The Brooklyn Daily Eagle from Brooklyn, New York • Page 65

SUNDAY, AUGUST 23, Apostles Pola and Their By Helen Appleton Read TIENNA and Viennese culture are a legend with Americans. Straus waltzes, Fritz Kreisler, Maria Jeritza, night club decorations by Josenh Urban get a special sort of acclaim because they are Viennese quite Irrespective of their undeniable intrinsic qualifications. To sense the special quality of Austrian culture requires a somewhat more exclusive taste, presumably, than is the case with the more traditional appreciation of French culture. Possibly this explains the fact that once an AmerIcan has been to Vienna and has learned to enjoy Viennese taste he assumes ever afterward a proprietory devotion and appreciation. The special quality of Viennese culture depends on its combination of Mediterranean and Nordic elements.

It has a curiously stimulating effect whatever Nordic race comes in upon contact with it. Germany admits her debt to Austrian artists and their nextdoor neighbors, the Bavarians, who are more Austrian than Germanic. And America's increasing competence and taste in matters pertaining to art and Industry depend considerably more the contribution made by Vienupon nese artists than upon French inspiration, despite the prevailing idea to the contrary. Before the war, the gay originality of the textile designs and objects d'art sent over by the Wiener Werkstatter to their New York branch were accepted by the American public without any of the protest and distrust accorded so-called modern decoration when, in 1925, Paris gave it its official sanction at the International Exposition of Decorative Arts. Yet this was the first significant break with the traditional styles.

Again its ready acceptance must be credited to the ingratiating quality of Viennese charm. Although branches of the Wiener Werkstatter had been established in New York before the modern movement had become an issue, it wasn't until Viennese artists, forced out by the stress of post-war conditions, came to this country to try their luck in country singularly bereft of designing talent, that the Viennese influence became important. And this influence was of a very different sort from the gay imaginative sort generally regarded as typifying the Viennese spirit. Imaginative, tasteful, it was, nevertheless, definitely a reflection of a new social order. Notable among the young emigres were Pola and Wolfgang Hoffman, son and daughter-in-law of the celebrated Viennese architect and designer, Joseph Hoffman, who was also the inspiration of the modern movement in Vienna and 1931 of Modern Design Wolfgang Hoffman Had to Wait 5 Years Before Ideals Were Recognized As Enduring Pola Hoffman head of the Viennese Kunstgewerbe means the practical essentials of an and decorators they were told that it Schule.

The Viennese have probably more celebrated designers among its graduates than any one of the many other excellent European schools of design. Pola and Wolfgang Hoffman came to New York in 1925 on their honeymoon, ostensibly, but with the intention of looking about and deciding whether America was a congenial and fertile soil upon which to implant their somewhat radical ideas of architecture and furniture design. Their only contact was Joseph Urban, famed Viennese designer of Metropolitan Opera sets, and architect for the Ziegfeld Theater and the New School of Social Research. His first work was of the typical gay decorative type, associated with the Viennese genius. His last effort, the New School, exhibits an effort toward the simplicity and rationalism, which is the new type of modern to which the young Hoffmans have dedicated their talents.

Americans have a tendency to think that they have exclusive rights to the pioneer spirit. But for a young girl and her equally young husband to elect to settle in a country for the purpose of establishing a point of view diametrically opposed to prevailing standards of luxury and acquisitiveness, was a display of pioneer spirit quite as courageous as the more traditional displays. The ideal to which the Hoffmans dedicated their talents was the rationalization of the backgrounds of living. This is to be accomplished by designing interiors and their furnishings which, through mass production and standardization of parts, would place at the disposal of people of moderate harmonious home, or office, these being wasn't modern--modern, to the matwo aspects of the backgrounds of jority of Americans, meaning fantastic living most in need of rationalization. shapes and violent breaks with tradiBeing artists, the designs that they tion.

Manufacturers were willing to create have quality, and are by no pay well for the use of the Hoffman means drab and doctrinaire. In other name, but not for the idea. But it words, they are assisting in the crea- was no compromise with both of them. tion of a style that is being simul- In the first difficult years, Pola made taneously and similarly developed by lampshades and Wolfgang worked in a all the young creative talents of Europe machine shop, their craftsmanship exand America. Simplicity, function de- tending to the domains of fine sewing termining form, absence of ornamenta- and mechanics, as well as to furniture tion are the outstanding character- design and interior architecture.

They istics. It can easily be seen that such never missed the opportunity, however, a style is not merely art for art's sake to exhibit whenever designers foreor for industry's sake--but art which gathered to hold group exhibitions of has definite relation to a new social trends in modern decoration. and economic order. It is true, modern, Five years of sticking to a principle. as opposed to the ultra, self-conscious Five years of watching designers withstyle that Paris attempted to foist upon out the faintest idea of what the modern the world in 1925, and whose reverbera- style really signified, getting large comtions in the form of the so-called missions for travesties of modern.

These modernistic style, are unfortunately still are already dated and demode, and with us. A very different sort of a manufacturers and architects have modern, too, from the gay insouciance come to the realization that the other of the Wiener Werkstatter ideal. style has style, because it is based on Pola and Wolfgang Hoffman were practical reasons and reflects the Zeitespecially fitted to be apostles of the geist. new. Artists by tradition, trained in Commissions commenced first with the technique of design and its appli- the St.

George Playhouse in Brookcation and exquisite craftmanship to lyn, then the Little Carnegie on Fiftyboot, they had witnessed the debacle seventh Street, Manhattan. Shops and of the old order of luxury and privi- restaurants followed, their latest being lege which could support the de luxe, the Sandwich hop on Flatbush Avenue. made to order piece. A new social order As a culminating recognition of their was born. New conditions of manu- accomplishment both of them have facture and production could aid its served as consultants in a recent Grand development if properly and imagin- Rapids furniture conference.

atively understood. It was the task An excellent example of the type of of the artist to sense the spirit of the decoration and furniture which Pola new order and develop a style which and Wolfgang Hoffman, stand for shall express it. may be seen in the man's office el When the Hoffmans attempted to sell hibited in the Audac Exhibition at the this idea to American manufacturers Brooklyn Museum.