The Private Adolf Loos. Claire Beck Loos
THE PRIVATE ADOLF LOOS
The Private Adolf Loos
Claire Beck Loos
Translated by
Constance C. Pontasch
Nicholas Saunders
Carrie Paterson Editor
DoppelHouse Press | Los Angeles
The Private Adolf Loos: Portrait of an Eccentric Genius
By Claire Beck Loos
Translated by Constance C. Pontasch and Nicholas Saunders
Edited by Carrie Paterson
© DoppelHouse Press, 2020 All rights reserved.
Adolf Loos Privat by Claire Beck Loos
Johannes-Presse, Vienna, Austria
© 1936 Claire Beck Loos
Book design: Carrie Paterson
Cover design: Carrie Paterson and Janet Lê
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data
Names: Loos, Claire, author. | Pontasch, Constance C., translator. | Saunders, Nicholas, translator. | Paterson, Carrie, 1972-, editor.
Title: The Private Adolf Loos : portrait of an eccentric genius / by Claire Beck Loos ; translated by Constance C. Pontasch and Nicholas Saunders ; Carrie Paterson, editor.
Description: Los Angeles, CA : DoppelHouse Press, 2020.
Identifers: LCCN: 2020931079 | ISBN: 9780997003482 | 9781733957939 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH Loos, Adolf, 1870-1933. | Loos, Claire. | Architects--Austria--Biography. | Architects--Czechoslovakia--Biography. | Architects--Europe--Biography. | Architecture--Austria--Vienna--History--20th century. | Architecture--Czech republic--History--20th century. | Vila Müller (Prague, Czech Republic) | Jewish authors--Biography. | Jewish women--Biography. | Photographers--Czechoslovakia--Biography. | BISAC BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Artists, Architects, Photographers | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Historical
Classification: LCC NA1038.L6 L62 2020 | DDC 720/.92/4--dc23
Dedicated to Charles Paterson in memorium
CONTENTS
Preface: Reflections of a Female Protégé
Claire Beck Loos: The Fractured Lens
Introduction to The Private Adolf Loos
Foreword by Claire Beck Loos
Appendices
Adolf Loos’ Circle, Some Context
Love Letters from Adolf Loos to Claire Beck
Select Loos Writings
Short Hair: Short or Long—Masculine or Feminine?
PREFACEREFLECTIONS OF A FEMALE PROTÉGÉ
An inscription by the author on a found second-hand copy of her 1936 book, Adolf Loos Privat [The Private Adolf Loos], is revealing: “In memory of a feverish time. Claire Beck Loos.”
What follows is Claire’s documentation of this passionate moment in culture, as well as her short-lived but impactful marriage to one of the great minds of the early-twentieth century. Through a penetrating view of her ex-husband, the architect Adolf Loos, she offers a dramatic and personal understanding of what it is to have spent time with a genius, an older mentor, and retain some of the creative psychic residue impressed by that experience.
Claire comes away from her time with Loos a changed person, and like anyone who has thrown himself or herself with abandon into a new mode of thinking — in rebellion or out of necessity — her struggle to integrate this moment into her life requires a generative act: this book. Through the unique form of her writing we learn not only about Loos and his work, but also about the role of emotional connections in forging new times.
CARRIE PATERSON, EDITOR
Adolf Loos in the living room of his apartment in Vienna, Giselastrasse 3, now Bösendorferstraße, Vienna I, 1929.
Courtesy Janet Beck Wilson
PHOTO CLAIRE BECK
ADOLF LOOSA SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Adolf Loos (December 10, 1870 – August 23, 1933) was born in Brunn (Brno, Czech Republic), the Moravian edge of Austro-Hungary. Son of a stonemason and sculptor, Loos studied architecture in Dresden from 1890–1893. He lived in the United States for three years following his education and then moved to Vienna to practice architecture in 1896. Within Vienna’s lively fin-de-siècle café culture he began to formulate ideas on cultural reform and urban development, beginning what was virtually a second career as a writer and lecturer. He published articles in Die Zeit, Die Wage, and the Neue Freie Presse, but also briefly put out his own publication, Das Andere [The Other], which was a journal promoting “the introduction of Western Civilization into Austria.” Loos’ writings were later collected in several volumes, including Ins Leere Gesprochen [Spoken into the Void] in 1921, and Trotzdem [Nevertheless] in 1931; a portion have been translated into English as Ornament and Crime, Selected Essays (Ariadne Press, 1998), some of which are reprinted at the end of this volume.
In addition to his written work, Loos gave some sixty lectures from 1910 onward to audiences in Vienna, Prague, Brno, Berlin, Paris, Graz, and Munich.
Loos