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Widely regarded as one of the most significant prophets of modern architecture, Adolf Loos was a star in his own time. 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 underclass 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's 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 has reads Loos as a witty, ironic rhetorician who has all too often been taken at face value. Far from being the anti-architect of the modern era, Masheck's Loos is 'an unruly yet integrally canonical artist-architect'.
He believed in culture, comfort, intimacy and privacy and advocated the evolution of artful architecture. This is a brilliantly written revisionist reading of a perennially popular architect.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• List of Illustrations(p. ix)
• Preface(p. xv)
• Acknowledgments(p. xxvii)
• Abbreviations(p. xxix)
• 1 Loos and Fine Art(p. 1)
• 2 Loosian Vernacular(p. 33)
• 3 Loos and Imperial New York(p. 61)
• 4 Critique of Ornament(p. 94)
• 5 Architecture and Ornament in Fact(p. 116)
• 6 Everybody's Doric(p. 147)
• 7 Architecturelessness and Sustainable Art(p. 172)
• 8 The Wittgenstein House as Loosian(p. 205)
• 9 Loos and Minimalism(p. 233)
• Notes(p. 265)
• Works Cited(p. 277)
• Index(p. 285)

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CHOICE Review

This book definitely requires prior knowledge of the work of Adolf Loos and the body of criticism on intellectual and cultural history of the early 20th century. Masheck (Hofstra Univ.) seeks to resituate Loos as an architect who maintained the art of architecture rather than reject it. The author provides nine thematic chapters that examine various buildings and writings by Loos, and his time in the US, as well as consider the philosopher Wittgenstein's house and 1960s minimalism. Thus, chapter 1 provides a rereading of the famous Looshaus of 1909 by connecting it with earlier Biedermeier architecture and the work of Louis Sullivan. Other chapters draw on American vernacular and Beaux-Arts buildings. In chapter 4, the author unpacks Loos's reference to tattoos in the well-known essay "Ornament and Crime" by situating it in its cultural context. The author provides much to ponder; the overblown writing style will, unfortunately, wear out all but the most determined readers. Included are 52 black-and-white illustrations. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, and professionals. M. Frank University of Massachusetts Lowell

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Joseph Masheck, Professor of Art History at Hofstra University, in Hempstead, New York, was editor-in-chief of Artforum in the late 1970s. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and, in 2006-10, Centenary Fellow of Edinburgh College of Art. Previous books include Building-Art: Modern Architecture Under Cultural Construction (Cambridge University Press, 1993) and Marcel Duchamp in Perspective, 2nd edn (Da Capo, 2002).