Gravestone and monument

In Praise of Boring: A Biography and Essay by Adolf Loos

Adolf Loos. Why should a man be well dressed? M.: Strelka Press, 2016.

Adolf Loos was a bore. This can be seen in all the essays he wrote during his life. Edification and narcissism are their hallmarks. He was deaf since childhood (memoirists write “deaf”), had scars on his body as a result of abdominal surgery, which did not stop him from marrying three times to beautiful women who were 20-30 years younger than him. They say he was “vital.” Perhaps so. If we call vitality the desire to impose one’s opinion everywhere and on everyone.

His judgments are categorical and categorical, many of them today seem ridiculous at best. For example, in his most famous essay “Ornament and Crime” (1908), Loos self-confidently writes: “The Papuan decorates himself with tattoos, paints his pirogue and oar, everything that falls into his hands. He's not a criminal. A modern person with a tattoo is either a criminal or a degenerate. People with tattoos living in freedom are either potential criminals or degenerate aristocrats. It happens that until the end of their days they lead an impeccable life. This means that death occurred before they committed the crime...” One could use the authority of Adolf Loos and label all contemporaries with tattoos as degenerates. He would have loved it.

Adolf Loos entered cultural history as an architectural theorist and practicing Austro-Czechoslovak architect. He built several important buildings in Vienna and the south of France, which he himself cited in lectures as examples of good architecture. Looking at them today, it is easy to doubt their beauty. However, beauty was precisely the main headache of Adolf Loos. It was about her that he thought about from childhood, it was about her that he argued with his contemporaries. A poor childhood and the need to achieve everything with one’s own labor, without relying on the help of others, took their toll. He was born in 1870 into the family of a stonecutter (or mason). Biographers clarify that his father was the owner of a shop that cut stones. He died when the boy was nine years old. The young man attended the construction and technical department of a vocational school in Bohemia, and from 1890 to 1893 he studied at the Higher Technical School in Dresden.

Further - worse. He becomes infected with syphilis in Viennese brothels, as a result of which he is unable to have children. It seems that this fact does not bother him very much, but his mother refuses her son, who is disgracing her, and at the age of 23, without finishing his studies, Adolf goes to live with his uncle in America. Loos was already dreaming of architecture, but for now he had to earn a living by washing dirty dishes.

In 1896 he returned to Vienna and immediately became involved in the life of the city. The essay “Ornament and Crime” was written as a manifesto - this is exactly how it was perceived by its contemporaries. The author argues that the style of the Vienna Secession (the Austrian version of Art Nouveau) is outdated, and that progress is associated with the rejection of ornament, which was widely used in architecture and in the applied arts of the Art Nouveau era. That it is a waste of time to force artisans and builders to waste time on decoration. He was a supporter of functionalism, which implied the use of simple geometric shapes to create forms. With his theses, Loos went against fashion, but he found supporters among young people - the most prominent successor of Loos' ideas, of course, was Le Corbusier. “Function determines form,” Loos declared and built his first luxurious house in Vienna for the millionaire Steiner (1910). The shabby façade with the ridiculous semi-circular attic roof is today considered a classic of this period. Everything is subordinated to the rational use of space, the house is a machine for living. Nothing more.

The activity of Adolf Loos led to the fact that in 1921 he was appointed chief architect of the Vienna construction department, but it is instructive that already in 1922 he was forced to leave this position as a result of a conflict with the Vienna city community, which did not appreciate his desire to mutilate the imperial city.

The most curious thing is that the desire for pragmatism in architecture was decisively at odds with Loos’s own taste, which is clearly confirmed by the book of his essay “Why a man should be well dressed.” Despite the enticing title, from the book you will not get a single clear answer to the question that is important for all men, posed in the title. Self-affirmation for Adolf Loos was much more important than the essence. In his own projects, the architect allowed himself to be embellished; he collected silver items and valued high-quality leather goods. He loved fashion and designed the men's clothing store Knize (1921, Carlsbad) and L. Goldm's store at 13 Graben Street in Vienna (1898). And he chose his wives as luxury items: the first was actress Lina Obertimpfler, the second was dancer Elzy Altman, the third was actress Claire Beck. “Be well dressed. Who wouldn't want that? Our century has eliminated class requirements for clothing, and now everyone has the right to dress up like a king,” in the title essay of the book, Adolf Loos articulates his main complex: to abandon class requirements, to become one of one’s own, to make up for what he was deprived of since childhood. He makes fun of the Germans, who follow the British in fashion, and ridicules the “peacocks” who rush to dress “in fashion.” He examines in detail the issues of cut and color combinations, and with a smile and passion tells you exactly what hats and shoes should be worn. “We are half a century behind England, where knitted underwear won a complete victory over linen,” Loos fights with foot wraps and linen in favor of knitwear, almost like Coco Chanel. “However, knitted underwear is fraught with great danger. In essence, it is intended only for those who wash themselves of their own free will. And many Germans consider wearing knitted underwear as a safe conduct, freeing them from the obligation to wash themselves.” It is clear that not all Germans were ready to identify themselves with the impudent man (these columns were published in the Austrian press). It is no coincidence that Adolf Loos was eventually forced to leave Vienna for France.

"Women's fashion! You are a disgusting chapter of cultural history!” - here he treats women sarcastically, as if taking revenge on them for the bad disease with which he was awarded in his youth: “The awakening of love is the only weapon that a woman has in the modern struggle of the sexes... A naked woman is unattractive for a man. She can inflame a man’s love, but cannot hold it...” Loos’s reflections are always provocative, categorical and aphoristic, which is why I want to re-read them: “Men’s fashion is set by the man who occupies the highest social position, and women’s fashion is shaped by that the woman who most skillfully awakens sensuality is the cocotte.”

Le Corbusier wrote that with the advent of Loos, “the sentimental period ended... Loos cleared the ground under our feet, and it was a general cleansing - thorough and philosophically logical.” The architect died in a sanatorium in 1933 due to an aggravated neurological disease. This happened five months before his famous namesake became Chancellor of Germany. On the grave of Adolf Loos in the Central Cemetery of Vienna there is a stone cube, reminiscent of both his stonemason parent and the architect’s own desire for brevity. Laconicism is nothing more than the quintessence of art. And if we proceed from this thesis, then both the life and death of Adolf Loos became such art. “Only the smallest part of architecture belongs to art, namely: the tombstone and the monument. Everything else, as serving a purpose, should be excluded from the world of art."