A traditionalist designer with imperial ambitions or an avant-garde general leading the modernist charge, a Secessionist architect with a penchant for
symbolic effects or a materialist proponent of realist values—Otto Wagner (1841-1918) can be portrayed in contrary ways. As the ten essays in this volume argue, however, a more accurate portrait is achieved when seemingly contradictory aspects of his rich architectural and literary oeuvre are allowed to find their own historical balance.
These essays focus less on the visually seductive aspects of Wagner's rich designs than on the cultural, intellectual, and artistic framework within which the architect brought his works to fruition. The result is an all-embracing yet
concentrated exploration of the parameters of Wagner's expression—a canvas of a period in which the sensualist aesthetic of the late nineteenth century merged with the realist vision of twentieth-century art.
Contributors are Stanford Anderson, J. Duncan Berry, Peter Haiko, Renata Kassal-Mikula, Harry Francis Mallgrave, Akos Moravánszky, Fritz Neumeyer, Werner Oechslin, August Sarnitz, and Iain Boyd Whyte.
Harry Francis Mallgrave is the editor of architecture and aesthetics for the Getty Research Institute's Texts & Documents series and is the Willard K. Martin Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Oregon. His most recent
book is Gottfried Semper: Architect of the Nineteenth Century.
This title is out of stock indefinitely. Please look for it at your local libraries and/or used bookstores.
Series: Issues & Debates
See: Contents
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