Adolf Loos
Adolf Loos
Adolf Franz Karl Viktor Maria Looswas an Austrian and Czechoslovak architect and influential European theorist of Modern architecture. His essay Ornament and Crime advocated smooth and clear surfaces in contrast to the lavish decorations of the Fin de siècle and also to the more modern aesthetic principles of the Vienna Secession. Loos became a pioneer of modern architecture and contributed a body of theory and criticism of Modernism in architecture and design...
NationalityAustrian
ProfessionArchitect
Date of Birth10 December 1870
CountryAustria
The architect can only achieve this if he establishes a relationship with those buildings which have hitherto created this sentiment in man.
All art is erotic. The first ornament to have been invented, the cross, was of erotic origin. It was the first work of art. A horizontal stroke: the woman lying down. A vertical stroke: the male who penetrates her.
If nothing were left of an extinct race but a single button, I would be able to infer, form the shape of that button, how these people dressed, built their houses, how they lived, what was their religion, their art, their mentality.
Tattooed men who are not behind bars are either latent criminals or degenerate aristocrats. If someone who is tattooed dies in freedom, then he does so a few years before he would have committed murder.
The work of art shows people new directions and thinks of the future. The house thinks of the present.
The house has to please everyone, contrary to the work of art which does not. The work is a private matter for the artist. The house is not.
Man loves everything that satisfies his comfort. He hates everything that wants to draw him out of his acquired and secured position and that disturbs him. Thus he loves the house and hates art.
The house has to serve comfort. The work of art is revolutionary; the house is conservative.