Secessionist Style

Definition

The secessionist style names the modern style produced by the Vienna Secession and its design school, the Kunstgewerbeschule — the first modern style whose success was, per Houze, a marketing achievement: the Secessionist campaign "was directed towards the feminine," and its "ornament and decorative motifs evolving from such imagery [botany, youth and organic forms] became the trademark for interior design which was regarded as a form of dressing" (editors' headnote, p. 156). The style's program is stated in its motto — the Secession "proclaimed youth, growth, and organic rejuvenation with their motto, 'Ver Sacrum,' (Sacred Spring)" — and its visual signature is freshness: critic Ludwig Hevesi on the 1900 Paris Exhibition room, "The motifs are taken from less frequently tread areas of botany… The plants are seen with freer eyes and depicted in a fresh, ornamental mood," against "the static, more historically based works of just a few years before" (p. 157). Its display technique was as distinctive as its motifs: complete "interiors" rather than individual works, "displayed as if arranged in a private home, rather than for sale in a department store, or as permanent exhibits of an art museum" — which led the English critic Gabriel Mourey to call the school's showing the "only truly modern and national style" at Paris (p. 157). The style's material register is textile: oversized ornamental motifs in appliqué, "extended to cover the walls as well" — dressings that made the interior itself a garment (pp. 157–158; see interior-as-garment).

The concept's analytical weight: the secessionist style is where the wiki's style question (Semper's production-line vs. Riegl's expression-line) meets the ornament-vs-purity debate as branding. The Secession's founders "seceded" from the Academy on the Roman secessio plebis model (n. 7, p. 161) — the style as secession, a group-identity act — and its ornament functioned as that identity's trademark, marketed through the journals and the Wiener Werkstätte. Adolf Loos's hostility to the style ("extremely hostile… especially for the latter's reliance on excessive ornamentation," p. 159) is thus not only an ornament doctrine but a rejection of style-as-brand.

Key Thinkers

• Rebecca Houze — the style's marketing historian (2002/2006): the feminine-directed campaign, the botanical trademark, the complementary commerce-culture process.
• Josef Hoffmann and Kolo Moser — the style's designers and marketers, who "responded to this mechanism as much as it responded to them" (p. 160); Hoffmann's Paris room (1900) and Palais Stoclet (1905–11) as its built forms. (Not yet paged — see log.)
• Ludwig Hevesi — the style's contemporary critic: the "fresh, ornamental mood" as the new era's feel. (Not yet paged — see log.)
• Adolf Loos — the style's hostile theorist: understated dress as modern man's disguise against the Secession's ornament-as-costume.
• Else Unger and Gisela von Falke — the style's female designers, whose hydrangea-motif desk and kindred works "creatively inspired the work of male teachers at the Kunstgewerbeschule" (p. 157). (Not yet paged — see log.)

Related Concepts

• Biedermeier — the historical style the secessionists revived to legitimize the new one; simplicity as national inheritance.
• Gesamtkunstwerk — the style's maximal statement: complete coordinated interiors, ending in costume (Madame Stoclet's dress).
• Wiener Werkstätte — the style's marketing machine: showrooms staged as homes, fashion magazines as its vehicle.
• Interior as Garment — the style's medium: appliqué dressings covering the walls; the interior designed as dress.
• Architectural Ornament — the style's contested substance: botanical ornament as the trademark that Loos's doctrine condemned.
• Ornament vs. Purity — the debate the style re-poses from the branding side: ornament not as crime or symbol but as signature — the visual mark of a secession.
• Style — the secessionist style is the era's answer to the style question: a style authored by a group identity and disseminated by fashion rather than by typology or canon.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• From Wiener Kunst im Hause to the Wiener Werkstätte (Houze 2002/2006) — the style's account: the editors' trademark thesis (p. 156); Ver Sacrum and the youth/organic program (p. 157); Hevesi's "fresh, ornamental mood" (p. 157); the Paris room's complete-interior display and Mourey's "only truly modern and national style" (p. 157); Else Unger's hydrangea desk (p. 157); the appliqué textile dressings (pp. 157–158); the complementary process of art and commerce (p. 160); and the style's dependence on "the constant driving force of fashion" (p. 160).

Open Questions

• Is "secessionist style" a style or a brand? Houze's complementary-process thesis (p. 160) suggests the distinction is untenable for this case — the trademark was the style. Does that make the secessionist style the historical origin of the designer-brand identity the wiki's iconic-architecture cluster theorizes a century later?
• The style's "national" character (Mourey) sits uneasily with the Secession's anti-institutional program: a national style authored by a secession from the national academy. Is every modern style that claims to break with the past secretly a national-revival style — cf. the Biedermeier revival?
• The botanical ornament's future: the Secession's "less frequently tread areas of botany" (Hevesi) prefigure both modernism's organic forms and the contemporary performative ornament (Bloomer's "changefulness… growth"). Is the secessionist botanical a third lineage of ornament between the structural (Semper) and the symbolic (Venturi)?
• Women designed the style's founding objects and then lost its authorship ("women can return to their rightful role as interior designers," p. 156). Is the secessionist style the clearest historical case of the wiki's pattern — the feminine-coded decorative exploited as the modern's trademark while its makers are re-assigned to consumption (see gender-and-the-interior, woman-as-decoration)?