)
16. Loos, Ins leere gesprochen (Paris and Zurich, 1921)
17. The attribution of first 'battle cry against ornament' appeared in a note to the 1932 edition of Ins leere gesprochen (Innsbruck, 1932)
18. It is important to note that Loos focused on the acanthus motif, whose significance in art theory can be traced back to Vitruvius
19. Loos, 'Das Luxusfuhrwerk', Neue Freie Presse, 3 July 1898
20. citations taken from Sämtliche Schriften, ed. Franz Glück (Vienna, 1962), 1, pp. 62-69 (p. 65)
21. Loos, 'Das Luxusfuhrwerk', p. 69
22. For a criticism of the neglect of the role of taste in work on Darwin's, see Evelleen Richards, 'Darwin and the Descent of Woman', in The Wider Domain of Evolutionary Thought, ed. David Oldroyd and Ian Langham (Dordrecht, 1983), pp. 57-111
23. Nevertheless, Darwin cautioned how 'there is no evidence in favor of this belief'. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (London, 1871; citations taken from 2nd edn, Amherst, NY, 1998), p. 605
24. Darwin, The Descent of Man, p. 603
25. For recent studies on Darwin and the visual arts, see 'The Darwin Effect: Evolution and Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture', Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, ed. Linda Nochlin and Martha Lucy, 2 (2003)
26. and David Kohn, 'The Aesthetic Construction of Darwin's Theory', in The Elusive Synthesis: Aesthetics and Science, ed. Alfred I. Tauber (Dordrecht, 1996), pp. 13-48
27. Republished in Dokumente der Frauen, 6. 23, 1 March 1902, pp. 660-61
28. Citations taken from Sämtliche Schriften, 1, pp. 157-64 (p. 161)
29. For perceptions of New Guinea at the time, see Janet Stewart, Fashioning Vienna: Adolf Loos's Cultural Criticism (London, 2002)
30. Although due to their lower development, it was acceptable - and even desirable - for women to dress in the style of prostitutes, it was unacceptable for anybody else to do so. References to prostitutes as embodiments of arrested development abound in Loos's work. As early as 1897, Loos insulted the Lefler room at the Christmas exhibition of the Austrian Museum by saying it was worthy of a 'cocotte'. Loos, 'Weihnachtsausstellung im Österreichischen Museum', Die Zeit, Vienna, 13. 168, 18 December 1897, p. 186
31. Citation taken from Loos, Escritos I, ed. Adolf Opel and Josep Quetglas, trans. Alberto Estévez, Josep Quetglas and Miquel Vila (Madrid, 1993), pp. 21-27 (p. 27)
32. Loos, 'Damenmode', p. 159
33. Loos, 'Ornament und Erziehung', Wohnungskultur, 2-3 (1924), p. 81
34. Citation taken from Trotzdem (Innsbruck, 1931), pp. 200-07 (p. 205)
35. Loos, Wohnungswanderungen (1907)
36. Partially republished in Loos, 'Wohnungs-Moden', Frankfurter Zeitung, 8 December 1907
37. Citations taken from Die Potemkin'sche Stadt: Verschollene Schriften 1897-1933 (Vienna, 1983), pp. 106-15. Loos finished his ostensibly ornament-free 'Café Museum' in 1907
38. Loos, Wohnungswanderungen, p. 108
39. Loos, Ornament und Verbrechen', p. 80. Italics original
40. Lombroso's work was a key influence to the 'Viennese school' of criminal anthropology associated with Moritz Benedikt, who sought the origins of in criminality in the brain. Cesare Lombroso, L'Uomo Delinquente (Milan, 1876; citations taken from 4th edn, Turin, 1889)
41. Translated into German as Lombroso, Der Verbrecher, in anthropoligischer, ärztlicher und juristischer Bezeihung (Hamburg, 1887-90)
42. For Moritz Benedikt, see Die Wiener Schule und die Criminal Anthropologie (Vienna, 1902)
43. On the relationship between Benedikt and Lombroso, see Mariacarla Gadesbusch Bondio, Die Rezeption der kriminalanthropologischen Theorien von Cesare Lombroso in Deutschland von 1880-1914 (Husum, 1995), pp. 129-31
44. Loos's private correspondence contains references to the work of Richard von Krafft-Ebing, author of Psychopathia Sexualis (Stuttgart, 1886). See Loos to Karl Kraus, n.d., Semmering, Germany, Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek, 138833. For references to Nordau, see Loos, Presentation Card, Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek, 138830/2
45. The Austrian explorer Andreas Reischek furnished the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna with Maori art. In 1907, the year of Loos's first reference to tattoos, the Viennese ethnologist Rudolf Pöch, began to publish the results of his explorations in New Guinea and disseminate in the Viennese press the image of the tattooed Papuan. Rudolf Pöch, 'Einige bemerkenswerte Ethnologika aus Neu-Guinea', Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien, 37 (1907), pp. 57-71
46. This publication was preceded by Rudolf Virchow's work on tattoos. Other scientists who focused on New Guinea tattoos included R. E. Guise, 'On the Tribes Inhabiting the Mouth of the Wanigela River, New Guinea', Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 29 (1899), pp. 205-19
47. and Francis R. Barton, 'Tattooing in South Eastern New Guinea', Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 48 (1918), pp. 22-79
48. For recent work on tattoos in New Guinea, see Alfred Gell, Wrapping in Images: Tattooing in Polynesia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993)
49. Nicholas Thomas 'Marked Men', Art Asia Pacific, 13 (1997), pp. 66-73
50. and Christopher Wright 'Supple Bodies: The Papua New Guinea Photographs of Captain Francis R. Barton, 1899-1907', in Photography's Other Histories, ed. Christopher Pinney and Nicolas Peterson (Durham, NC, 2003), pp. 146-69
51. For a general history of tattooing, see Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History, ed. Jane Caplan (London, 2000)
52. Kant compared architectural ornament to the tattooing of a New Zealander, each constituting an extraneous supplement to a purposefully-arranged form. Immanuel Kant, Critik der Urtheilskraft (Berlin, 1790; citation taken from Critique of Judgement, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis, 1987)), p. 77
53. See Ernst Grosse, The Beginnings of Art (New York, 1897), pp. 53-54
54. The main authors linking tattoos and primitives were Mantegazza, Lubbock, Darwin and Scherzer. Both Darwin and Lombroso read Mantegazza and Lubbock on tattoos. For Darwin's references to Mantegazza and Lubbock, see Darwin, The Descent of Man, p. 594, n. 42
55. 'Ma la prima, principalissima cause della difusione di questo [tattuaggio] uso fra noi, io credo sia l'atavismo, o quell'altra specie di atavismo storico, che è la tradizione, comechè il tatuaggio sia uno dei caratteri speciali dell'uomo primitivo, e di quello in istato di selvatichezza.' Cesare Lombroso, L'Uomo Delinquente, p. 319
56. Lombroso, Palimsesti del Carcere (Turin, 1888; citation taken from Florence, 1996), p. 37
57. Nordau, 'Nouvelle Théorie Biologique du Crime', La Revue, 42 (1902), pp. 150-64 (p. 153)
58. Max Nordau's view of the criminal differed from Lombroso's in some minor respects. For example, Nordau was responsible for describing the habitual criminal as parasitic and not only atavistic. Overall, however, the similarities between the two criminologists were more overwhelming than the differences. In Nordau's words: 'Je suis heureux de constater qu'au fond, mon illustre maître et ami M. Lombroso et moi, nous sommes tout à fait d'accord.' See their 'debate' in Lombroso and Nordau, 'Parasitisme ou Atavisme', La Revue, 43 (1902), pp. 456-60 (p. 459)
59. Loos, 'Ornament und Erziehung', p. 200
60. Darwin to A. R. Wallace (Down, 28 May?] 1864), PP- 271-73; Darwin to Wallace (Down, 22 February 1867?), pp. 274-75; Darwin to Wallace (Down, 23 February 1867), p. 275; Darwin to Wallace (Down, 26 February 1867), pp. 276-77; Darwin to Wallace (Down, March 1867), pp. 277-78; Darwin to F. Müller (Down
61. February 1869?), pp. 292-93; Darwin to Wallace (Down, 16 March 1871), pp. 317-20. In Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Including an Autobiographical Chapter, ed. Francis Darwin, 2 (New York, 1887; citations taken from New York, 1911)
62. Argyll, Reign of Law (London, 1860)
63. Gottfried Semper, Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Künsten oder praktische Ästhetik: Ein Handbook für Techniker, Künstler und Kunstfreunde, 2 vols (Frankfurt, 1860, 1863)
64. trans. Henry Mallgrave and Wolfgang Herrmann as 'Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts or Practical Aesthetics: A Handbook for Technicians, Artists, and Patrons of Art', in Semper, The Four Elements of Architecture and Other Writings (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 181-263 (p. 255)
65. Semper, Der Stil, pp. 216-17
66. Semper is known to have held Cuvier's work in high esteem. His first written reference to Darwin appeared in 1869. See Mallgrave, Gottfried Semper: Architect of the Nineteenth Century (New Haven, CT, 1996), p. 305
67. and Mallgrave, 'Introduction', in The Four Elements of Architecture and Other Writings (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 1-44 (pp. 30-32)
68. On Semper's anthropological sources, see Joseph Rykwert, 'Semper and the Conception of Style', in Gottfried Semper und die Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts, ed. Eva Börsch Supan (Zurich, 1974), pp. 67-81
69. Alois Riegl, Stilfragen: Grundlegungen zu einer Geschichte der Ornamentik (Berlin 1893; citations taken from Problems of Style: Foundations for a History of Ornament, trans. Evelyn Kain, Princeton, 1992), p. 4
70. Riegl, Problems of Style, p. 21
71. While Riegl denied a materialist interpretation of art, he still believed that there was some correlation between ornament and culture. Riegl speculated that the need for ornament could die out altogether in some distant time, leaving functional objects plain and unadorned; until that time, however, he recommended that designers employ historical ornament, rather than invent ornaments anew or copy from nature. Riegl, 'Das Moderne in der Kunst', Graphische Kunst, 22 (1899), pp. 9-12 (p. 12)
72. Otto Wagner also grouped Semper and Darwin together in Moderne Architektur (Vienna, 1902), p. 93
73. Riegl, 'Über neuseeländische Ornamentik', Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien, 20 (1890), pp. 84-87
74. In 1898 Vienna, Kamillo Windt implemented the prison system of the famous French criminologist Alphonse Bertillon after studying with him in Paris. For his work on fingerprinting, see Kamillo Windt, Daktyloskopie; Verwertung von Fingerabdrucken zu Identifizierungszwecken (Vienna, 1904)
75. Windt and Siegmund Kodicek, Daktyloskopie, verwertung von Fingerabdrücken zu identifizierungszwecken; Lehrbuch zum selbstunterricht für Richter, Polizeiorgane, Strafanstaltsbeamte, Gendarmen etc., 2nd edn (Vienna, 1923)
76. Loos believed that 'every implement [object of daily use] can tell something about the customs and characters of a people'. He learned this lesson from Semper, who believed that 'by looking at the pots that a certain people produced, we are able to tell in a general way what kind of race they were and how advanced their civilization was' (Loos, 'Glas und Ton', Neue Freie Presse, 26 June 1898; citation taken from Sämtliche Schriften, 1, pp. 55-61 (p. 55))
77. In Loos, the reading of cultures from their products was taken to a further extreme. He wrote: 'even if the only object that survived from a town which disappeared was a button, I could, by its form, deduce the clothing and customs of that town, their morals, religion, their art and spirituality.' According to Loos legitimate ornaments were signifiers through which the culture of a people and their level of civilization could be read (Loos, 'Antworten auf Fragen aus dem Publikum', Neues 8 Uhr-Blatt, 21 June, 9, 16, 23 August, 20 September, 4, 18 October 1919
78. citations taken from Loos, Escritos II, ed. Adolf Opel and Josep Quetglas, trans. Alberto Estévez, Josep Quetglas and Miquel Vila (Madrid, 1993), pp. 132-56 (p. 145))
79. Loos compared modern ornament to modern artificial languages, in particular Volapük and Esperanto. When he commented on Otto Wagner's turn to the ornamentation of the 'Belgian school' in his creation of a train station, Loos described it as an unfortunate move away from 'the formal language of antiquity' towards a 'personal language' which he compared to 'an extravagant Volapük'. According to him, the crises of ornament and architecture arose because modern architects tried to speak in an artificial language. 'Modern architects', Loos wrote, 'resemble Esperantoists.' In his criticism of artificial languages, Loos was working in the tradition of earlier German linguists, such as Herder, who believed there was an inseparable and natural connexion between language, culture and evolutionary development that could not be artificially altered. For Loos on artificial languages, see Loos, 'Otto Wagner', Reichspost, 13 July 1911
80. This line was erased in the version reprinted in Loos, 'Ornament and Education', in Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays, trans. Michael Mitchel (Riverside, Ca., 1998)
81. For other allusions to language, see Loos, Foreword to Ins leere gesprochen
82. Loos, 'Antworten auf Fragen aus dem Publikum'
83. Loos, 'Die Emanzipation des Judentums', 1900, published for the first time in Loos, Escritos I, p. 251
84. 'Loos, Arnold Schönberg und seine Zeitgenossen', Anbruch (August and September 1924)
85. It is probable that many of his criticisms were also directed against Dagobert Peche, although he did not mention him by name. See Sabine Plakolm-Forsthuber, 'Dagobert Peche and "the Viennese Women's Crafts'", in Dagobert Peche and the Wiener Werkstätte, ed. Peter Noever (Vienna, 1998), pp. 79-95
86. In this respect Loos has been widely misread, being categorically known as 'der Ornamentenfiend'. Even the essay 'Ornament and Crime' was translated as 'Ornament is Crime' in the French and Spanish versions. Later in his life Loos lamented about how the 'wrong interpretation' of his teachings was taken up by the 'neue Sachlichkeit' of the Weimar Bauhaus. 'Adolf Loos über Josef Hoffmann', Das neue Frankfurt (February 1931)
87. reprinted in Loos, 'Modern angezogen', Prager Presse, 19 March 1931
88. Citations taken from Escritos II, pp. 284-85 (p. 285)
89. Loos differed from other enemies of ornament, such as the American Louis Sullivan, because behind his theory of ornamentation stood a stark scientific structure. He also distanced himself from the unornamented work of Joseph Hoffmann, where 'all that was superficial, in truth, his lack of ornaments, both past and present ... was really only an ornament' (Loos, Über Joseph Hoffmann (1931; published for the first time in Escritos II), pp. 282-83 (p. 283))
90. The term 'der Ornamentenfiend' referring to Loos appeared in Der Sturm, 6, 7 April 1910, p. 44
91. Loos, 'Otto Wagner', Reichspost, 13 July 1911
92. citation taken from Escritos II, pp. 37-42 (p. 41)
93. Loos, 'Otto Wagner', p. 41
94. Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York, 1981), pp. 338-39
95. Loos, 'Die Überflüssigen', März, 15, 3 August 1908, p. 185
96. citation taken from Trotzdem, 2nd edn (Innsbruck, 1931), pp. 70-73 (p. 72)
97. Loos, 'Kulturentartung', Trotzdem (Innsbruck, 1931), pp. 74-78 (p. 78)
98. Loos, 'Unsere Kunstgewerbeschule', Die Zeit, 13. 161, 31 October 1897, p. 78
99. citation taken from Escritos I, pp. 11-15 (p. 14)
100. Loos, Richtlinien für ein Kunstamt (Vienna, 1919; citations taken from Die Potemkin'sche Stadt: Verschollene Schriften 1897-1933, Vienna, 1983), pp. 148-66 (p. 157). Separata from Der Friede, 29 March 1919