Vienna 1900 - Architecture and Design by Franco Borsi

by Kirk Varnedoe

Book by Varnedoe, Kirk

Genres: Art, Architecture, History

Hardcover

First published June 1, 1970

About the author

John Kirk Train Varnedoe was an American art historian, the Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art from 1988 to 2001, Professor of the History of Art at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and Professor of Fine Arts at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts.

Reviews

[Arwen Downs · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a book to read cover-to-cover - I pick it up and read bits and then put it back down. But Kirk Varnedoe does an excellent job with the exquisite subject matter at his disposal; indeed, I think it would be difficult not to. There were parts that surprised me, though, which I found set the book apart from other books on Viennese art and design in the early twentieth century. My favorite are the dresses designed by Gustav Klimt. Seriously. How do those not get covered in more books?

I found this book at Lorem Ipsum, and only bought it because Kirk Varnedoe was a much-lauded curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York who founded the program of artist-curated shows that is still going on now. . . in other words, I trusted him to write a good book on art. And he did. Boo-ya. The Viennese artists from this time period are fascinating (partially because they are just so strange, but also because their work is instantly recognizable and mind-blowingly ahead of it's time) and it is great to have a book that discusses them.

[Individualfrog · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazing collection of beautiful things, the exhibition must have been quite something. Assembled, from what I've read, through heroic efforts by Varnedoe to drag some masterpieces from totally unwilling Viennese institutions, and he has written a surprisingly elegant text (his chapters in the "Primitivism" catalogue are extremely tedious) which he spends the entirety of shitting on everything exhibited. Like his mentor William Rubin, haunted with angst that someone, somewhere, is enjoying art that isn't by Picasso. Varnedoe can go fuck himself, but the pictures are wonderful.