Frederick Kiesler: Face to Face with the Avant-Garde: Essays on Network and Impact 9783035615418, 9783035615500

Table of contents :
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
1. Face to Face with the Avant-Garde
2. Kiesler’s Berlin (1921–1926), Theater and the November Group
3. Frederick Kiesler, Berthold Viertel and Karl Kraus Between Vienna, Berlin and New York
4. The Kieslers and the Tietzes
5. Frederick Kiesler, the Bauhaus and the Bauhaus-Stage
6. Frederick Kiesler and the Futurists
7. Parallel Avant-Gardes in Vienna
8. Frederick Kiesler and Theo van Doesburg
9. Frederick Kiesler and Piet Mondrian
10. Frederick Kiesler and Hans Richter
11. George Antheil, Kiesler’s first American Friend
12. Frederick Kiesler and the American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen
13. The Friendship Between Hans Arp and Frederick Kiesler
14. Frederick Kiesler and Sigfried Giedion
15. Frederick Kiesler and Marcel Duchamp
16. Arshile Gorky and Frederick Kiesler
17. Frederick Kiesler and Sidney Janis
18. Frederick Kiesler and Hans Hofmann
19. A Personal Memory
20. Frederick Kiesler and Piero Dorazio
21. Kiesler facing Jerusalem
Index
Authors’ Biographies
Credits
Imprint

Citation preview

Frederick Kiesler: Face to Face with the Avant-Garde

Frederick Kiesler: Face to Face with the Avant-Garde Essays on Network and Impact Edited by Peter Bogner, Gerd Zillner Frederick Kiesler Foundation

Birkhäuser Basel

Contents

Foreword Hani Rashid

7

Introduction Peter Bogner



9

1 Face to Face

with the Avant-Garde Gerd Zillner

15

2 Kiesler’s Berlin

(1921–1926), Theater and the November Group Christian Welzbacher

53

3 Frederick Kiesler,

Berthold Viertel and Karl Kraus Between Vienna, Berlin and New York Katharina Prager

67

4 The Kieslers

and the Tietzes Dieter Bogner and Gerd Zillner

83

5 Frederick Kiesler,

the Bauhaus and the Bauhaus-Stage Torsten Blume

97

6 Frederick Kiesler and

the Futurists Raffaele Bedarida

115



7 Parallel Avant-Gardes



15 Frederick Kiesler and

in Vienna

Marcel Duchamp

Judit Galácz and

Alex Kauffman

Merse Pál Szeredi

135



8 Frederick Kiesler and

Michael Taylor

9 Frederick Kiesler and

Carroll Janis

10 Frederick Kiesler and

Lucinda Barnes

287

177



18 Frederick Kiesler and

Hans Hofmann

Hans Richter Jill Meißner-Wolfbeisser

281

165



17 Frederick Kiesler and

Sidney Janis

Piet Mondrian Tilo Grabach

265

151



16 Arshile Gorky and

Frederick Kiesler

Theo van Doesburg Laura McGuire

249

11 George Antheil,

19 A Personal Memory

James Wines

299

Kiesler’s first American Friend Mauro Piccinini

193

20 Frederick Kiesler and

Piero Dorazio Valentina Sonzogni



315

12 Frederick Kiesler and

the American Union



of Decorative Artists

Elana Shapira

21 Kiesler facing Jerusalem 329

and Craftsmen Marilyn F. Friedman

207

13 The Friendship Between

Index 346

Hans Arp and Frederick Kiesler Stephanie Buhmann

Authors’ Biographies 354 219

14 Frederick Kiesler and

Sigfried Giedion Almut Grunewald

237

7

Foreword Hani Rashid

Fast Forward Kiesler

This prestigious publication marks the anniversary of the Frederick Kiesler Foundation’s impressive 20-year history. It has been a remarkable journey where under the direction of Eva-Christina Kraus from 1999 to 2002, then Monika Pessler from 2003 to 2013, both working alongside Dieter Bogner and navigating the foundation through numerous accomplishments and achievements. Today, under my watch and that of our esteemed board, the foundation is directed by Peter Bogner with the assistance of an excellent group in Vienna. The Foundation today is push­ing forward towards even newer and more exciting horizons in research, exhibitions, symposia and archiving. These past years have seen some ambitious exhibitions come to light, such as the expansive show at the MAK in Vienna (2016) and an enlightening large-scale exhibition at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin (2017). The Foundation is truly unique and unlike any other art-based organization on the planet, and the 20-year jubilee that we are cele­brating this year is a time for taking stock and considering how we can make Frederick Kiesler’s remarkable forward-thinking visions and strategies even more evident and vivid. Kiesler so powerfully succeeded in merg­ing architec­ture, science, poetry, scenography, philosophy, physics, paint­ing, drawing, sculp­ture, sound and all manner of spatial discovery and ques­ tioning. The important and unique exhibitions, award program, academic papers and books along with the cataloging and archiving of valuable materials (under the superb eye and astute direction of Gerd Zillner) are all centered around our unique interdisciplinary mission and mandate.

8

Foreword

For Frederick Kiesler, today’s interconnected and digitally manipu­ lated world was something neither he nor anyone else could have foreseen or imagined. Somehow Kiesler, perhaps more than any other artist and thinker of the early 20th century, recognized the prophetic glimmers of a neurally networked planet and society, construed of fluid and tem­po­rary formal structures that tenuously hold us all together. Our existence today within what Buckminster Fuller referred to as “Spaceship Earth” over a half-century ago has metamorphosed into an aberration of Marshall McLuhan’s “Global Village”; a vast interconnected global Endless House now on steroids. We exist now in a real world that has in fact begun to resem­ble the ether-like fluidity and a-physicality that Kiesler struggled so deeply to comprehend, model and build. Today the retooled Foundation is again a vital and crucial nexus in Vienna’s cultural scene, and Kiesler’s visions, prophetic texts, “strange and uncanny” works and sharp and precise thoughts hold truer today than ever. Strategies that for him were always a sort of confrontation were often met with so many naysayers and a conservative opposition; regardless, he endured and led a truly inspired and remarkable life. It is a great honor for me to sit today at the helm of the Foundation as its president, particularly with myself being an active artist and archi­­tect also invested in seeking out the possibilities before us for the next 100 years; there is undoubtedly no better place to describe, de­­­­bate and formulate such seeds of thought. The Foun­dation is today more than ever situated ideally at the crossroads of spatial thought and experimentation; a place where all like­minded tourists of the near and deep future sooner or later converge. This volume exists thanks to the authors’ brilliant contributions. Together with all of us here at the Foundation I thank these brilliant thinkers for celebrating this jubilee year. This volume is precisely as Kiesler would have enjoyed; not as a brack­et­ing but rather as an aperture and portal into an even more remarkable future.

9

Introduction Peter Bogner

Face to Face with the Avant-Garde

The importance of the Austro-American architect, artist, stage decorator, designer and theorist Frederick Kiesler with regard to our present times is undisputed. As a true visionary of the twentieth century, his ideas and his work appear far ahead of their time. As a result, however, there is a risk of per­ceiving him as an unrecognized individual figure who stands out erratically from the art world of his day. This would completely fail to consider a key aspect of his personality as an artist and his method of working: viewing Kiesler in context, he appears as a dedicated networker who played a pivotal role in the transfer of ideas between the European avant-garde and the New World. As a research center, the Frederick Kiesler Foundation is a place for dialog and exchange between international researchers. In selecting the au­thors for this anthology, we have relied on this community: in addi­ tion to a mixture of young and established researchers, we have made a point of inviting scholars who are engaged in investigating Kiesler’s artis­ tic circles, thereby supplying new impetus to the discourse thanks to this “exter­nal perspective.” In terms of subject matter, the focus of this publication is on the blind spots in Kiesler research, particularly on the 1920s, a period that he spent in Berlin, Vienna and Paris, and on the later years of his life. The structure of the anthology is defined by individual and case studies and an interlocking analysis of his life and work. The cornerstones for Kiesler’s development as an artist were laid in Berlin. Hitherto, information about his network and the influences

10

Introduction

that he assimilated during this time has been conjectural. Christian Welzbacher con­siders him in the context of the Berlin theater, art and architecture scene of the late 1910s and early 1920s. Based on the collaboration of Kiesler and Berthold Viertel in Berlin, Katharina Prager traces the “Vienna circles” revolving around these two protagonists. The recently published diaries of Erica Tietze-Conrat are the starting point for Dieter Bogner and Gerd Zillner’s discussion of Kiesler’s network in the circles of the Gesell­schaft zur Förderung moderner Kunst in Wien (Society for the Promotion of Modern Art in Vienna) and the prehistory of the Internationale Aus­stellung neuer Theatertechnik (International Exhibition of New Theater Techniques). The Bauhaus stage, a prominent exhibitor at this show, and parallels between the visionary theater concepts of Kiesler and the Bau­haus are the subjects addressed by Torsten Blume. In a very similar vein, Raffaele Bedarida traces the connec­ tion to the futurists, specifically Enrico Prampolini and Fortunato Depero. Judit Galácz and Merse Pál Szeredi examine the fraught relation­ ship between Kiesler and Lajos Kassák. Laura McGuire’s essay on Theo van Doesburg and Tilo Grabach’s piece on Piet Mondrian not only afford new insights into Kiesler’s role in the De Stijl group, but also testify to his great skill in entertaining close relationships with artists who were on bad terms with each other. Jill Meißner-Wolfbeisser reports on the longest friendship and how Kiesler and Hans Richter concurrently moved chameleon-like through the avant-garde movements. In his article about George Antheil, Mauro Piccinini adds some important insights regarding Kiesler’s little researched stay in Paris in 1925. Marilyn Friedman describes Kiesler’s beginnings in European émigré circles in New York and his pre-eminent role as a communicator of European design ideas in the United States. In her essay, Stephanie Buhmann looks into the artistic-intellectual and intense personal friend­ ship between Kiesler and Hans Arp. Almut Grunewald uncovers as yet unknown parallels in the concept of “Time-Space Architecture” and the “Synthesis of the Arts” in the work of Kiesler and Sigfried Giedion. The interaction between Kiesler and Marcel Duchamp is illustrated by Alexander Kauffman looking at their joint projects and shared interests. Michael Taylor devotes his essay to the “elective affinity” of the seemingly odd couple Kiesler and Arshile Gorky. Drawing on his

Introduction

11

memories, Carroll Janis reports on the close friendship between Kiesler and his father, the art dealer Sidney Janis. Kiesler and Hans Hofmann’s “closely intersected orbits” are des­ cribed by Lucinda Barnes, while James Wines depicts Kiesler’s role in the New York art scene of the 1960s from the contemporary’s vantage point. Valentina Sonzogni writes about the little known friendship between Kiesler and Piero Dorazio and his links to the Italian art scene. Elana Shapira’s piece on the Shrine of the Book, his only structure that was actually realized, concludes the book. Joachim Krausse’s essay on Kiesler’s relationship to Richard Buckminster Fuller went beyond the scope of this book and will be published as an independent publication. The twenty-one essays collected in this publication portray numerous links and nodes in Frederick Kiesler’s network. Although this has allowed us to fill in many blanks on the map, the publishers are painfully aware that much nevertheless remains unresolved. For example, the publication only touches on his relationship to the surrealist exiles in New York, as this has already been described and an in-depth discussion of this topic would fill a separate publication. The latter also applies to the lack of essays on Kiesler’s relationship to the New York music, theater, dance and literature scene. Each question answered in this publication opens up an “endless” number of research fields and indeed prompts further research!

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Face to Face with the Avant-Garde

Biographical Miscellanea and Nodes in the Network Gerd Zillner

If Kiesler was a unique man it may be because he loved composers like a composer, poets like a poet, actors like an actor and dancers like a dancer … If contemporary music was played Kiesler was there. If a new poet published poems Kiesler had the book, if a new underground film was shown Kiesler was in the audience.1 —Erick Hawkins On December 29, 1965 around four hundred figures from the New York art scene gathered at Frank E. Campbell’s Funeral Home in Manhattan to say farewell to Frederick Kiesler. This was an avant-garde happening very much in the spirit of the deceased: in addition to the dancer Erick Hawkins, who began the obeisances with a silent, almost endless bow before Kiesler’s casket, the Juilliard String Quartet performed pieces by Mozart and Schoenberg, and there were speeches by René d’Harnoncourt, the director of the Museum of Modern Art of New York, the designer Jack Lenor Larsen, the writers Marguerite Young and Ruth Stephan, the composers Virgil Thomson and Lucia Dlugoszewski, and Erick Hawkins. The actress Madge Evans recited a text written by Sidney Kingsley. Kiesler’s studio assistant Len Pitkowsky and Kiesler’s widow Lillian recited poems and some of the deceased’s last words. The artist Robert Rauschenberg

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Face to Face with the Avant-Garde

painted a car tire and rolled it through the mourners, placing it in front of Kiesler’s casket.2 While Kiesler’s funeral testifies to the great respect that he enjoyed in the New York art scene, “there was a crowd … as if for a celebrity— Kiesler was, in fact, a celebrity,” 3 the make-up of the mourners is indicative of the close-knit network that the deceased had created during his lifetime. It consisted of different circles of artists, different generations, and fields and reflects Kiesler’s interdisciplinary mindset: in addition to his wife Lillian and his assistant—to re-emphasize this fact—the speakers included dancers, composers, writers, and a museum director, a designer, and a visual artist. In view of Kiesler’s rediscovery by the archi­­tectural scene of the 1970s, it comes as some surprise that there were no architects among the speakers, and only few among the mourners. The eulogists talked about enlightening conversations with the deceased and about his importance as a person, his greatness that was in such stark contrast to his stature. They recalled his “Promethean gifts,” above all to theater, and spoke of “continuity” and “endlessness.” There are a number of sources to consult to reconstruct Kiesler’s networks. The artist’s estate is concentrated in a few locations and readily accessible.4 A host of letters have survived and the calendars of his first wife Stefi Kiesler provide documentary evidence of the couple’s personal contacts and even specific meetings.5 Ego-documents and “auto­bio­ graphical writing” round off the archive documents.6 In recent years, not least thanks to this publication, the holdings of other archives and collections have been added (and are still being added) to the sources from the archive of the Frederick Kiesler Foundation. It is also possible to fill in various gaps with regard to reconstructing joint projects with fellow artists and artist friends, and above all exhibitions in which Kiesler was involved, although there is still research to be done in this context and the essays included in this book are intended to serve as a stimulus. Today, network research is an acknowledged method in various disciplines. Founded upon the social sciences, it has also become established in the science of history as “historical network research.” The vantage point of network analysis is of particular interest in emigration and exile research.7 Burcu Dogramaci and Karin Wimmer, for example, have conducted such research for protagonists from the field of visual and applied art. Their focus on displaced artists from Germany and Austria

1

Biographical Miscellanea and Nodes in the Network

17

makes the conference publication Netzwerke des Exils. Künstlerische Verflechtungen, Austausch und Patronage nach 1933 (Exile Networks: Artistic Relations, Exchange, and Patronage after 1933) relevant to the study of Kiesler.8 “A network is defined as a discrete set of nodes or elements and the set of edges that run between them,” 9 where nodes “ … are not necessarily actors. They may also be events or objects.” 10 Accompanying the case studies presented in the contributions to this publication, in the following we will draw on individual events, chiefly exhibitions, or objects in order to retrace the networks that Kiesler himself built and those in which he moved by way of example. Interes­ tingly, one and the same project can often be taken to observe the inter­ con­nections between different networks and groups of artists, but also shifts. They testify to the fact “that networks are not static entities but rather dynamic.”11 Special attention is devoted to the period around 1926, when the Kieslers emigrated, given that it marks “a turning point in the history of those affected”12—the breaks and water-sheds, but also the continuities of biographical ties, building new networks in New York, and (re)establishing links with existing networks in Europe. Vienna–Berlin–Paris

Frederick Kiesler was born in Chernivtsi, the capital of the AustroHungarian crown land of Bukovina (in modern-day Ukraine), on September 22, 1890. After attending the Greek Orthodox Oberrealschule (secondary school) he went to Vienna to study. He applied to the Akademie der bilden­­den Künste (Academy of Fine Arts) in winter semester 1908/09 but was rejected, and enrolled at the k.k. Technische Hochschule (Imperial and Royal College of Technology) instead.13 Applying to the Academy once again in 1910, he was accepted, but left without graduating in 1913. Upon the outbreak of World War I, Kiesler was drafted into the army and was assigned to the Art Department of the War Press Office in September 1917.14 Although it is almost impossible to say what his duties involved, he probably made some important contacts there. His future best man Fritz Lampl, for example, and the writers Franz Theodor Csokor and Albert Ehrenstein also served at the War Press Office and the associated War Archives.15 Sources regarding Kiesler’s time in Vienna immediately after the end of World War I are sparse, and so it is almost impossible to depict his

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Face to Face with the Avant-Garde

network during this time. Although Kiesler does go into this period in some detail in an interview with Thomas H. Creighton for Progressive Architecture magazine in 1961, emphasizing its importance for his subsequent work: “The three years 1922, 1923, 1924 were the most fruitful years of my life,”16 he remains vague when it comes to giving specific names of people in his network. The only thing he mentions is that the Vienna coffee-houses, first and foremost the Café Museum, were his school. Significantly, he drew up an incredible mental map of Vienna’s Karlsplatz for the interview, depicting it as a dense web of (connecting) lines between various “caves of the artists” (cf. Prager).17 Apart from the entries in the Vienna Melderegister (resi­­dent register) indicating the Kieslers’ residential address, the only sur­­viving document is their marriage certificate—Kiesler mar­ried his first wife Stefi on August 19, 1920 in the synagogue in Vienna’s Seitenstettengasse.18 The witnesses were the writer and glass artist Fritz Lampl,19 whom Kiesler knew from the War Press Office, as mentioned above, and the writer Arnold Gahlberg, about whom little is known today. A manuscript of Benedikt Fred Dolbin dated February 1, 1921 and entitled “Fritz Kiessler[sic],” that has sur­vived among Dolbin’s papers, is a rare, if rather unrevealing source with regard to Kiesler’s artistic activities during this period and more an example of ex­pressionist art criticism.20 Kiesler did not make his breakthrough as an artist in Vienna, but rather in Berlin, where he literally leapt onto the stage of the avant-garde in 1923 (cf. Welzbacher). The exact circumstances are once again obscure, and autobiographical notes are only a limited source of information. Kiesler made mention of these circumstances in a lecture on the De Stijl group that he gave at Yale University in 1947. He talked about his precarious situation in Vienna immediately after the war, drawing on common topoi of illness, poverty, and unemployment and claiming that the commission from Berlin had been his last chance. Kiesler recalled raging against traditional theater out of “youth and social inexperience” among the coffee-house regulars. The theater entrepreneur Eugen Robert, who operated stages in Berlin and Vienna, came to learn of the would-be coffee-house revolutionary: upon being offered a “crazy” play, Karel Čapek’s robot dystopia W.U.R. (R.U.R.), he remem­bered Kiesler, whose ideas for the stage seemed best suited for staging the play.21 In a newspaper article in which Robert ex­plains his directing concept, he emphasized the

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Biographical Miscellanea and Nodes in the Network

19

fact that Kiesler had approached him on his own initiative and that it was the drive of the man from Vienna that made him decide in favor of Kiesler.22 However the commission came about—Kiesler’s electromechanical stage set for R.U.R. was a key moment and his ticket to the artist circles of the avant-garde. The anecdote in which he is just about to leave the theater at night by the stage door after the second per­ for­mance and is pushed aside by Theo van Doesburg, who is looking for the author of the stage set and inquires “Where is Kiesler?,” where upon Kiesler reveals his identity and is grabbed by van Doesburg’s “gang,” Kurt Schwitters, Hans Richter, László Moholoy-Nagy, El Lissitzky, and Werner Graeff and carried off on their shoulders to a club where they meet Mies van der Rohe and spend the night discussing the future of archi­ tecture and theater, features in several of the essays in this publication. The friendships that were struck up that crazy evening would endure for a long time—this is especially true of Theo van Doesburg (cf. McGuire) and Hans Richter (cf. Meißner-Wolfbeisser).23 In 1923 and 1924 Kiesler traveled back and forth between Vienna and Berlin.24 So far it has only been possible to speculate about the social circles in which Kiesler moved during these years in Vienna. The diaries of art historian Erica Tietze-Conrat published in 2015 have shed light on some of the gaps (cf. Bogner, Zillner).25 She was the wife of art historian Hans Tietze, who as a scientist, museum adviser, and initiator of the Gesellschaft zur Förderung Moderner Kunst in Wien (Society for the Promotion of Modern Art in Vienna) was without doubt among Kiesler’s most important patrons. Alongside the works for theater in Berlin, the Inter­­­­nationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik (Inter­­national Exhibi­ tion of New Theater Techniques) organized under the aegis of the “Gesellschaft” on behalf of the City of Vienna in 1924 was, after all, the second cornerstone for Kiesler’s further career as an artist and for his later artistic network.26, 1 , 2  As artistic director, Kiesler brought the who’s who of avant-garde theater to Vienna. He marshaled the contacts to the Sturm circles that he had made in Berlin, offered the Bauhausbühne their first international performance (cf. Blume), brought in the theater visionaries from Russia, and gave the futurists the opportunity to show­case themselves to great effect both in the exhibition and in the catalog (cf. Bedarida). While it was acknowledged in the art world, the exhibition also met with incom­

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1   Guestbook of Franz Čižek’s class at the Vienna School of Applied Arts with signatures of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Enrico Prampolini and Theo van Doesburg, et al, Vienna October 13, 1924 [Wienbibliothek im Rathaus, guestbook registration, estate of Franz Čižek, ZPH 489, archive box 7, 3.4.]

prehension, scorn and derision. The daily press in particular took advan­ tage of the opportunity to mock the avant-garde stage creations, with the centerpiece of the ex­hi­bition, Kiesler’s Raumbühne (Space Stage), being the prime target of ridicule.27 The Raumbühne also gave rise to a plagiarism dispute with the doctor, psychiatrist, and founder of psycho­­drama Jacob Levy Moreno.28 The fierce altercation was waged by proxy: Levy Moreno was backed by the Vienna-based activists of the MA circle headed by Lajos Kassák (cf. Galácz/Szeredi), while Josef Hoffmann, Hans Fritz, Fernand Léger, Enrico Prampolini, and Oskar Maurus Fontana were

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Biographical Miscellanea and Nodes in the Network

21

among those who signed a declaration of solidarity with Kiesler in the Neue Freie Presse.29 In consequence, Kiesler was commissioned by Josef Hoffmann to design the Austrian theater section at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris in 1925. The exhibition opened at the end of April. However, Kiesler probably left earlier, for a letter from Theo van Doesburg to Stefi Kiesler in which van Doesburg complains bitterly about her husband’s arrogant behavior is dated April 22.30 Two documents created in connection with the exhibition reveal the networks of the various artistic communities in which Kiesler was moving at the time—a photograph and a protest note: the photo­graph shows Kiesler with artist friends and colleagues in front of the Raum­­­stadt (City in Space) in the Grand Palais (cf. Piccinini)11, 2 . We see Theo and Nelly van Doesburg, Juan and Josette Gris, George Antheil, Konstantin Melnikow, Agathe Wegerif-Gravestein, Auguste Perret, László Moholy-Nagy, and Tristan Tzara.31 In Paris, Kiesler was on the one hand able to con­ solidate his links to those acquaintances in the European avant-garde that he had met in Berlin and in the course of organizing the Internationale

2   Kurt Rathe, Frederick Kiesler, Enrico Prampolini, unidentified person, Benedikt Fred Dolbin (FLTR) at the International Exhibition of New Theatre Techniques, Vienna 1924 [Institut für Zeitungsforschung, Dortmund]

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3   Frederick Kiesler and Harvey Wiley Corbett, New York 1926

Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik the previous year—first and foremost Theo van Doesburg and the De Stijl group. But he also made many new contacts—above all Tristan Tzara, whom he probably met through Adolf Loos. The latter subsequently introduced Kiesler to Jane Heap (cf. Piccinini), and is thus indirectly responsible for the Kieslers’ departure to America. The De Stijl group was barred from taking part in the Exposition by the Dutch organizers. Kiesler is thus the only member represented at the show, even if he did not exhibit a work of his own but rather designed the Austrian theater section. The model of a free-floating urban mega­ structure, the Raumstadt, it was nevertheless very impressive. Kiesler used the theater section to print a protest note against the barring of the De Stijl group. It was signed, among others, by Gabriel Guevrekian, Oskar Strnad, Hoffmann, Auguste Perret, Bedřich Feuerstein, Oswald Haerdtl, Robert Mallet-Stevens, Kurt Schwitters, Walter Gropius, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, and the De Stijl members Cornelis van Eesteren, Gerrit Rietveld, Vilmos Huszár, and Jan Wils.32 The Kieslers stayed on in Paris after the end of the exhibition. They lived in the Avenue Reille,33 just a few yards from Amédée Ozenfant’s studio house, and in the Rue de Tournon, busying themselves with preparations for the exhibition in New York, with Kiesler collecting theater works and enlisting authors for the catalog.34

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Biographical Miscellanea and Nodes in the Network

23

On January 19, 1926, the Kieslers crossed the Atlantic en route to New York on board the Leviathan. The famous photograph of Kiesler check­­ing the transport crates for the International Theatre Exposition upon arriving in New York is deceptive—the Kieslers’ early days in the New World were anything but smooth sailing. Letters to their friends in Europe, above all Theo van Doesburg and Tristan Tzara, are full of complaints about Jane Heap and her poor preparation of the exhibition. Despite all adversities, the show opened on February 27, 1926 on two floors of the newly built Steinway Building at 113 West 57th Street.36 The Kieslers stayed in New York for the duration of the exhibition and did not return imme­diately even after the end of the show.37 At the exhibition Kiesler met the well-known Reinhardt actress Maria Carmi (Princess Matchabelli), who succeeded in winning him over for her planned Theater Arts Institute. Aside from Kiesler, the pioneer of dance and movement Bess Mensendieck is also listed as a teacher.38 Ralph Jonas, financier and president of the Chamber of Commerce in Brooklyn, who encouraged the cultural development of Brooklyn for party political reasons, invited Kiesler to plan a theater building for the newly estab­­lished theater institute. When the projects fell through, the Kieslers suddenly faced financial ruin.39 At this time, the Kieslers were in close contact with Katherine Dreier, the cofounder of the Société Anonyme, Inc. Dreier was preparing a major exhibition of modern art that was to go on show at the Brooklyn Museum in November and December 1926. Kiesler linked her up with his European network.40 In return, Dreier supported the Kieslers during their financial straits, granting them a loan and introducing Frederick Kiesler to the architect Harvey Wiley Corbett.41, 3  In the course of 1927, Kiesler also worked on plans for a museum building for the Société Anonyme. The project never materialized and almost caused the Kieslers to fall out with their patron. In order to earn a living for them both, Stefi gave up her life as an artist and began working at the New York Public Library in August 1927.42 Slowly but surely, Kiesler was able to build up his own network in New York. In addition to his contacts to the local theater scene, that he had made in the course of the International Theatre Exposition, particular mention should be made of the circles of other European émigrés— above all the American Union of Decorative Artists and Crafts­men, AUDAC

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(cf. Friedman), most prominently Paul T. Frankl from Vienna.43 It was probably through Frankl that Kiesler received his first notable com-­ mission in New York in 1928: designing the windows of the luxury depart­ ment store Saks Fifth Avenue. In May, the Film Arts Guild announced that Kiesler would be building a new kind of cinema for them that was to open in February 1929. Just how strongly Kiesler was in­­volved with the AUDAC at this time is reflected by the fact that he was commissioned to design the Twelfth Annual Home Show at the Grand Central Palace12, 1  and, at the same time, was one of just five representatives of the associa­ tion to exhibit there. In the first months in which Stefi kept her calendar, the same names feature repeatedly, among them Alfred Auerbach, publisher of Retailing, Home Furnishings Edition magazine, the German-American art dealer and publisher J. B. Neumann, Adolph Cook Glassgold and his wife, the dancer Sophia Delza, Lee Simonson, and, recurrently, the writer and humorist Alexander King and his wife Nettie. In spring 1930, the Kieslers faced another seemingly insurmountable problem: their residence permit was about to expire and they were trying to get it renewed so that they could travel to Europe, as planned, in summer. Kiesler tried, sadly without success, to prove that he had been teaching continuously in the United States for three years so as to avoid being deported.44 Although the Kieslers did manage to get their permit extended until the stated date of their departure on June 12, they did not actually travel to Europe until August 12, arriving in Le Havre on August 20. As mentioned above, Stefi Kiesler began keeping a joint calendar in 1930. These mostly little books bound in blue fabric provide a detailed picture of the couple’s meetings up to the beginning of 1952. This calen­dar is of particular interest with regard to the Kieslers’ time in Paris. Not only does it feature the who’s who of the avant-garde, the entries also docu­ment how the various networks in which the Kieslers moved in Europe ran paral­lel, shifted, and partly intersected with each other. On the first evening in Paris, August 21, Stefi noted: “evening Dinner Place Tertre / Mr. & Mrs. Loos, Ivan Goll, [Lajos] Tihanyi / [Joseph] Stella, [Ergy?] Landau.”45 A colorful and extended mix of acquaintances from their time in Vienna. Two days later, on August 23, the Kieslers met their associates Nelly and Theo van Doesburg. Over the next few weeks,

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4   Stefi Kiesler’s Calendar Yearbook, New York 1930

the two couples met twenty-two times in different constellations. They very cleverly avoided various rivalries, above all the one between van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian (cf. Grabach), whom they also visited on several occasions. The entries in connection with Alexander Calder’s Circus are symptomatic of this. On September 21 Stefi notes: “4.30 at Kalder’s [sic] with Arp, Einstein, [Lucie] Holt Le-Son.”46 Kiesler seems to have been so impressed by Calder’s performances that he introduced all of his friends to Calder. The entries for October 14 and 15 are of particular interest 4 : “evening Calder Circus / with Leger [sic] Corbusier, Einstein, Mondrian etc.” 47 From Calder’s diaries we know that van Doesburg was originally also to attend the presentation. To avoid a conflict, on Kiesler’s advice Calder wired van Doesburg an invitation for the following evening.48 On the last day but one in Paris Stefi noted: “8h Does Dinner at our place / 9h Threepenny Opera / met Kokoschka.”

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So the Kieslers saw The Threepenny Opera in Paris and met Oskar Kokoschka. There are hardly any sources to document Kiesler’s relationship with Kokoschka—in his review of the Raumbühne of January 6, 1925 Kiesler mentions that Kokoschka was considering a production of his Orpheus und Eurydike, but that he withdrew the idea.49 Thomas Messer, Director of the Guggenheim Museum contacted Lillian in 1986 in the course of preparations for a Kokoschka exhibition to ask whether there was any correspondence between the two artists, but Lillian replied that there was none. Kiesler had, however, spoken frequently with her about Kokoschka and had felt very attracted to the circle of Karl Kraus, Loos and Kokoschka. The correspondence had, however, been lost during Kiesler’s attempt to have his belongings that he had left in Vienna sent to New York.50

5   Frederick Kiesler, Project of a Museum of Modern Art (for the Société Anonyme, Inc.), blueprint of an axonometric drawing, New York 1927

6   “Wanted: An American Institute for Industrial Design,” in The American Magazine of Art, June 1934, separate reprint

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Still in Paris, Kiesler received a letter from Wallace K. Harrison informing him that he had been appointed lecturer at Columbia University. However, it is not possible to say whether he actually started teaching there.51 On October 18, the Kieslers set sail from Cherbourg on board the Berengaria, reaching New York on the 24th.52 They resumed their social life in the AUDAC circles, meeting regularly with other members, first and foremost Adolph C. Glassgold and Paul T. Frankl. Alfred Auerbach was another of Kiesler’s main supporters during this time. In the course of the following year, Kiesler drove several times with Frankl to Woodstock, New York,53 where the latter owned a weekend house. Frankl’s contacts to J. P. McEvoy and others garnered Kiesler an invitation to a com­petition for a summer theater. With his project, an elastic, multifunctional theater building, he won out against such rivals as Frank Lloyd Wright. As a result of the financial crisis, however, the theater was never built. But Kiesler was able to publish his Universal Theatre very prominently— in Archi­­tectural Forum,54 in Theatre Monthly,55 and in Shelter.56 The publication in Shelter shows particularly well that Kiesler’s networks were shifting in the 1930s: while the project was originally arranged by his colleagues at AUDAC , he published it in the magazine of the Struc­tural Studies Associates (SSA) headed by Richard Buckminster Fuller.57 Other members of the SSA are C. Theodore Larson and Knud LönbergHolm. Kiesler would maintain a close, lifelong friendship above all with the latter.58 On November 23, 1930 Stefi noted the name Janowitz in her calendar for the first time.59 Sidney Janis, then Janowitz, became one of their closest friends and main patrons in the 1930s. He was also Kiesler’s gallerist in the 1950s (cf. Janis). J. B. Neumann arranged a meeting on March 20, 1931 between Kiesler and Hilla Rebay 60 with the aim of suggesting Kiesler as the architect for the planned Museum for Non-Objective Art. Rebay was invited to the Kieslers just one week later.61 In a letter to her friend the painter Rudolf Bauer she talks enthusiastically about Kiesler’s museum plans.62 For this project he harked back to the plans that he had designed for Katherine Dreier’s museum of the Société Anonyme.63, 5  In December 1933, Rebay tried to persuade Kiesler to collaborate with the architect Edmund Körner, whose Museum Folkwang she had recently visited.64 Soon afterwards, the project had probably fallen through for Kiesler as he contributed two

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views of the striking building as illustrations for E. M. Benson’s article for an American Bauhaus.65, 6  In January 1933, Kiesler and Janis traveled together to Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Chicago to present his designs to potential industrialists. The focus of the trip, however, was on Kiesler’s attempt to sell the Nucleus House 66 to Sears, Roebuck and Co., the leading purveyors of mail order homes. In letters to Stefi, Kiesler reports on the progress of negotiations, asking her to pass on the information to Auerbach and Janis, who had re­­ turned early.67 In the summer, Kiesler went to Grand Rapids and Chicago again with Auerbach and Martin Feinman, the owner of the Modernage Furniture Company.68 Feinman commissioned Kiesler to redesign the premises of his Modernage Furniture Company. Kiesler took advantage of the commission to rebuild his concept for a family home in the salesroom: the Space House. The exhibition and the Space House opened on October 16, 1933.69 That month brought significant changes not only for Frederick, but also for the Kieslers as a couple: following frequent, not always voluntary moves, the Kieslers found a permanent abode for the rest of their days in the pent­house apartment at 56 7th Avenue, corner of 14th Street.70 Many a party was celebrated in the apartment and on the terraces, and Kiesler often used it as an office. It was also a popular port of call for many (artist) friends, not only because of the legendary view.71 In January 1934, Kiesler traveled to Chicago again for ten days to give lectures at the Merchandise Mart’s Clinic of Modern Design.72 Sidney Janis got his friend another commission: Kiesler traveled several times to Buffalo, New York, to design Jay’s Shoes, a store belonging to Janis’s brother Martin.73 On February 28, the opera Helen Retires premiered at the Juilliard School of Music—the libretto was written by John Erskine, the music by George Antheil, and Kiesler was responsible for the stage set (cf. Piccinini). Kiesler would continue to work at the Juilliard School until 1956. Thanks to his position as “Director of Scenic Design” he had a small, if regular income that allowed him a certain independence from commissions in other fields of artistic activity.74 It also established him at the institutional level in the music and theater industry. On the evening of the premiere, Kiesler met the librettist and writer John Latouche, who would become one of his closest friends and

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associates up to his untimely death in 1956. Along with Paul Bowles and Harry Dunham, Latouche, or “Touche,” belonged to the nucleus of the circle of intellectuals referred to by Virgil Thomson as “Little Friends” that would soon also be home to the Kieslers.75 In the course of 1937, Kiesler’s series of articles on “Design Correla­ tion” was published in Architectural Record 76 and in February he was appointed first “Instruct[or] in Design in Industry” and in May “Associate in Architecture” at Columbia University in New York. Together with the textile designer Emmy Zweybrück from Vienna, Kiesler was slated to hold “Summer Courses.”77 The Laboratory for Design Correlation at Columbia commenced operation in the winter term. Over the following years, Kiesler acquired the reputation of an innovative force in design and architectural teaching and was dispatched by Dean Arnaud to a con­ ference on Coordination in Design with regard to Education in Archi­tecture and Ap­plied Design.78 Kiesler’s statement suggesting that students must learn to think for themselves again met with “stunned silence” from his audience.79 He also succeeded in establishing a network in academia that would subsequently garner him a host of invitations and lectures. Examples include his teaching assignment at the Institute for Design in Chicago at the invitation of Serge Chermayeff,80 and in Yale in 1950–1952 at the invitation of George Howe.81 Exhibitions, letters, cocktails, parties. Frederick Kiesler and the surrealists in exile

In June 1940, France suffered a devastating military defeat against the German Reich. The terms set out in the Armistice of Compiègne threw many artists, intellectuals, regime opponents, and all those forced by the Nuremberg Laws to flee Germany and the annexed areas to France, into a state of panic. Article 19, the “Surrender on Demand” clause, threatened their very existence and many tried to escape to the unoccupied south of France. Many members of the surrealists were also among the droves of refugees. Under extremely precarious circumstances they waited in and around Marseilles to leave the country and continue their journey, preferably to the safe haven of the United States.82 With the aid of Varian Fry 83 and the Emergency Rescue Committee, many succeeded in making the crossing, and so the community of surrealists

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7   Frederick Kiesler and an unidentified woman seated in the Surrealist Gallery, Art of This Century, New York 1942 [Photograph by Berenice Abbott]

in exile in New York grew. Its members would become Kiesler’s main interlocutors for an artistic and intellectual dialog in the 1940s. Today, it is no longer possible to retrace Kiesler’s entrée into the circle of the surrealists. He owned issues of Minotaure magazine, visited the exhibitions at MoMA and in the galleries, and also purchased the cata­ logs.84 He was in contact with Marcel Duchamp by 1937, if not earlier, follow­ing his publication on the Large Glass.85 In October 1938, the Kieslers met Kurt Seligmann—who was stopping over in New York en route back to Europe—probably through the gallerist Karl Nierendorf. Seligmann had previously bought a totem pole of the Gitxsan of British Columbia for the Musée de l’Homme in Paris.86 The names of the new arrivals slowly begin to appear in Stefi Kiesler’s calendars in 1940: on June 9, 1940 she notes the name “Matta” for the first time,87 on October 9, Gordon Onslow Ford and Matta.88 The renewed contact to Kurt Seligmann, who came to dinner on October 20, probably came about through these two men.89 Four days later, on October 24,

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Onslow Ford is mentioned again,90 Onslow Ford and Matta once again on November 3.91 Kiesler would establish an intensive dialog with these three artists, meeting frequently over the next few years.92 One particular occurrence linked Onslow Ford and Kiesler: Onslow Ford was to hold lectures at the New School of Social Research. Having no lecturing experience, he rehearsed in Kiesler’s penthouse apartment.93 In May 1941 André Breton also reached New York and on August 4 his name appeared for the first time among the Kieslers’ guests at 56 7th Avenue.94 In the winter of that year, Peggy Guggenheim and Max Ernst also arrived in New York, with Kiesler already attending a cocktail party at Peggy Guggenheim’s apartment on November 22.95 Soon after, she would approach him with the commission to design her Art of This Century gallery museum7 . The ensuing months that the artist spent planning count among the most productive of his life.96 Based on his research into human perception conducted at the Laboratory for Design Correlation at Columbia University in preceding years, he developed a number of extraordinary display strategies. His work with Peggy Guggenheim also intensified his interactions with the surrealists. Little surprise, therefore, that Kiesler features in the legendary group portraits taken in Peggy’s apartment (cf. Grabach)9, 6 . The opening of the gallery was delayed until October 20, with the First Papers of Surrealism featuring Duchamp’s twine opening on October 14. Out of courtesy, Kiesler is mentioned by Duchamp, who had been lodging with him since June 1942.97 Numerous publications are devoted to his close ties with the latter, including the essay by Kauffmann in this book. Their mutual regard is reflected among other things in Kiesler’s “Hommage,” a fold-out triptych that Kiesler contributed to the special Duchamp issue of View.98 Kiesler remained in close contact with the surrealists throughout 1943 and 1944, contributing regularly to the group’s magazines published in New York, above all VVV: in the first issue of June 1942, the essay “Some Testimonials of Dream Images” 99 and in the double issue of March 1943, the article “Design Correlation as an Approach to Architectural Planning,” 100 and the “Twin Touch Test” on the back cover together with Duchamp. To celebrate completion of this issue, the Kieslers invited their friends to a glittering party.101 Kiesler also used the term “Endless House” for the first time in VVV magazine.102

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Frederick and—notably—Stefi Kiesler were involved in another event of the surrealist exiles in New York, the exhibition The Imagery of Chess, that took place at the Julien Levy Gallery from December 12, 1944 until January 31, 1945.103 Stefi contributed two chess collages 104 and Frederick was entrusted with the “lighting.” As part of the show, Marcel Duchamp invited chess enthusiasts among his artist friends to take part in a simultaneous blindfold chess tournament on January 6, 1945. Alfred H. Barr, Max Ernst, Dorothea Tanning, Vittorio Rieti, Xanti Schawinsky, the gallerist Julien Levy, and Frederick Kiesler played against the reigning world champion of blindfold chess George Koltanowski. Duchamp acted as referee. Kiesler was the only one who managed to force a draw with the grand master.105 Among the players were Dorothea Tanning and Max Ernst, with whom Kiesler was also close: the estate managed by the Foundation includes many testimonies of this friendship. In addition to books with dedications, letters and letter objects, various photographs of them celebrating together—including a series of photographs of Kiesler crowning his artist friend with a laurel wreath.106, 8  His exchange with André Breton was also extremely productive. Not only does his name feature frequently in Stefi Kiesler’s calendars, in

8   Roberto Matta, Arlette Seligmann, Frederick Kiesler, Max Ernst and Nina Lebel (FLTR), New York, Late 1940s [Photograph by Sheila Ward]

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9   Farewell Dinner for André Breton, New York 1945

1945 and 1946 Kiesler also worked intensively on illustrations for two of Breton’s books, Ode à Charles Fourier and Ovid’s Metamorphoses.107 Kiesler also created several portraits of his friend. Once again, photographs that have survived in the estate testify to this close friendship, among them the legendary photograph of Breton’s farewell dinner showing almost all of the New York surrealists.108, 9  In 1947 Kiesler took part in two surrealist exhibitions that could not have been more different—Bloodflames 1947 at New York’s Hugo Gallery and the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme at Paris’s Galerie Maeght. With the aid of color fields painted across walls, floors, ceilings and, above all, corners, Kiesler dispelled the “box lid spirit” of the former show, that he described as an “exhibition in a small space.”109 He installed pictures in corners and hung them at angles on the walls, placing them on the floor and even suspending one from the ceiling. The show was curated by Nicolas Calas for the gallerist Alexander Iolas and featured mem­bers of the surrealists in exile in New York—Arshile Gorky, David Hare, Gerome Kamrowski, Wifredo Lam, Roberto Matta, Isamu Noguchi, Helen Phillips and Jeanne Reynal—alongside younger American artists associated with

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10   Group photograph of the participating artists, Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, Galerie Maeght, Paris 1947 [Photograph by Denise Bellon © akg-images / Denise Bellon]

11   Yves Tanguy, Kay Sage, Maria Martins, Enrico Donati, Marcel Duchamp and Frederick Kiesler at Yves Tanguy’s Town Farm, Woodbury, Connecticut on May 23, 1948

them.110 The exhibition would remain one of the last joint efforts of the surrealists in exile in New York. The concept for the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme was entirely different.111 A large-scale show, André Breton sought to follow on from the success of the first International Surrealist Exhibition at Wilden­stein’s Galerie Beaux-Arts in 1938, to reunite the surrealists dis­ persed across the globe, and to regain his position as the leading intel­­lec­ tual in post-war Paris 10  . The exhibition was dedicated to the “New Myth” and followed a “Parade Spirituelle.” Breton once again enlisted Duchamp as co-curator, with Kiesler designing the architectural frame­work, and it was Kiesler himself who designed the first room in the sequence com­ prising the Salle de Superstition, the Salle de Pluie, and the Labyrinth “Le Dédale.” When Kiesler left for Paris on May 27 to create the installation, he was accompanied to the airport by Duchamp and others. Kiesler stayed in France over the summer, not returning until September 27.112

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During these summer months, Kiesler began to explore new avenues for his future artistic activities, starting to paint and experiment with sculptures. On the other hand, Kiesler intensified his contacts to the artists of Paris, meeting old friends and gaining new ones. This is particu­larly true of Viktor Brauner,113 Marcel Jean, Jindřich Heisler,114 and the artist Toyen. He did not lose touch with the latter even after returning to New York, as they switched over to exchanging letters and artworks.115 Kiesler was also involved in the second issue of NEON 116 magazine pub­lished by Heisler, helping with distribution in New York, among other things by designing a display window for the presentation of the magazine at the Gotham Book Mart. A photoseries with group photographs taken during a visit to Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy’s Town Farm in Woodbury shows Maria Martins, Enrico Donati, Marcel Duchamp and Frederick Kiesler along with the hosts. The photograph is probably the last pictorial document showing Duchamp and Kiesler together .117, 11  Soon after­wards, Gorky committed suicide and the New York surrealist community fell apart in the wake of the “Matta affair”118 in which Kiesler played an unintentional, if all the more crucial role, and that led to Matta’s and subsequent­­ly Brauner’s expulsion (cf. Taylor). Despite the quarrels he maintained contact with many of his associates left in Paris, while they spelled the abrupt end of his relationship with several New York artist friends, above all Marcel Duchamp. “The greatest non-building architect” and the Museum of Modern Art, New York

Kiesler was associated with no museum as closely as with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. He continues to feature in a host of exhibitions at MoMA today, with key works of Kiesler’s entering the museum’s collection by way of acquisition or donation. Among these works are, for example, the large-format plans for his Endless Theatre from 1925, original furniture from the 1930s, the model for an Endless House from 1950, the illustrations for Kiesler’s piece on “The Endless House and Its Psychological Lighting,”119 and the sculptures Totem of All Religions from 1947 and Galaxy for Nelson Rockefeller created between 1948 and 1952; the collection also includes various items of Correalistic Furniture from Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery museum.120 Some of the

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exhibitions in which Kiesler was involved during his lifetime have gone down in the annals of art history, for example the show Modern Archi­ tecture: International Exhibition, curated by Philip Johnson and HenryRussell Hitchcock (February 9 – March 23, 1932)121 as well as Cubism and Abstract Art (March 2 – April 19, 1936), compiled by Alfred H. Barr, Jr. 1952. The year 1952 deserves special mention, with Kiesler participating in three exhibitions: his Galaxy for Nelson Rockefeller and a nineteen-part Galaxy Painting were on show at 15 Americans (April 9 – July 27, 1952) curated by Dorothy Miller,122 Arthur Drexler juxtaposed Kiesler’s Endless House with a Geodesic Dome by Buckminster Fuller 12  at the exhibition Two Houses. New Ways to Build (August 26 – October 13, 1952), and a large reproduction of his Raumstadt was on show at the De Stijl exhibition (December 16, 1952 – February 15, 1953). His wish to curate or design this show, however, remained unfulfilled. As early as 1946, Kiesler approached James Johnson Sweeney with concepts, first for a show entitled Art and Architecture an Exhibition and, shortly afterwards, with The De Stijl-Group. 1917–1931.123, 13  Sweeney was a curator and, in 1945 and 1946, director of the Painting and Sculpture Department at MoMA, and from 1952 to 1960 director of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The Endless House, perhaps Kiesler’s most well-known project, would be inconceivable without MoMA, considering that it was to be built as a full-sized model in the museum’s sculpture garden. The D.S. and R.H. Gottesman Foundation gave MoMA a grant to prepare and realize the project. This allowed the artist to create the models, drawings and plans that give us an impression of this visionary concept today.124 For the project was never realized, falling foul, among other things, of an extension of the museum.125 By way of “compensation,” Kiesler featured prominently in the exhibition Visionary Architecture (September 29 –  December 4, 1960) with the model, blowups of the interior, and plans for his Endless Theatre of 1925.14  Kiesler had particularly close ties above all with four people at MoMA: the founding director Alfred H. Barr, Jr., his successor René d’Harnoncourt, and the directors of the Department of Architecture Philip Johnson and Arthur Drexler. In a thank-you letter for Barr’s letter of condolence, Lillian Kiesler points out the museum man’s importance for her late husband: “… despite whatever vicissitudes your relationship with him and his with you may have encountered, there was for him a magnetic

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12   Two Houses: New Ways to Build, Exhibition View, Museum of Modern Art, New York 1952 [Photograph by Soichi Sunami, Photographic Archive. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; digital image © 2018, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence]

13   Frederick Kiesler, Conceptual study of an exhibition [The De Stijl-Group 1917–1931], New York 1946

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14   Visionary Architecture, Exhibition View, Museum of Modern Art, New York 1960 [Photograph by George Barrows; Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; digital image © 2018, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence]

15   Frederick Kiesler, Study for Fido, Graphite on buff wove paper, New York 1949, [Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. René d’Harnoncourt, 1979-175-1]

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field around Alfred Barr that had an effect on him until the day he died.” 126 The name Barr first appears in Stefi Kiesler’s calendars on April 5, 1932, when she notes a meeting of Kiesler, Hans Tietze, and Barr.127 Barr was also one of the first people to whom Kiesler proudly showed the finished apart­ment for Marguerita Mergentime.128 Even a dispute waged in letters to the editor in connection with Kiesler’s article “Animals and Architecture,” 129 in which he made several sharp-tongued attacks on Henry-Russell Hitchcock and MoMA, did not diminish their mutual respect.130 Barr appreciated Kiesler’s work as an artist. This went so far that he wrote a poem for a pre­sen­tation of Kiesler’s Galaxy for Nelson Rockefeller in Harper’s Bazaar fashion magazine that was printed alongside the full-page photograph of the sculpture.131 Kiesler also had close ties with Barr’s successor René d’Harnoncourt, and the fact that they both hailed from Austria may not have been the only connection. Kiesler did a drawing of the d’Harnoncourt family’s cat that is now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.132, 15  Stefi and Frederick Kiesler were “cat people.” Many photos in the estate show the couple’s feline com­panions over the years—probably most well-known is the photo of Kiesler with Sing Sing the cat on the Metabolism Chart. At the end of the 1940s Kiesler began drawing portraits and making the multi-part Galaxy Portraits of his friends. Some also feature the portraitees’ pets. When d’Harnoncourt was commissioned by MoMA to curate an exhibition of contemporary American sculpture entitled Modern Sculpture: USA for the Musée Rodin in Paris (June 22 to October 10, 1965), three of Kiesler’s works were among the seventy sculptures of thirty-two artists.133 Arthur Drexler is first mentioned in the estate in connection with the exhibition The Muralist and The Modern Architect at the Kootz Gallery (October 3 to 23, 1950).135 As editor of Interiors magazine, he gave Kiesler the opportunity to publish his first text on the Endless House: “The Endless House and Its Psychological Lighting.” Soon after starting work at MoMA, as mentioned above, he exhibited Kiesler together with Richard Buckminster Fuller. Although Kiesler was unhappy with the mode of the juxtaposition—“The House must, under such conditions, look to them [the audience] like a haphazardous concoction. It is not.” 136—Drexler became one of the promoters of the Endless House.

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Kiesler’s relationship with Philip Johnson was fraught with tension. Not only in view of the oft-repeated backhanded compliment about Kiesler being “the greatest non-building architect of our time” and Kiesler’s come­back that he would rather be the “greatest non-building architect” than the “most-building non-architect.” 137 Impressed by Kiesler’s Galaxy for Nelson Rockefeller, Johnson commissioned him to install such a sculpture in the garden in front of his Glass House in New Canaan. The surrealist wood sculpture contrasts with the stringent minimalism of the house. In the summer of 1953, Johnson wired Kiesler, who was staying in the south of France, concerning completion of the sculpture: “GALAXY GREAT SUCCESS BARR / JOINS ME HUNDRED Congratula­ tions” 138, 16  Johnson played an important, if ambivalent role in Kiesler’s last architec­tural project, the Grotto for Meditation in New Harmony (1962–1965). It was on his recommendation that Kiesler was given the com­ mission. The client, Jane Blaffer Owen, was the wife of the great-greatgrandson of Robert Owen, the social reformer who made New Harmony the center of an early socialist cooperative experiment in the 1820s. Her aim was to give the town back its former standing, among other things by means of a number of building projects.139 The first was the Roofless Church de­signed by Philip Johnson and consecrated in 1960. Kiesler was to design a “Cave of The New Being” in a park dedicated to the theologian and religious philosopher Paul Tillich. As so often before, Kiesler’s project exceeded the agreed framework and was rejected by Jane Owen, also in view of insurmountable differences regarding matters of content.140 Johnson supported the client in her decision and was thus indirectly responsible for Kiesler remaining the “greatest non-building architect.” The Club and The Hamptons—old and new friends 1950 to 1965

When he liked the abstract expressionists, they thought he was one of them; the surrealists, when they admired his work, called him surrealist. He said it didn’t matter, what difference did it make? 141 Towards the end of 1951, Kiesler fell out with his wife Stefi, who subse­ quently stopped keeping a joint calendar. To trace the circle of Kiesler’s friends after this date, it is necessary to consult other sources. On the one hand, the collection of conversation and travel notes, poems, and autobiographical writings from 1956 to 1964, published post­ humously as Inside the Endless House. Art People and Architecture.

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16   Frederick Kiesler, Wooden Galaxy in front of Philip Johnson’s Glass House, New Canaan, Connecticut, c. 1953

A Journal,142 can help redress this situation. On the other, Maria Bottero’s interviews with contemporaries bear eloquent witness to the aesthetic community associated with Kiesler in New York in the late 1950s and 1960s. “[The] most spectacular discovery in the Museum of Modern Art’s 15 Americans show are the sculpture and painting by architect Frederick Kiesler.” 143 These are the words used by the artist and critic Elaine de Kooning to describe an illustration prefacing her review of the exhibi­tion 15 Americans at the New York Museum of Modern Art: an almost doublepage montage featuring an expressive concept drawing combined with details of the finished Galaxy Sculpture torn unevenly from photo­ graphs. That de Kooning dedicates her essay to the “outsiders” Edwin Dickinson and Kiesler despite the fact that the show featured such artists as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Herbert Ferber, Clyfford Still and Richard Lippold, is at first glance surprising. In addition to her appreci­ ation of these “major American artists whose work is … unfamiliar to the artwise public,” 144 as far as Kiesler is concerned, personal ties will also probably have played some role. After all, “Doktor Raum” (Doctor

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Space) was not only a good friend of hers but also of her husband Willem “Bill” de Kooning. In Maria Bottero’s interviews with Kiesler’s con­tem­poraries, the painters of the New York School unanimously give Bill de Kooning as the figure with whom Kiesler was closest friends.145 The friendship is captured in a double portrait of the two men by Irving Penn.146, 17  However, this did not prevent Kiesler from also apprecia­ting the work of Jackson Pollock, de Kooning’s great “rival.”147 In 1964 Mark Rothko was commissioned to create paintings for a chapel for the University of St Thomas in Houston. In the course of designing the building, the painter began to interfere increasingly in the architectural design begun by Philip Johnson. He studied in depth Kiesler’s display strategies, his sculptural environments, and the Shrine of the Book that was under construction at the time.148 A series of snap­shots that Rothko took of Kiesler in the Central Park Zoo shows that the

17   Frederick Kiesler and Willem De Kooning, New York 1960 [Photograph by Irving Penn, © The Irving Penn Foundation]

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link between the two men was not only professional, but also familiar and friendly.149 That Kiesler’s Shrine of the Book was of great interest to his artist friends is reflected by a letter from Barnett Newman in which he asks Kiesler to let him view the design drawings.150 Kiesler’s connection to the New York School was above all the 8th Street Club, whose events he attended regularly and that usually finished off at the Cedar Tavern.151 Philip Pavia, the Club’s unofficial host, de­­ scribed Kiesler as “a very likeable talker. Being a senior artist who lived in Europe during the period of the great 1920s, he told us many stories, especially of the [European] father figures walking up and down Eighth Street.” 152 Above all Kiesler’s interest in the relationship of archi­tec­t­ ure to painting and sculpture, his concept of Environmental Sculptures, and his cross-discipline modus operandi overlapped with the various dis­courses at the Club. Contemporary music was another important factor: the Juilliard String Quartet performed at the Club at Kiesler’s invitation,153 he gave the introduction to John Cage’s lecture on “Contemporary Music” 154 in 1952, and, stepping in for Cage, who was ill, he accompanied the composer and conductor Pierre Boulez to a party at the Club in his honor.155 Cage met Kiesler when he came to New York in the 1940s and was welcomed with generous hospitality by Frederick and Stefi.156 Kiesler also worked on a Portrait Galaxy 157 of his friend, a privilege afforded to very few people. Interestingly, there also exists a study for a Portrait Galaxy of Cage’s life partner, the dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham.158 Once again an exhibition became a node in the network: from April 12 to May 1, 1960, an architect, a composer, a stage designer, and a poet (Kiesler, Cage, Julien Beck and Kenneth Rexroth) exhibit drawings, pastels, and scores together at the Great Jones Gallery.159 Through Beck, the thread goes on to the world of theater: as early as 1951, Kiesler was con­tacted by Judith Malina and Beck who wanted to discuss the produc­tions of their company, the Living Theatre, with him.160 They stayed in contact and Kiesler held a celebrated lecture for the Living Theatre.161 Kiesler’s circles gradually began to shift away from the surrealists towards the artists of the New York School. As a little aside, it should be mentioned that the way the Kieslers spent their summers also changed over the years. Initially vacationing with other European immigrants in the Catskill Mountains, for example with Joseph Binder in Boiceville,162 at the beginning of the 1950s the Kieslers were drawn to the south of

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France. He subsequently became a fixture of the summer artist’s colony on Long Island,163 to begin with as the guest of his friends Peggy Jackson, Costantino Nivola, and above all the family of gallery owner Leo Castelli.164 As of the 1960s he began renting his own little house there for the summer, along with a shed as a studio.165 One of the composers who frequented the Club was Kiesler’s friend Edgard Varèse. Kiesler records a notable anecdote relating to April 21, 1961 in Inside the Endless House.166 The actor and director Burgess Meredith contacted Varèse and Kiesler to plan a play with them. He had assured the author—Elisabeth Mann-Borgese 167—that he would only direct the play if Varèse did the music and Kiesler the stage set. Preparations took a bizarre turn when Kiesler and Varèse came to the planned meeting without having read the manuscript and Meredith failed to show up. Familiar with only few details of the plot, and thus ignorant of the play, Varèse and Kiesler nevertheless discussed the production. Kiesler played the taped conversation back to the director, recording the ensuing discussion with Meredith. In the end the play was not staged 168—Kiesler did, however, design a “scenic theatre,” a “combination of theater-in-the-round with two proscenium stages and a Japanese ramp.” 169 A double portrait taken by the photographer Duane Michals is one testimony to Varèse and Kiesler’s long-standing friendship.18  A sheet of contact prints 170 bespeaks the long search for that portrait that depicts so wonderfully the contrast between the two different figures—the birdlike, fragile Kiesler with thin wisps of hair appears out of half-darkness alongside the disheveled “devil’s face” of Varèse, the “Zeus ex machina musica.” 171 He was so pleased with his half of the portrait that he used it again, unceremoniously spir­iting his friend away into the dark and putting the remaining single portrait on the cover of his journal Inside the Endless House. In the late 1950s, Castelli became one of Kiesler’s closest associates. As his gallerist and friend, and with both men hailing from AustriaHungary, they met almost daily.172 Kiesler was also friendly with the young painters (Salvatore Scarpitta, Jasper Johns, Bob Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol) who gravitated around Castelli’s gallery.173 Peggy Jackson Steele even goes so far as to say that Kiesler recommended that his friend include the pop artists in his program.174 For all his appreciation, however, according to the architect Raimund Abraham,175 Kiesler was not uncrit­ical of pop art. He respected the young artists, but also liked to

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18   Edgar Varèse and Frederick Kiesler, New York early 1960s [Photograph by Duane Michals, © Duane Michals. Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, New York]

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19   Frederick Kiesler with Andy Warhol and “Baby” Jane Holzer in Warhol’s Silver Factory, New York, early 1960s

provoke them—Abraham makes particular mention of Andy Warhol in this respect.176, 19  In an interview with Maria Bottero, he recalls a party held in Kiesler’s studio in 1964: “Jasper Johns was there and he spent all evening looking at Kiesler’s work, piece by piece.” 177 Kiesler himself described the admiration expressed by Johns and Rauschenberg for the precision of his “curvilinear concepts in ink” after the opening of the Visionary Architecture exhibition.178 Their respectful relationship is not only reflected by Rauschenberg’s performance at Kiesler’s funeral, but also in the Homage to Frederick Kiesler.179 For this color lithograph, Rauschenberg used a photo portrait of Kiesler taken at the opening of an exhibition of Salvatore Scarpitta at the Leo Castelli Gallery. We see Kiesler in a motoring helmet or aviator hat sitting in a racing car exhi­bited by Scarpitta. Changing the color of the headgear, he de­­picts his late artist friend as a Dantean Renaissance scholar appearing to tran­scend space and time. “Life is short, Art is Long, Architecture Endless.” 180

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Erick Hawkins at Kiesler’s Funeral, typescript, Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation (ÖFLKS), TXT 505/0. n.p. [1]. 2 Cf. Program of the funeral service, type­s cript, ÖFLKS, TXT 503/0; folder with documents concerning the funeral service (funeral speeches, press clippings, obituaries, etc.), cf. ÖFLKS, box LGP 10. Commenting on Rauschenberg’s painted tire, Leo Castelli observes, “he’d taken an auto­ mobile tire, painted it many colors to trans­f orming [sic] it into a garland of flowers”; Maria Bottero, Frederick Kiesler: arte, architettura, ambiente (Milano: Electa, 1995), 244. 3 “Artist Will Barnet on Kiesler’s funeral,” Bottero, Frederick Kiesler, 244. 4 Lillian Kiesler, née Olinsey, was for many years Kiesler’s assistant and confidante. She married him in 1964, one year before his death, reviewed the estate and made it available for academic research. In 1980 Lillian donated part of the estate to the American Archives of Art, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, including a large part of his corre­ spondence, calendars, manuscripts, and printed material (Lillian and Frederick Kiesler papers). When the Österreichische Friedrich und Lillian Kiesler-Privatstiftung (ÖFLKS, Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation) was founded in 1996, the remaining estate was incorporated into the Foundation. Also in the 1980s, Lillian donated a large part of Kiesler’s works for theater to the Harvard Theater Collection – Frederick Kiesler Papers, Harvard Theater Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University. 5 Much of the estate was formally recorded in the ÖFLKS and scientifically reviewed under a research project of the Anniversary Fund of the Österreichische Nationalbank (project No.: 10428). Some diary entries and letters were transcribed. 6 “Design’s Bad Boy,” Architectural Forum 86, no. 2 (February 1947), 88–91, 138, 140. Thomas Creighton, “Kiesler’s Pursuit of an Idea,” Progressive Architecture 42, no. 7 (July 1961), 104–123. Frederick Kiesler, Inside The Endless House. Art, People and Architecture: A Journal (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966). 7 Cf. Introduction to Marten Düring et al., eds., Handbuch Historische Netzwerkforschung: Grund­ lagen und Anwendungen, Schriften des Kultur­ wissenschaftlichen Instituts Essen (KWI) zur Methodenforschung, vol. 1 (Berlin Münster: LIT, 2016). 8 Cf. Burcu Dogramaci, Karin Wimmer, and Uni­versität München, eds., Netzwerke des Exils: künstlerische Verflechtungen, Austausch und Patronage nach 1933 (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2011). 9 Dorothea Jansen, Einführung in die Netzwerk­ analyse: Grundlagen, Methoden, Anwendungen (Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien, 2013), 52. (Translated from German.) 10 Ibid., footnote 17. (Translated from German.) 11 Dogramaci, Wimmer, and Universität München,

Netzwerke des Exils, 24. (Translated from German.) 12 Ibid., 14. (Translated from German.) 13 Archive of the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna, UAAbKW, record of marks, vol. 20, 1905–1911 (Allgemeine Malerschule ClassificationsListe Schuljahr 1908/09); archive of the Technische Universität Wien, TUWA, main catalog of officially enrolled students 1908/09, No. 307 of October 20, 1908. 14 Österreichisches Staatsarchiv (ÖStA, Austrian State Archives), Kriegspressequartier (War Press Office), Kriegsarchiv (War Archives), KPQu, fasc. 44k. 15 For general information about the War Press Office, cf.: Walter Reichel, “Pressearbeit ist Propaganda­ arbeit”: Medienverwaltung 1914–1918: Das Kriegs­ pressequartier (KPQ), Mitteilungen des Österreichi­ schen Staatsarchivs Sonderband 13 (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2016). The publi­c ation lists members of the War Press Office, although it does not claim to be exhaustive. Kiesler is not listed. 16 Creighton, “Kiesler’s Pursuit of an Idea,” Progressive Architecture, no. 7 (July 1961), 104–123, 110. 17 For an analysis of Kiesler’s mental map of the Karlsplatz, cf. Beatriz Colomina, “Endless Drawing: Architecture as Self-Analysis,” in Frederick Kiesler. Co-Realities, Drawing Papers 77 (New York: The Drawing Center, 2008), 16–33, 16 f. 18 Marriage certificate, Vienna, September 11, 1930, negative reproduction of the original certificate, ÖFLKS, LD 5038/0. 19 Waltraud Neuwirth, Lampengeblasenes Glas aus Wien: 2 : Bimini – Wiener Glaskunst des Art Déco (Vienna, 1992). 20 Benedikt Fred Dolbin, Fritz Kiessler [sic], BenediktFred Dolbin Papers, inv. No. 02348-49, typescript, 3 pages, Institut für Zeitungsforschung, Dortmund. Barbara Lesák is probably right in noting that Dolbin is more likely to have seen Kiesler’s pictures in his studio than in an exhibition. The author would like to thank Barbara Lesák, the doyenne of Kiesler research, for the continuous exchange of ideas. 21 “I had once, some time past, had a discussion with him [Eugen Robert]. Due my youth and social inexperience, I had lashed violently out against the present theater. Somehow that discussion had stuck with him. In his opinion, he had acquired what he called ‘a crazy script,’ and felt it had an affinity to my ideas for the theater. I don’t know if he thought I was crazy, too, but it was a serious offer … I accepted it. I had never been on a stage in my life before. I knew nothing about theater design. I just did it.” Frederick Kiesler, Yale Lecture, Yale University 1947, “smooth-rough” transcription, ÖFLKS, TXT 6757/0, 13. 22 “I wrote to Mr. Kiesler and immediately received the following telegram: ‘Arriving Monday with finished sketches’ … This succinct and energetic manner showed him to be the kind of collaborator I like.” “W.U.R.” und sein Regisseur. Ein Gespräch

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mit Eugen Robert. Newspaper cutting (title of the newspaper unknown), undated (1924), Theater­ sammlung der Universität, Cologne, collection of theater reviews. Quoted from Barbara Lesák and Thomas Trabitsch, eds., Frederick Kiesler: Theatervisionär—Architekt—Künstler (Vienna: Brandstätter, 2012), 25, footnote 13. (Translated from German.) 23 Creighton, “Kiesler’s Pursuit of an Idea,” 109. 24 Cf. resident registration documents; the registration forms provide some details of where the resident left for. 25 Cf. Erica Tietze-Conrat. Tagebücher, ed. Alexandra Caruso (Vienna: Böhlau, 2015). 26 Alexandra Caruso, “Towards a Modern Attitude in All Spheres of Spiritual Life! The Gesellschaft Zur Förderung Moderner Kunst in Wien. From Its Foundation to Planning of the Internationale Ausstellung Neuer Theatertechnik,” in Vienna 1924. Hotspot of the Avant-Garde, ed. Peter Bogner (Vienna: Frederick Kiesler Foundation, 2018), 20–29. 27 Cf. Barbara Lesák, Die Kulisse explodiert: Friedrich Kieslers Theaterexperimente und Architektur­projekte 1923–1925 (Vienna: Löcker, 1988). 28 Cf. Gerd Zillner, “Friedrich Kiesler vs. Levy Moreno – Krokodil oder Radio. Der Plagiatsstreit um die ‘Raumbühne’ 1924,” in Design Dialogue: Jewish Contributions to Viennese Modernism, ed. Elana Shapira (Vienna: Böhlau, 2018). 29 “[Die Raumbühne],” Neue Freie Presse, October 6, 1924. 30 The exhibition ran from April 28 to October 25, 1925. Lettre de Recommendation of the branch of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce for Frederick Kiesler, March 10, 1925, ÖFLKS, LET 6741/0; Theo van Doesburg, letter to Stefi Kiesler, April 22, 1925, ÖFLKS, LET 997/0. 31 ÖFLKS, PHO 239/0; handwritten annotation on reverse: “Left to right: / Kiesler, van Doesburg (behind), Mrs. van Doesburg, George Antheil, / the Architect of the Russian Pavillion [sic], Mrs. Antheil, Auguste Perret, Mrs. Juan / Gris, Tristan Tzara, Juan Gris / Paris, 1925 / Exposition des ARTS décoratifs.” 32 Appel de Protestation contre le refus de la participation du groupe “DE STIJL” à l’Exposition des Arts Décoratifs (Section des Pays-Bas), published in “Appel de Protestation,” De Stijl 6, no. 10/11 (1925), 149–150. 33 51, Avenue Reille, Paris XIV; address as per two Cartes Pneumatiques; Frederick Kiesler, letter to Tristan Tzara, October 16, 1925, Frederick Kiesler, letter to Tristan Tzara, January 17, 1926, Bibliothèque Doucet, Paris. 34 Cf. Akademie der Künste [AdK] Berlin, HerbertIhering-Archiv, 3.3. Redaktionskorrespondenz (editorial correspondence). 35 “Jane Heap was totally impotent, had to do everything myself … ,” Frederick Kiesler, letter to Theo van Doesburg, March 12, 1926, RKDarchives,

47

Archive of Theo and Nelly van Doesburg, “After unspeakable problems, after a string of petty jealousies aggravated by total impotence and sabotage on the part of Jane Heap … ,” Frederick Kiesler, letter to Tristan Tzara, June 11, 1926. (Bibliotheque Doucet, Paris, SKMBT_ C22415111915110). (Translated from German.) 36 Cf. “Die International Theatre Exposition, New York 1926,” Lesák and Trabitsch, Frederick Kiesler, 50–54. 37 “… if Stefi has not written in almost every letter: ‘… soon we will be back in Paris’,” or “I hope that we will be in Paris in two weeks.” (Letter of March 18) … “now from the letter I received three days ago, we conclude that you will be staying on in New York …” Theo van Doesburg, letter to Frederick Kiesler, April 13, 1926, RKDarchives, Archive of Theo and Nelly van Doesburg. (Translated from German.) 38 Brochure of the International Theatre Arts Institute, 1926, ÖFLKS, MED 5997/0; Kiesler is listed under both “Artistic Council” and “Faculty,” “Personnel.” 39 Cf. “Design’s Bad Boy.” 40 Frederick Kiesler, letter to Theo van Doesburg, March 18, 1926, RKDarchives, Archive of Theo and Nelly van Doesburg; Frederick Kiesler, letter to Hans Richter, March 18, 1926; Frederick Kiesler, letter to Dr. Kurt Rathe, March 18, 1926, Frederick Kiesler, letter to Amédée Ozenfant, March 18, 1926, Katherine S. Dreier Papers / Société Anonyme Archive. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. 41 “This is to introduce to you … ,” Katherine Dreier, two letters to Harvey Wiley Corbett, March 25, 1927, Katherine S. Dreier Papers / Société Anonyme Archive. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. 42 Cf. Jill Meißner, “Stefi Kiesler (1897–1963): Künstlerfrau – Vermittlerin – Literatin” (unpubl. diploma thesis, University of Vienna, 2013). 43 Cf. Chapter “AUDAC and the King of Pushcarts,” in Paul T Frankl, Christopher Long, and Aurora McClain, Paul T. Frankl Autobiography (Los Angeles: DoppelHouse Press, 2013), 91–100; Christopher Long, Paul T. Frankl and Modern American Design (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 89–91, 98–101, 106. 44 Cf. American Archives of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Lillian and Frederick Kiesler papers, [circa 1910]–2003, bulk 1958–2000, 2.2: Correspondence, Chronological, 1923, 1926, 1930–1932. 45 Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, August 21, 1930, ÖFLKS, MED 844/0. (Translated from German.) 46 Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, September 21, 1930, ÖFLKS, MED 844/0. (Translated from German.) 47 Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, October 14 and October 15, 1930, ÖFLKS, MED 844/0. (Translated from German.) 48 Ibid. 49 “So Kokoschka, who was planning to demonstrate various elements of his Orpheus on the Raumbühne,

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also lost interest,” Frederick Kiesler, “Dem neuen Schau-Spiel entgegen,” Der (Wiener) Tag, Vienna, January 6, 1925, 4 f. (Translated from German.) 50 “But there is no proof except he had ‘an elective affinity’ with this group.” Lillian Kiesler, letter to Thomas M. Messer, August 25, 1986; response to Thomas M. Messer to Lillian Kiesler, August 20, 1986 both ÖFLKS, Lillian Kiesler Papers, Correspondence—not yet part of inventory. 51 “I had lunch yesterday with Hudnut … I am enclosing his letter with the appointment for you as lecturer at Columbia,” Wallace K. Harrison, letter to Frederick Kiesler, September 24, 1939, ÖFLKS, LET 1274/0. 52 Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, October 24, 1930, ÖFLKS, MED 844/0. 53 May 29, 1931; on various occasions in August 1931, Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, ÖFLKS, MED 845/0. 54 Frederick Kiesler, “The Universal. A Multi-Purpose Community Center Theater Designed For Woodstock, N. Y.,” Architectural Forum 57 (December 1932), 535–542. 55 Frederick Kiesler, “Notes on Improving Theatre Design,” Theatre Arts Monthly 18, no. 9 (September 1934), 726–730. 56 Frederick Kiesler, “A Festival Shelter. The Space Theatre for Woodstock, New York,” Shelter 2, no. 4 (May 1932), 42–47. 57 Cf. Joachim Krausse, Unsichtbare Architektur: Knud Lönberg-Holm und die Structural Study Associates, Disko 20 (Nuremberg: AdBK, 2011); Suzanne Strum, The Ideal of Total Environmental Control: Knud Lönberg-Holm, Buckminster Fuller, and the SSA, Routledge Research in Architecture (New York: Routledge, 2018). 58 Kiesler probably already knew the architect Lönberg-Holm from Berlin. Lönberg-Holm was the publisher of Sweet’s Catalog, a building materials catalog issued by the same publishing house as the Architectural Record. Stefi Kiesler’s calendars mention the name Knud Lönberg-Holm in different spellings more than 160 times. Predominantly as the “Holms”—the friendship included the wives Ethel and Stefi. The meetings became less frequent at the end of 1940s. When Lönberg-Holm published his standard work Catalog Design Progress. Advancing Standards in Visual Communication (New York: Sweet’s Catalog Service) together with Ladislav Sutnar in 1950, he sent Kiesler a copy, thereby reviving their friendship. 59 “afternoon to Schaufler / (Chanin, Janowitz),” Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, November 23, 1930, ÖFLKS, MED 844/0. (Translated from German.) 60 “afternoon tea at / Baroness Rebay,” Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, March 20, 1931, ÖFLKS, MED 845/0. (Translated from German.) As early as 1930, Piet Mondrian recommended his friend “I also spoke of you to Kiesler, a friend of Miss Dreier and a great modern architect.” Piet Mondrian, letter to Hilla Rebay, October 10, 1930, cited from: Joan M. Lukach, Hilla Rebay: In Search of the Spirit in Art (New York: G. Braziller, 1983), 65; Don Quaintance,

“Erecting the Temple of Non-Objectivity: The Architectural Infancy of the Guggenheim Museum,” in The Museum of Non-Objective Painting: Hilla Rebay and the Origins of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, ed. Karole P. B. Vail and Tracey R. Bashkoff (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2009), 179–221; Lukach, Hilla Rebay. 61 “Rebay at our place,” Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, March 28, 1931, ÖFLKS MED 845/0. (Translated from German.) 62 “… Kiesler showed me his plan for a new museum that has no windows, is 14 stories high very very interesting.” Rebay, letter to Bauer, March 30, 1931, cited after Lukach, Hilla Rebay, 135. 63 Quaintance, “Erecting the Temple of NonObjectivity,” 183–185. 64 Quaintance, 287 and note 32. 65 Cf. E. M. Benson, “Wanted: An American Bauhaus for Industrial Design,” American Magazine of Art 27, no. 6 (June 1934), 307–312. 66 Cf. “Chapter 7, Building on a Nucleus, 1932,” in Laura McGuire, “Space Within – Frederick Kiesler and the Architecture of an Idea” (PhD diss., The University of Texas at Austin, 2014), 185 ff. 67 Cf. Kiesler, letter to Stefi Kiesler, January 19, 1933, ÖFLKS, LET 2213/0. 68 “6 o’clock train Grand / Rapids-Chicago / with Auerbach & Feinman,” Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, June 24, 1933 ÖFLKS, MED 847/0. (Translated from German.) 69 Cf. ÖFLKS, box sfp 03, Space House. 70 “October 6 / 12h mover – 56 7th Av,” “October 9 / moved completely / first night in new aptment [sic],” “October 23 / first time cook here / first dinner,” Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, 1933, ÖFLKS, MED 847/0. (Translated from German.) 71 Along with a host of snapshots on the terrace, special mention should be made of Berenice Abbott’s photograph General View from the Penthouse at 56 Seventh Avenue, New York, July 14, 1937. 72 “You can’t afford to miss ‘a clinic of modern design’,” Retailing, Home Furnishings Edition, December 18, 1933. “January 3 / Lecture K. at Merchandise Mart,” “January 9 / 2nd lecture K. Chicago,” “January 11 / Lecture K. Chicago [struck through]” Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, 1934, ÖFLKS, MED 848/0. 73 “May 31 / dinner at Benson (canceled) / K. at 4 to Buffalo,” “November 3 / 3 a.m. K. to Buffalo / dinner with John – / to Harlem,” Cf. Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, 1934, ÖFLKS, MED 848/0. (Translated from German.) McGuire, “Space Within,” 248. 74 Cf. Barbara Lesák and Thomas Trabitsch, eds., Frederick Kiesler: Theatervisionär – Architekt – Künstler (Vienna: Brandstätter, 2012). 75 Cf. Chapter “Little Friends” in Howard Pollack, The Ballad of John Latouche (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 43–68. For Kiesler, 65 ff. For Kiesler’s reaction to his friend’s premature death, cf. “The Inevitable Suddenly,” July 7, 1956,

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in Kiesler, Inside The Endless House, 46–54. 76 Cf. Frederick Kiesler, “The Architect in Search Of … Design Correlation. A Column on Exhibits, the Theater and the Cinema,” Architectural Record 81, no. 2 (February 1937), 7–15; Frederick Kiesler, “Design-Correlation. Animals and Architecture,” Architectural Record 81, no. 4 (April 1937), 87–92; Frederick Kiesler, “Design-Correlation. [Marcel Duchamp],” Architectural Record 81, no. 5 (May 1937), 53–59; Frederick Kiesler, “DesignCorrelation. Towards a Prefabrication of Folk Festival,” Architectural Record 81, no. 6 (June 1937), 93–96; Frederick Kiesler, “Design-Correlation. Certain Data Pertaining to the Genesis of Design by Light. Part I,” Architectural Record 82, no. 7 (July 1937), 89–92; Frederick Kiesler, “DesignCorrelation. Certain Data Pertaining to the Genesis of Design by Light. Part II,” Architectural Record 82, no. 8 (August 1937), 79–84. 77 “… you have been appointed to give instruction in Design in Industry / for the Summer Session of 1937 in this University.” Columbia University [Secretary], letter to Kiesler, February 2, 1937, American Archives of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Lillian and Frederick Kiesler papers, [circa 1910]– 2003, bulk 1958–2000, 2.5: Teaching Files, 1937– 1964, Contracts, 1937–1940. “… you have been appointed to be / Associate in Architecture / in Columbia University … ,” Columbia University [Secretary], letter to Kiesler, May 3, 1937. 2.5: Teaching Files, Contracts 1937–1940. 78 Cf. Bechara Helal, “Les Laboratoires de l’architecture. Enquête Épistémologique Sur Un Paradigme Historique” (PhD diss., Université de Montréal, 2016), 122 ff. Program of the conference, ÖFLKS, LD 3092/0; preparatory statement by Kiesler for Dean Wells Bennett, “Perennial crisis in Architecture,” ÖFLKS, TXT 3015/0. 79 “Apparently taking the conferees by surprise … and certainly received by them in stunned silence was a resolution offered by Mr. Kiesler. This resolution it seemed to me, contained the essence of the educational problem with which the con­ ference was supposed to deal. Strange as it seems, the resolution simply suggested that students be educated to think for themselves!” Kenneth C. Black, “The Ann Arbor Conference,” Pencil Points, 1940, quoted from ÖFLKS, TXT 3014/0. 80 “I am inviting you therefore to come to the institute,” Serge Chermayeff, letter to Kiesler, September 28, 1949, ÖFLKS, LET 802/0. 81 Cf. Helal, “Les Laboratoires de l’architecture. Enquête Épistémologique Sur Un Paradigme Historique,” 156 ff. 82 Martica Sawin, Surrealism in Exile and the Beginning of the New York School (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1995). Stephanie Barron and Sabine Eckmann, eds., Exiles + Emigrés: The Flight of European Artists from Hitler (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; New York: H.N. Abrams, 1997). Rosemary Sullan, Villa Air-Bel:

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49 World War II, Escape, and a House in Marseille (New York: HarperCollins, 2014). Cf. Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand (New York: Random House, 1945). “December 8 / opening Surrealist art / at Museum of Modern Art / afterwards to Tony with / Wieselthiers,” Stefi Kiesler’s calendar 1936, ÖFLKS, MED 850/0. (Translated from German.) Frederick Kiesler, “Design-Correlation,” Architectural Record 81, no. 5 (May 1937), 53–59. “October 15 / Party Annot / Party Helen Walser (no) / afternoon to J.B. Neuman, to Nierendorf, eve. Ozenfants, Seligmanns, Nierendorf,” Stefi Kiesler’s calendar 1938, ÖFLKS, MED 852/0. (Translated from German.) Cf. Stephan E. Hauser and Kurt Seligmann, Kurt Seligmann, 1900–1962: Leben Und Werk (Basel: Schwabe, 1997), 150 f. “June 9 / 4.30 Matta here / 5.30 Kazounoff / and Pereira,” Stefi Kiesler’s calendar 1940 (small), ÖFLKS, MED 854/0. “October 9 / 9h Matta, Onslow-Ford, / Goodwin, etc. here (until 2 night),” Stefi Kiesler’s calendar 1940 (small), ÖFLKS, MED 854/0. “October 20 / 7h dinner Seligmann,” Stefi Kiesler’s calendar 1940 (big), ÖFLKS, MED 854/1. “October 24 / K. to see Onslow-Ford / evening / Julien Levy 3-6 / (H.D. Rothchild),” Stefi Kiesler’s calendar 1940 (big), ÖFLKS, MED 854/1. “November 3 / Cocktails at Varèse / (K. alone) / 4h Matta’s her[e] / 4.30 Valeska & Jane here (until 8h) / 5.30 Onslow-Ford here / K. to Charack’s for dinner,” Stefi Kiesler’s calendar 1940 (big), ÖFLKS, MED 854/1. Roberto Matta is mentioned sixty-five times in Stefi Kiesler’s calendars, Gordon Onslow Ford thirty-four times, and Kurt Seligmann thirty-one times, some­ times several times a week. For Gordon Onslow Ford’s lectures, cf. Sawin, Surrealism in Exile and the Beginning of the New York School, 156–166. “… He helped me through a very hard time when I first arrived in N.Y. without a cent and found, to my dismay, that I was expected to give lectures. The first lecture (a trial to give confidence) was given at 56 7th avenue. Kiesler had such assurance. He was one of the few who knew …” Gordon Onslow Ford, letter to Lillian Kiesler, Inverness, California, December 29, 1965, ÖFLKS, LET 3334/0. “August 4 / André Breton / here with Fords,” Stefi Kiesler’s calendar 1941 (big), ÖFLKS, MED 855/1. “November 22 / 5.30 Peggy Guggenheim / 440 E 51 Str. (cocktails) / 7.30 dinner at Binders / (St. Moritz) / 9.30 with Binders to / Rathaus (Kzrenek),” Stefi Kiesler’s calendar 1941 (big), ÖFLKS, MED 855/1. Art of This Century is one of the best researched projects of Frederick Kiesler. Cf. Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main and Österreichische Friedrich und Lillian KieslerPrivatstiftung, eds., Friedrich Kiesler: Art of This Century (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje-Cantz, 2003);

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Susan Davidson and Dieter Bogner, eds., Peggy Guggenheim & Frederick Kiesler: The Story of Art of This Century (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje-Cantz, 2004). 97 André Breton and Marcel Duchamp, eds., First Papers of Surrealism (New York: Coordinating Council of French Relief Societies, Inc., 1942). 98 Frederick Kiesler, “Les Larves d’Imagie d’Henri Robert Marcel Duchamp [Flip out Triptych],” View, no. 1 (March 1945), 24 ff. 99 Frederick Kiesler, “Some Testimonial Drawings of Dream Images,” VVV, no. 1 (June 1942), 27–32. 100 Frederick Kiesler, “Design-Correlation as an Approach to Architectural Planning,” VVV, no. 2–3 (March 1943), 76 ff. 101 “April 4 / Cocktail party for VVV (at / home) about 55 people,” Stefi Kiesler’s calendar 1943, ÖFLKS, MED 858/0. Following an argument about excessive bills for Art of This Century, Peggy Guggenheim had not been invited to this party but sneaked in wearing a false beard and her son Sindbad’s suit. Upon being recognized by Kiesler, “he was so delighted that we made up then and there and were friendly thereafter,” Peggy Guggenheim, Out of This Century: Confessions of an Art Addict (New York: Universe Books, 1979), 292 f. 102 Frederick Kiesler, “Endless House (Photo­montage),” VVV, no. 4 (February 1944), 60–61. 103 Cf. Larry List and Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum, eds., The Imagery of Chess Revisited (New York: Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum: G. Braziller, 2005). 104 Stefi Kiesler, Is chess a martial game?, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2010-118-1a—d; A Chess Village, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2001-62-2202a—d. 105 Cf. “The Blindfold Chess Event,” in The Imagery of Chess Revisited, 17–21. 106 The photoseries comprises: Coronation of Max Ernst, ÖFLKS, PHO 2850/0, PHO 2852/0, PHO 2853/0, and Kiesler joking with Dorothea Tanning and Jimmy Ernst, ÖFLKS, PHO 2851/0. 107 André Breton, Ode à Charles Fourier (Paris: Collection « L’Age d’or », Revue Fontaine, 1947). Preparatory material for both projects: ÖFLKS, box mfp 05. 108 ÖFLKS, PHO 2822/0. 109 Frederick Kiesler, “Economy and Exuberanz,” typescript with handwritten annotations, New York 1947, ÖFLKS, TXT 876/0. 110 Cf. Bloodflames 1947, (New York: Hugo Gallery, 1947), exhibition catalog; Anna Sauer, “In the Context of Late Surrealist Exhibitions and 1940s New York: Nicolas Calas Presenting and Frederick Kiesler Designing Bloodflames 1947” (unpubl. diploma thesis, University of Vienna, 2019). The author would like to take this opportunity to thank Anna Sauer for the detailed discussions. 111 Cf. Eva Kraus, “Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, 1947. Display Strategien und kuratorische Praxis” (PhD diss., Universität für angewandte Kunst, 2010). Eva Kraus, Breton Duchamp Kiesler: Surreal Space 1947, ed. Monika

Pessler, 13 (Vienna: Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, 2013). 112 “May 27 / 8.30 a.m. to La Guardia / Field with Marcel, / Alice & Lillian / 11h plane left,” “Septem­ ber 21 / K. arrived from Paris / 1.30 at La Guardia / (went with Alice) / 9.30 Marcel here,” Stefi Kiesler’s calendar 1947, ÖFLKS, MED 862/0. 113 Eva Kraus, “L’amitié de Frederick Kiesler et de Victor Brauner,” Supérieur Inconnu, no. 4 (July– December 2006), 40–42. 114 Jindřich Toman and Matthew S. Witkovsky, Jindřich Heisler: Surrealism under Pressure, 1938–1953, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago; New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2012). 115 Victor Brauner, “Talisman de Voyage,” Paris 1947, encaustic, ÖFLKS, SFP 1178/0 and three drawings, ÖFLKS, SFP 7087/0, SFP 7088/0, SFP 7090/0, two b/w photographs by Jindřich Heisler: Rake (Hrábě), 1944 and Untitled [Woman with bird in back], 1944, ÖFLKS, PHO 7347/0 and 7346/0. A drawing by Toyen, Untitled [Bird in Cat’s Mouth], 1947, ÖFLKS, 7089/0. 116 “Typographique – Frederick Kiesler,” NEON (N’Etre rien. Etre Tout. Ouvrir l’Etre) no. 2 (February 1948). Photograph of the display window in New York in 1948, ÖFLKS, PHO 1000/0, “The Gotham Book Mart and Frederick Kiesler invite you to meet NEON,” invitation to the presentation for June 24, 1948, ÖFLKS, LD 5017/0. 117 “May 23 / 9.30 a.m. K. with Marcel, Maria / Donati to country / (Tanguy, Gorki, Julien / back at 1 a.m. / 9.30 birthday party at Leo, 7h Lillian here for dinner,” ÖFLKS, MED 866/0. Series of group portraits—Cf. ÖFLKS, PHO 2824/0 – PHO 2826/0 and PHO 4584/0 – 4591/0. 118 “Strangely there are no entries concerning Gorky’s death in Stefi’s Calendar Yearbooks”—Cf. research material preparing the exhibition Through the Looking Glass, Frederick Kiesler Foundation, February 10–March 31, 2006, and Michael Taylor in this edited collection. 119 Frederick Kiesler, “The Endless House and Its Psychological Lighting,” Interiors (November 1950), 122–129. 120 The statistics on the MoMA website list 42 exhibition participations and 53 works. https://www.moma.org/artists/3091?locale=de (Accessed May 15, 2018). 121 The catalog notes: “William Lescaze, Frederick Kiesler and Richard J. Neutra are the best among the foreign born, foreign trained modern architects now practicing in America,” in Museum of Modern Art, Modern Architecture: Inter­n ational Exhibition, New York, Feburary 10 to March 23, 1932 (New York: Plandome Press, 1932), 22. 122 The catalog accompanying the exhibition includes Kiesler’s significant lines “My sculpture is a practical sculpture. It is both to be lived with and within.” Frederick Kiesler, “Note on Correalism,” in 15 Americans (New York: Simon and Schuster, distributor, 1952), 8.

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Biographical Miscellanea and Nodes in the Network

123 Art and Architecture an Exhibition, New York, April 16, 1946, ÖFLKS, TXT 5275/1; The De StijlGroup. 1917–1931, New York, June 6, 1946, ÖFLKS, TXT 5875/0 with related concept drawing for the exhibition design, ÖFLKS, SFP 6414/0. Corres­ pondence between Sweeney and Kiesler testifies to the internal discussion at the museum concerning the suggestions, Frederick Kiesler, letters to James Johnson Sweeney, ÖFLKS, LET 5558/0+1 and LET 6191/0. Johnson Sweeney, letters to Frederick Kiesler, ÖFLKS, LET 2009/0-2011/0. 124 “Grant to Museum for Architectural Project. Plans for an exhibition of revolutionary buildings in the Museum of Modern Art garden have been given impetus by a grant of $ 12,000 from the D.S. and R.H. Gottesman Foundation … ,” New York, February 2, 1958, ÖFLKS, TXT 616/0. 125 Cf. Kiesler, Inside The Endless House, 277–279. For general information about the Endless House, cf. Gerd Zillner, “Frederick Kiesler’s Endless House. An Attempt to Retrace an Endless Story,” in Endless Kiesler, ed. Klaus Bollinger, Florian Medicus, and Österreichische Friedrich und Lillian KieslerPrivatstiftung, Edition Angewandte (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2015), 98–178. 126 Lillian Kiesler, letter to Alfred H. Barr, Jr., New York, April 15, 1966, ÖFLKS, LET 3434/0. 127 “April 5 /Dinner Dr. Hans Tietze & Barr,” Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, 1932, ÖFLKS, MED 103/0. 128 “March 23 / … 5h at Mergentime with Barr / Goodwin, Fantl.” Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, 1936, ÖFLKS, MED 850/0. 129 Kiesler, “Design Correlation.” 130 Alfred H. Barr, Jr., letter to Architectural Record, New York, May 27, 1937, ÖFLKS, LET 623/0; Frederick J. Kiesler, letter to Alfred H. Barr, Jr., New York, n.d., ÖFLKS, LET 622/0. 131 “Galaxy is architecture for sky-gazers … ,” Alfred H. Barr Jr., “Kiesler’s Galaxy,” Harper’s Bazaar, (April 1952), 142–143. 132 Study for Fido, New York 1949, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1979-179-1, “To René d’Harnoncourt.” 133 “The largest exhibition of American sculpture ever to be shown in Europe … ,” Press Release, June 3, 1965. 134 “September 19 / 9.30 Mr. Drexler from / Interiors Mag. / (interview for Magazine),” Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, 1950, ÖFLKS, MED 863/0. 135 Kiesler, “The Endless House and Its Psychological Lighting.” 136 Philip Johnson, “Three Architects Presented by Philip Johnson,” Art in America 48, no. 1 (Spring 1960), 70–75. 137 Frederick Kiesler, “Building Architect. To the Art Editor,” Sunday Times (April 17, 1960). 138 Philip Johnson, letter to Frederick Kiesler, June 6, 1953, ÖFLKS, LET 3571/0. 139 Cf. Ben Nicholson and Michelangelo Sabatino, eds., Avante-Garde in the Cornfields: Architecture, Landscape and Preservation in New Harmony

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(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018). 140 Cf. Ben Nicholson and with William R. Crout, “Frederick Kiesler’s Grotto: A Promethean Spirit in New Harmony,” in Avant-Garde in the Cornfields: Architecture, Landscape, and Preservation in New Harmony (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018). The article provides an incredibly precise timeline of the project and of the exchange between Owen, Tillich, Johnson and Kiesler. I would like to thank Ben Nicholson for allowing me to see the essay in advance. 141 Lillian Kiesler interviewed by Maria Bottero, in Maria Bottero, Frederick Kiesler: arte, architettura, ambiente (Milano: Electa, 1995), 209. 142 Cf. Kiesler, Inside The Endless House. Art, People and Architecture: A Journal. The book was published posthumously by Lillian Kiesler, Frederick Kiesler’s long-time assistant, second wife, and widow. A collection of unused text fragments origi­ nally entitled “Endless Search” have survived in the archive of the ÖFLKS. 143 Elaine de Kooning, “The Modern Museum’s Fifteen: Dickinson and Kiesler,” ART News 51, no. 2 (April 1952), 20–23, 66 f. 144 Ibid. 145 “Kiesler was especially De Kooning’s friend,” (Lillian Kiesler), Bottero, Frederick Kiesler, 209; “Kiesler was De Kooning’s friend,” (Devon Meade), Bottero, Frederick Kiesler. 146 Series of slightly different details of the double portrait; ÖFLKS, PHO 4883/0, PHO 4884/0, PHO 4887/0, PHO 4888/0; “May 4 [1960], Wednesday / 4h photographer,” Frederick Kiesler’s calendar, 1960, MED 6635/0. 147 “But Kiesler was also fascinated by Jackson Pollock’s work: he was the first to recognize the importance of his painting.” Cf. Bottero, Frederick Kiesler, 209 and 214. 148 Cf. chapter “The Architectural Program” in Sheldon Nodelman, The Rothko Chapel Paintings: Origins, Structure, Meaning (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997), 43–77, particularly 52–59. 149 ÖFLKS, PHO 816/0, PHO 4650/0 – PHO 4652/0, PHO 4665/0. The photographs bear the hand­ written words “Photo: Mark Rothko” on the reverse. 150 “May I, therefore, ask that you do me the honor of letting me see the drawings for this sanctuary … ?,” Barnett Newman, letter to Frederick Kiesler, June 19, 1958, ÖFLKS, LET 1714/0. 151 Cf. Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, 1950, ÖFLKS, MED 863/0 and 1951, ÖFLKS, MED 864/0. 152 Cf. Natalie Edgar, ed., Club without Walls: Selections from the Journals of Philip Pavia (New York: Midmarch Arts, 2007), 138. 153 Cf. Robert Mann in an interview with Lillian Kiesler, Bottero, Frederick Kiesler, 240. 154 Edgar, Club without Walls, 167. 155 “… John Cage who was ill with a cold asked him to fetch Boulez (for whom the party at the club was given) at the Theatre (The Barraults for whom he is musical director) and bring him down.”

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Stefi Kiesler’s diary, December 9, 1952, ÖFLKS, TXT 6435/6. 156 Bottero, Frederick Kiesler, 229. 157 Frederick Kiesler, Study for “Galaxial Portrait” of John Cage, 1949, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Asc. No. 2010-221-17, gift from Ronnie L. and John E. Shore. 158 Frederick Kiesler, Portrait Merce Cunningham, New York, March 30, 1950, ÖFLKS, MFP 1098/0. 159 Thomas B. Hess (T.B.H.), “Form Is a Language,” ART News 59, no. 2 (April 1960), 34 f., 62. For a comparison of Cage’s notation with the Endless House studies, cf. Angela Lammert, “Von Der Bildlichkeit Der Notation,” in Notation. Kalkül und Form in den Künsten, eds. Hubertus von Amelunxen, Dieter Appelt, and Peter Weibel (Berlin: Akademie der Künste, 2008), 39–54. 160 “Since your work has been such a constant source of inspiration to us, we hoped that it might be possible to discuss our plans with you,” Judith Malina and Julian Beck, letter to Kiesler, October 9, 1951, ÖFLKS, LET 1633/0. 161 “The entire staff of the Living Theatre has fallen in love with you; your talk on Saturday was a complete success with everyone here.” Julien Beck, letter to Kiesler, April 13, 1959, ÖFLKS, LET 3092/0. In his reply, however, Kiesler expresses his regret about the rather small audience and the fact that the talk was not taped. Kiesler, letter to Julien Beck, April 16, 1959, ÖFLKS, LET 3093/0. 162 Photographs of Joseph and Carla Binder with Frederick Kiesler, 1943, MAK – Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst/Gegenwartskunst, Joseph Binder Papers, Inv. No. KI 14145-1233-35-1. Jimmy Ernst, letter to Stefi and Frederick Kiesler in which he announces that he is coming to Boiceville, July 21 and July 26, 1940, ÖFLKS, LET 1115/0 and LET 1116/0. 163 For general information about the artists on Long Island; Cf. Helen A. Harrison and Constance Ayers Denne, Hamptons Bohemia: Two Centuries of Artists and Writers on the Beach (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2002). 164 Bottero, Frederick Kiesler, 239. 165 Cf. Leases for 1961, ÖFLKS, LD 5050/0 and LD 5051/0; for 1963, ÖFLKS, LD 5052/0. 166 “Varèse-Kiesler-Meredith,” in Kiesler, Inside The Endless House, 419–433. 167 The play was Elisabeth Mann-Borgese’s ONLY THE PYRE, typescript owned by Kiesler, ÖFLKS, TXT 7625/0. 168 “What about our joint project? I have the impression … that Burgess Meredith has not the slightest intention of doing anything for our poor witch.” Elisabeth Mann-Borgese, letter to Frederick Kiesler, January 22, 1962, ÖFLKS, LET 1634/0. 169 Kiesler, Inside The Endless House, 428. More general, cf. Arnold Aronson, The History and Theory of Environmental Scenography (New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2018), 69–75.

170 Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Lillian and Frederick Kiesler papers, bulk 19582000, Folder: Papers related to Frederick Kiesler, 2.8: Photographic Material, undated, Contact Sheets and Negatives, circa 1960s–1980s. 171 Kiesler, Inside The Endless House, 420. 172 “Have you read his diary?“ “Yes, I’ve read it. It’s strange that he hardly mentions our friendship in the book. He talks about many frivolous things, but not of our almost daily contact – and perhaps because it was an everyday occurrence, it wasn’t mentioned,” in Bottero, Frederick Kiesler, 240. 173 Leo Castelli, Bottero, Frederick Kiesler, 239 f. 174 “Kiesler advised Castelli to be courageous and encourage Pop Art – Bob Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns –, assuring him he’d be successful and Pop Art was sure becoming very popular,” Bottero, Frederick Kiesler, 241. 175 Raimund Abraham rented a space in Kiesler’s studio in 1964. Cf. Bottero, Frederick Kiesler, 229, 232 f., 239. 176 Bottero, Frederick Kiesler, 239. 177 Ibid. 178 Kiesler, Inside The Endless House, 302. 179 Robert Rauschenberg, Homage to Frederick Kiesler, 1966, offset lithograph in color, Edition of 200. 180 Frederick Kiesler, TO MYSELF, typescript, July 11, 1958, ÖFLKS, TXT 6507/0

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Kiesler’s Berlin (1921–1926),  Theater and the November Group

“ Arriving Monday With Finished Sketches” Christian Welzbacher

In 1921 Frederick Kiesler was just thirty years old and relatively newly wed. He had experienced an unsuccessful spell at Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts and four years of military service. As a painter and graphic designer he was working on experiments “in which lines and color are contra­ puntally made into one,” although despite all “hope in view of the beauty of the bud and blossom” of this art, so far it seemed that the “fruit had not ripened.”1 Benedikt Fred Dolbin, who expressed this opinion in February 1921, portrays his acquaintance Kiesler as a young man in search of something. And this search is known to have brought Kiesler to Berlin for the first time in July 1921. According to the resident register,2 he and his wife Stephanie (Stefi) initially stayed for almost four months (reporting back to Vienna on October 29), only to visit the capital of the German Reich for another month in January 1922 and once again at the end of April, this time for an indefinite period. Referring to the correspondence of the network that was gradually evolving during these years, one may assume that Kiesler continued to leave Vienna on a regular basis—sometimes without giving official notice of moving away—in order to spend extended periods working in Berlin and, as of 1925, also in Paris. He continued to build contacts between these three metropolises before moving to America in 1926. And he presented various widely acclaimed works to the public in all three cities: for the first

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Kiesler’s Berlin (1921–1926), Theater and the November Group

time in 1923, and one year later, the stage sets for Karel Čapek’s utopian play R.U.R. and Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones in Berlin; in 1924 the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik (International Exhibition of New Theater Techniques) and the Raumbühne (Space Stage) in Vienna; in 1925 the Austrian theater section at the Exposition Inter­ nationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (International Exhibi­ tion of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts) in Paris. Kiesler may have stayed in Berlin for extended periods five or six times, perhaps more often, before the artist’s “fruit” had ripened. However, to this end, he turned his attention away from painting and to theater and architecture: “Arriving Monday with finished sketches,”3 he telegrammed theater entrepreneur Eugen Robert from Vienna in the late fall of 1922. This con­ cise message marked the start of his career. He had brought with him the designs for the spectacular stage set for Čapek’s R.U.R.1  Of course, the question that has preoccupied Kiesler experts from the outset is: what exactly happened in Kiesler’s life before his break­ through with R.U.R.? What did Kiesler do in Berlin as of July 1921, who did he meet, what did he work on? Records are few and far between so that we can only trace Kiesler’s beginnings indirectly based on his later activities and his connections with numerous figures. But one thing can be said for certain: a few years after World War I, Kiesler experienced Berlin as a “melting pot” of cultures, as a city marked by severe crises (by the time the “Golden Twenties” had arrived in the course of political

1   R.U.R. (scenic design by Frederick Kiesler), Theater am Kurfürstendamm, Berlin 1923

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“Arriving Monday With Finished Sketches”

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and economic consolidation, Kiesler was already in America). One year prior to his first visit, the general strike in the wake of the Kapp putsch had paralyzed the capital of the Reich, a city of homecoming soldiers rava­ged by poverty and unemployment. As of 1921, the debate about repara­ tions stipulated in the Treaty of Versailles overshadowed the stabilization of the republic. In the long term, the Reich government’s reaction led to inflation, which peaked in 1923 and could only be stopped by introducing the Rentenmark in November of the same year. The devaluation of currency spelled the destruction of countless livelihoods. Suicides, home­less­ ness and crimes of despair were rife. On June 24, 1922 Foreign Secretary Walther Rathenau—who had previously negotiated Germany’s rapproche­ ment with the Soviet Union in Rapallo—was assassi­nated by right-wing extremists. In January 1923, French troops occupied the Ruhr. The Beer Hall putsch took place in Munich on November 9 of the same year. The impact of this political, social and economic roller-coaster ride on people was best observed by outsiders who were not immediately affected. Kiesler may have seen things similarly to the Russian poet Andrei Bely, who wrote in “How nice it is in Berlin” (1924): “Yes, everything is upside down in Berlin: the greats of culture live in the shady, squalid depths of a mocked, insane, conspued existence; and the commoners walk about with their noses in the air, sitting in restaurants, cruising in cars, festooning themselves with brilliants. Berlin is an organized, systematically realized nightmare, performed in the innocent form of normal (bourgeois) common sense: sense becomes nonsense.”4 According to Bely, people reacted to the course of history with absolute inurement—to which cultural life (in all its manifestations), courting, as it does, the audi­ence’s favor, responded in turn with effects, sensations, radicalism and increasing “madness.” Kiesler was equally trapped in this spiral. Berlin was a city of theater whose stages catered for all genres from light entertainment and the classics to avant-garde experiments.5 Along with Leopold Jessner, one of the most influential directors was Max Reinhardt, who operated several stages, differentiated according to program, form of production, and audience. In the breathtakingly brief period from February to November 1919, he had the former Circus Schumann on Schiffbauerdamm converted into a “mass theater” for monumental productions of the classical repertoire. Hans Poelzig’s design gained fame above all for its fairytale cavernous atmosphere, but was

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Kiesler’s Berlin (1921–1926), Theater and the November Group

2   Hans Poelzig, Großes Schauspielhaus, interior view, Berlin 1919 [Architekturmuseum der TU Berlin]

equally innovative in terms of its handling of space.2  In addition to a revolving backstage, he also installed a podium that extended far into the dome-topped auditorium in order to break down the boundaries between stage and audience and thrust the action into the spectators’ midst.6 However, Reinhardt’s productions failed to make the most of the theater’s technical potential. This annoyed both feuilleton critics and the archi­tect Poelzig himself, who when creating the set for King Lear in April 1923 (directed by Felix Hollaender) seized on the final opportunity to make full use of the theater with the aid of a “Stufenbühne” (multi-level stage) borrowed from Leopold Jessner. “It is one of the tragedies of this theater that only in its final production did it seem to have been mastered in terms of space for the first time,”7 as Herbert Ihering, a journalist who would get to know Kiesler shortly afterwards, summed up in the Berliner Börsen-Courier on April 21, 1923.8 Kiesler’s own theater construction plans, that he began to make as of 1923/24, leave no doubt as to the fact that he was endeavoring to optimize Poelzig’s ideas in terms of technical realization and dramaturgy— his exchange with Erwin Piscator may well have been an additional encouragement in this respect. Piscator had launched his “Proletarian

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“Arriving Monday With Finished Sketches”

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Theater” in the fall of 1920 that from the outset developed elements of (what was known as of 1927 as) the “Piscator Stage” (“Simultaneous Stage”) and “epic theater” that challenged the hitherto prevailing conception of theater: again, a key concern was to physically connect the stage and the auditorium, with Piscator evolving this idea into the Total Theater (1926) 3  together with Walter Gropius and a team of Bauhaus collaborators headed by Xanti Schawinsky and Franz Ehrlich. With the bounds of the Aristotelian laws now broken (something that had already been accomplished in naturalism), the aim now was to surmount the barrier between actors and visitors, to incorporate new media (film), and to endeavor to have an effect on politics and society (in the sense of communism) beyond the confines of theater. Gropius’s and Piscator’s stages as well as Kiesler’s experiments with the Raumbühne likely influ­ enced each other as a result of their personal exchange: the Total Theater and Kiesler’s Endless Theatre 4 , developed in Paris in 1925, would be inconceivable without each other.9

3   Walter Gropius, Total Theater, model and plan drawings for “Piscator Stage,” 1927 [Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin; Walter Gropius © Bildrecht, Wien, 2018]

 

4  Frederick Kiesler, Endless Theatre, plan, Paris 1925

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Kiesler’s Berlin (1921–1926), Theater and the November Group

However, he never collaborated directly with Piscator in Berlin. Instead, Kiesler used his connection to Eugen Robert to carry out his first own project. Robert had made a name for himself in Berlin by founding the Hebbel-Theater in 1908, since when he had been working there (and in Vienna), with varying degrees of success, as an impresario. When Robert took over management of the Tribüne on Kurfürstendamm in 1920, he commissioned the very busy theater architect Oskar Kaufmann (who had already produced the plans for the Hebbel-Theater) to convert the former rooms of the Berliner Secession into the Theater am Kurfürstendamm. Robert opened on October 8, 1921, managing the stage until it was taken over by Ferdinand Bruckner in 1927. Although he staged young theater that was firmly distanced from agitprop and leftist avant-garde, portraying the issues of the day in a rather fashionably toned-down manner (even Kaufmann’s architecture was no more than a conventional proscenium stage), he also allowed for experimentation with the aim of outdoing his many different rivals. This was already the case on the theater’s opening night: Robert staged the tragicomedy Ingeborg, Curt Goetz’s first full-length play, albeit to mixed reactions. It was thus nothing out of the ordinary when, shortly afterwards, he gave the newcomer Kiesler his first break as a stage designer after Kiesler had simply approached him. The success of Karel Čapek’s R.U.R. seemed to be guaranteed. The Czech writer had created a controversial mixture of criticism of capitalism, social drama, and science fiction, a “thriller, but with brains”10 that quickly began to triumph around the world. Following the premiere in 1920, Čapek sold the rights in more than ten countries, with the piece showing for the first time in Germany in Aachen in 1921, followed by various sensational stage adaptations in England and America in 1922. Kiesler’s stage design for R.U.R. in Berlin transplanted aspects of the “radical left-wing” range of productions of Piscator’s workers’ theater into the good middle-class west of Berlin, adapting them to the utopian, technocritical subject matter. The extent to which Kiesler had modeled himself on the aforementioned developments in Berlin (which the examples shown at the Vienna theater exhibition also confirm) is reflected above all by the collage-style backdrop depicting the director’s room in Čapek’s human factory. It featured an iris diaphragm measur­ ing 1.10 meters across that could be opened to display film projections.

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“Arriving Monday With Finished Sketches”

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Kiesler himself talks about “electro-mechanical scenery,”11 his aim—hark­ ing back to Fernand Léger’s Ballet mécanique—being to transform the appearance of the backdrop in space and time with the aid of technical devices. This also found favor with the critics: “The stage is full of flashing instruments and mysterious rods and reflections that, here and there, are quite amusing,” wrote Fritz Engel in the Berliner Tageblatt.12 The fact that such show effects sometimes gave way to uninten­tional slapstick is revealed by a remark made by Siegfried Kracauer, who had previously described Piscator’s stage revolution as a “sort of Grand Guignol for the rich, who enjoyed letting themselves be frightened by communism as long as they had no real fear of it.”13 From this point of view, what may R.U.R. have been? In The Emperor Jones, his second production in Berlin, Kiesler took his idea of transformation one step further in the form of a “mecha­ nical space scenery” consisting of abstract-cubist elements. The backdrop was designed so that it changed constantly as the play progressed, i.e., rearranged itself as if of its own accord. This suggests that Kiesler had meanwhile begun to study the abstract choreographies and kinetic experi­ ments of the Bauhaus, Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack’s light games, and the dramaturgies of László Moholy-Nagy. In any case, with his two theater works Kiesler took a core theme of the avant-garde as the leitmotif for his work as whole: abolishing the boundaries of space, form and con­ tent. Always revolving around the concept of “endlessness,” he would explore this idea from every possible angle to the end of his days.4  The R.U.R. backdrop already revealed that the sources of Kiesler’s artistic inspiration also lay outside the realm of theater: in the world of the visual arts. Kiesler unquestionably threw himself into the hustle and bustle of art fairs, exhibitions and galleries in Berlin (c.f. Prager). And he was involved in activities that we regard today as key moments in the history of art. He had arrived too late to collaborate on the Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Workers Council for Art) that began work straight after the end of the war. Nor, in all probability, will he have been familiar with the correspondence of the group of architects known as the Gläserne Kette (The Crystal Chain), who were also concerned with abolishing the bound­ aries of space, time and structural constraints.14 The Novembergruppe (November Group) founded at the end of 1918, on the other hand, had a formative in­fluence during Kiesler’s years in Berlin.15 Working across

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Kiesler’s Berlin (1921–1926), Theater and the November Group

 

5  El Lissitzky, Prounenraum (Proun Room), Große Berliner Kunstausstellung (Great Berlin Art Exhibition), 1923 [Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam]

disciplinary boundaries, Kiesler saw it as having a twofold appeal: firstly, the roughly 170 members hailed from all spheres of art, secondly they exhibited regularly in a wide range of different contexts and constellations and were associated with other groups, art schools, galleries or publishers, allowing him to make further contacts through a host of events. The nature of Berlin’s art exhibitions had quickly changed since the end of the war. The internal German perspective, with its emphasis on collecting, that, harking back to pre-war expressionism, had initially engaged in a kind of reorientation soon gave way to an enriching internat­ ional perspective in which artists from all European nations shared. One hub of this development was the gallery Der Sturm,16 that also ran a magazine of the same name with the aim of disseminating its ideas. Numbering almost fifty, the Sturm artists and editors accounted for the largest faction within the November Group. Kiesler probably met Sturm founder Herwarth Walden through the writer Alfred Döblin.17 Since that time, he will probably have regularly attended the special Sturm shows and the annual Große Berliner Kunstausstellung (Great Berlin Art Exhibition), in which the November Group also participated with their own extensive contributions. One of the most formative events at this time was the Erste Russische Kunstausstellung (First Russian Art Exhibition)18 that opened in the rooms of the Galerie van Diemen on Unter den Linden on October 15, 1922.

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6   Vladimir Tatlin, Monument to the Third International, model, 1920 [Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; digital image © 2018, The Museum of Modern Art/Scala, Florence]

For the first time in western Europe, the whole range of the Russian avantgarde was on show, including works by Kazimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin, whose “Machine Art” had been revered by Berlin’s Neo-Dadaists in 1920, and El Lissitzky, whose Prouns 5  would be adopted shortly afterwards (as the November Group contribution to the Große Berliner Kunstausstellung in 1923) by the exponents of De Stijl spearheaded by Theo van Doesburg, who would soon become Kiesler’s most important mentor. Incidentally, in addition to paintings, sculptures and architectural designs, the show also featured theater works. In view of Russian Constructivism, the R.U.R. backdrop seems like a reflection on the collages of Ivan Puni or Tatlin’s glorification of tech­ nology. The Russians’ art remained a key point of reference for Kiesler even after R.U.R. The dynamically winding levels of the Vienna Raumbühne evoke associations with Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International (1919) 6 , the speaker’s balcony 7  recalling El Lissitzky’s Lenin Tribune (1920) 8 .

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Kiesler’s Berlin (1921–1926), Theater and the November Group

Kiesler’s writings also reflect Russian inspirations, for instance when he propagates the abolition of the static axis, as El Lissitzky had similarly done with his Wolkenbügel (Cloud Iron).19 Kiesler’s catalog for the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theater­ technik later reveals the whole breadth of the inspirations that he had discovered in Berlin. Hans Poelzig’s experiments with space (who for Kiesler goes by Reinhardt’s first name “Max”) feature in the form of the monumental designs for a festival hall in Salzburg (1920). Meyerhold, the dominant father figure of Russian theater, is acknowledged with a portrait photograph and various sample images of his productions. Kiesler continues to show designs for anti-naturalist stage sets, abstract theater experiments, Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadisches Ballett (Triadic Ballet) and the Bauhaus stage workshop under Lothar Schreyer. It was just a stone’s throw from Berlin, where Walter Gropius had his architectural studio, to Weimar, where he worked as director of the Art School.

7   Frederick Kiesler, Speaker’s platform next to the Raumbühne (Space Stage), Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik (International Exhibition of New Theater Techniques), Vienna 1924

8   El Lissitzky, Lenin Tribune, collage, 1920 [Collection of State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow; digital image © 2018, Fine Art Images/Heritage Images / Getty Images]

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When Kiesler arrived in Berlin, he probably gained his first foothold in the Neo-Dadaist faction of the November Group, who, similar to the Italian Futurists, formed an autonomous part of this artists’ association. Hannah Höch became Kiesler’s most important acquaintance. She appears to have been a kind of door-opener for him, not only with regard to the Berlin and German artists, but also international artists who had gathered in the city. The Neo-Dada enthusiasm for developments in Russia may soon have led him to Constructivism. Of key importance, however, was the fact that Constructivism was already undergoing another transformation and—specifically in 1923—was having a tremendous impact on the Bauhaus in the form of De Stijl through Theo van Doesburg’s lectures. It is not perfectly clear when Kiesler first came into contact with De Stijl. But it was probably in Berlin.20 At the Juryfreie Kunstausstellung (Jury-free Art Exhibition) in 1923 he may have seen Vilmos Huszár’s model room decoration for which Gerrit Rietveld had developed the Berlin Chair. It will also have been around this time that he came into contact with Theo van Doesburg, who published the R.U.R. stage design in the De Stijl magazine (May/June issue, 1923), making Kiesler a regular author and soon committing him to his movement. What is more, in The Emperor Jones we can discern a certain similarity to the film experiments of Hans Richter, another figure in the Berlin Dada network who helped commit Kiesler to De Stijl (and, in subsequent years, to Surrealism).21 Later on, Kiesler’s catalog layout for the Vienna theater exhibition was an out-and-out homage to De Stijl: not only the idea of nesting columns of text vertically and horizontally, even the typography was borrowed directly from Doesburg. The exhibition system can also be seen as a translation of De Stijl principles into space, something that Piet Mondrian, Vilmos Huszár and Gerrit Rietveld were also experimenting with at the time. The first personal meeting of Doesburg and Kiesler recorded in the sources was duly warm-hearted, as Doesburg reported to Hannah Höch in Berlin in November 1924: “… I was on a one-month lecture tour of Vienna, Prague, Brno, etc. It was a very lively time and, in some respects, very gratifying. I grew very fond of Mr. and Mrs. Kiesler in Vienna. I think you know the Kieslers too! They are charming people. Kiesler was very successful with his Raumbühne. The whole press were clamoring for and against. The exhibition was excellent too. The exhi­bition system

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Kiesler’s Berlin (1921–1926), Theater and the November Group

itself was better than the things on show!”22 Their rela­tionship continued to grow after this initial meeting. While the De Stijl group may have been excluded from the Paris “Art Déco” exhibition in 1925, Doesburg saw Kiesler’s Austrian theater contribution as satisfactory compensation, almost as a kind of Trojan horse that had allowed De Stijl to sneak in after all. Like a teacher assessing his pupil, Doesburg observed in May 1925: “It’s a joy to work together with Kiesler,” adding that: “He made a very clear construction at the exhibition.”23 Meanwhile, Kiesler’s work was already beginning to move away from such categories as group affiliation or nationality. He used his Berlin connections, quickly growing beyond Berlin and making his reputation international and his work an integral part of the avant-garde canon, a feat that he soon achieved thanks to an active exchange with other writers in journals and books. The writer Adolf Behne had included Kiesler’s exhibition system for the Vienna theater exhibition in Modern Functional Building. The book—devised in 1923 and published in 1926—was a key work in the auto-historiography of modernism and had a momentous impact, influencing not only Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus 1925 book Interna­ tionale Architektur (International Architecture) but also the New York exhibition The International Style (at the Museum of Modern Art, 1932) and the catalog of the same name, a project in which Kiesler himself— having meanwhile established himself in America—was, in turn, involved. Looking back upon his life’s work, we can trace Kiesler’s artistic, intellectual development by taking Neo-Dada, Constructivism, De Stijl and Surrealism as points of reference, a development that Kiesler shared with many fellow artists in his network. Unlike many of his acquaintances, the circumstances of the day seem to have affected him only indirectly, if at all. In an interview from the 1950s, Hannah Höch looked back at her Berlin around 1921 with a “feeling of alienation”: “We were then living in a world that nobody with any sensitivity could accept or approve.”24 A visitor to Berlin, Kiesler may well have seen things similarly in view of the civil-war-like atmosphere that prevailed, with everyone around him involved in politics: the anti-bourgeois Neo-Dadaists, the “leftists” Höch, Kurt Schwitters and Hans Arp, the admired Russian artists, and the socialist Theo van Doesburg. However, save for a number of flippant remarks vaguely reminiscent of the Dadaists’ “middle-class philistine” insults, Kiesler was reticent

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about his beliefs. He was more subtle in revealing his sympathies, for example by including in the catalog for the Vienna theater exhi­bition a full-page advertisement for Berlin’s Malik-Verlag, Germany’s leading communist publishing house whose satirical publications were regarded at the time as “blasphemous”, hostile to the state, and contemptuous of society. He will have guessed that the Viennese visitors to his show were equally aware of these interconnections and that there may have been a risk of political prejudgment. Otherwise, he steered clear of political work—instead he transcended the social utopias being bandied about on all sides in a very personal way, taking them to the level of artistic utopia and thus venturing into the realm of universal human questions beyond the constraints of time and the modes of the day: which is, after all, the very reason why his work remains of such profound interest even today. One could speculate excellently as to whether it was the social whirlwind that raged in twenties’ Berlin that brought him to this contem­ plative stance, whether, then, the hint of reclusive reverie inherent in some of Kiesler’s projects can be interpreted as a response to outside circumstances. The only thing that is certain is that the roots of Kiesler’s lifelong artistic themes are to be found in the Berlin of the early twenties. They evolved as a result of his confrontation and dialog with international developments, that Kiesler could only have come into contact with in this concentrated form in the German capital. Kiesler in Berlin between 1921 and 1926: that was the right man in the right place at the right time.

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Benedikt F. Dolbin, “Fritz Kiessler [sic],” unpublished typescript from the Dolbin-Nachlass at the Institut für Zeitungsforschung, Dortmund, I AK 2002/302–51, INV. NO. 02343-02347, quoted after: Barbara Lesák, “Die Theaterbiographie des Frederick J. Kiesler: Stationen eines Theater­ visionärs: Czernowitz, Wien, Berlin, Paris und New York,” in Frederick Kiesler: Theatervisionär – Architekt – Künstler, ed. Barbara Lesák and Thomas Trabitsch (Vienna: Brandstätter, 2013), exhibition catalog, 23. (Translated from German.) The entries were kindly given to me by the archive of the Frederick Kiesler Foundation, Vienna

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(Gerd Zillner). The original registration forms are kept at Vienna’s Stadt- und Landesarchiv (MA8). “‘W.U.R.’ und sein Regisseur: Ein Gespräch mit Eugen Robert,” undated clipping [1924], Theater­w issenschaftliche Sammlung der Universität zu Köln, Sammlung von Theaterkritiken, quoted after: Lesák, “Die Theaterbiographie des Frederick J. Kiesler,” 25. (Translated from German.) Text reprinted in Fritz Mierau, ed., Russen in Berlin: Literatur, Malerei, Theater, Film 1918–1933, (Leipzig: Reclam, 1991), 56–68, this quotation 66. (Translated from German.)

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Kiesler’s Berlin (1921–1926), Theater and the November Group

5

For a comprehensive overview, see: Günther Rühle, Theater in Deutschland: Seine Ereignisse, seine Menschen (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 2007). 6 Heike Hambrock, “Kollektive Festlichkeit: Theater und Festbau der Zukunft,” in Hans Poelzig: Architekt, Lehrer, Künstler. 1869–1939, ed. Wolfgang Pehnt and Matthias Schirren (Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2007), exhibition catalog, 126–143. 7 Berliner Börsen-Courier, April 21, 1923. 8 Commissioned by Ihering, Kiesler published his piece “Schauspieler, Bildbühne, Raumbühne” (Actors, Set Design and Space Stage) in the Berliner Börsen-Courier of March 16 and 21, 1924. 9 In this context, Jill Meißner-Wolfbeisser from Vienna’s Kiesler Archive drew my attention to a telegram sent by Kiesler from New York to Herbert Ihering on July 24, 1927 that is among the HerbertIhering-Archiv (1694) held by the Akademie der Künste, Berlin: “VARIATIONS OF PERFECT

20

21

22

THEATER FOR PISCATOR FINISHED HELP ME COME TO BERLIN FOR A WEEK POSSIBLY

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WILLING TO COLLABORATE WITH GROPIUS .”

(Translated from German.) 10 As Fritz Engel wrote in the Berliner Tageblatt of March 30, 1923. Mauro Piccinini, Jens, was kind enough to draw my attention to this and other articles about R.U.R. 11 Frederick Kiesler, ed., Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik: Katalog, Programm, Almanach (Vienna: Würthle & Sohn, 1924), exhi­ bition catalog, 20. 12 Berliner Tageblatt, March 30, 1923. (Translated from German.) 13 Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of Film (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964), 192. 14 Iain Boyd Whyte, ed., Die Briefe der Gläsernen Kette (Berlin: Ernst, Wilhelm & Sohn, 1986). 15 Helga Kliemann, Die Novembergruppe (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1969). No notable recent literature on this topic has been published since Kliemann’s study. 16 Antje Birthälmer, ed., Der Sturm: Zentrum der Avantgarde. 2 vols. (Wuppertal: von der HeydtMuseum, 2011), exhibition catalog. Henriette Herwig and Andrea von Hülsen-Esch, eds., Der Sturm: Literatur, Musik, Graphik und die Vernetzung in der Zeit des Expressionismus (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015). 17 The Kiesler Archive in Vienna drew my attention to Frederick and Stefi Kiesler’s signatures in the Sturm visitors’ book (that is kept today by the Staatsbibliothek Berlin) from May 25, 1923. No other visitors signed the book on that day, however. 18 Still worth reading in this context is the catalog Irina Antonova and Jörn Merker, eds., BerlinMoskau 1900–1950 (Munich: Prestel, 1995), exhibition catalog. 19 Cf. a pamphlet from the Estate of Hannah Höch at the Berlinische Galerie, BG-HHC D 609/79, entitled “La Contre-Architecture,” in which Kiesler

24

writes: “A system of spans (tension) in free space. / A change of urban space. / No foundations, no walls. / Liberation from the ground, abolition of the static axis. / Creation of new kinds of living, and, through them, the demands which will remould society … .” (Translated from French.) The Frederick Kiesler Foundation pointed me to Thomas Creighton’s interview with Kiesler (“Kiesler’s Pursuit of an Idea,” Progressive Architecture, July 1961), in which Kiesler indicates that Doesburg had wanted to meet him after seeing a performance of R.U.R. with a group of artist friends. It is hard to determine whether this anecdote is apocryphal. Richter’s “Film” text signed “April ’23, Berlin,” that bears striking similarities to Kiesler’s staging ideas, was published in De Stijl 6, no. 5 (1923). Theo van Doesburg, letter to Hannah Höch, November 11, 1924, Estate of Hannah Höch at Berlinische Galerie, INV. NO. BG-HHC K 127/79. (Translated from German.) Theo van Doesburg [and Nelly van Doesburg], letter to Hannah Höch (with corrections and comments), May 21, 1925, Estate of Hannah Höch at Berlinische Galerie. (Translated from German.) Hannah Höch, in Edouard Roditi, More Dialogues on Art (Santa Barbara: Ross-Erikson, 1984), 105.

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Frederick Kiesler, Berthold Viertel and Karl Kraus Between Vienna, Berlin and New York

Intersections Between Circles Katharina Prager

Turn-of-the-century Vienna

When I think back, I realize now how rich the middle teens and early ’20s were in Vienna. There were not only extraordinary individuals, but extraordinary groups and, most significantly, meeting places, private apartments, studios, and above all cafés where we would gather.1 The importance of circles (in the sense of groups) and their non- or semi-institutionalized spaces for the “creative impetus of Viennese modernism” to which Frederick Kiesler referred in this interview from the 1960s has meanwhile become an axiom of research in this field. Kraus-expert Edward Timms in particular has explained how loose net­ works centering on coffeehouses in turn-of-the-century Vienna were the milieu (not only) of progressive intellectuals, and how they became centers of the structural trans­formation of the public sphere (Habermas) that they encouraged.2 Both Kiesler and Timms attempted to sketch out these “Viennese circles” around 1900 and up to roughly 1918.1 , 2  Kiesler’s drawing is a better illustration of the dynamics and the inter­ meshing of these circles, while Timms brings out their order and function more clearly. The important thing, however, is that Kiesler’s name is not mentioned at all in Timms’ circles around 1900 and only turns up in the 1920s in the context of the Sozialdemokratische Kunststelle (Social Democratic Arts Section).3 

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Frederick Kiesler, Berthold Viertel and Karl Kraus Between Vienna, Berlin and New York

1   Edward Timms, Vienna Circles 1900–14 [Courtesy of Edward Timms]

On the one hand, this has to do with Kiesler’s age: born in 1890, he was still a child in 1898 when the writer and director Berthold Viertel (chronicler of these Viennese circles around 1900), five years his senior, first crossed the threshold of Café Central, his true “school”— … that blessed, accursed place where my life … seemed to have begun, only to end here too. Never did I escape this conventional, unconventional place, no matter how far I traveled.3 On the other hand, Kiesler did not leave Chernivtsi to study in Vienna until 1908. However, we may assume that he was similarly influenced by Vienna’s culture of circles and coffeehouses, and in this respect it would be important to ascertain his “position within the intellectual movements of Vienna” beyond mere “hypothesis” 4—given that he himself expressly

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2   Frederick Kiesler, Drawing of Vienna’s Karlsplatz in the 1920s, collage, crayon on paper, 1961

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Frederick Kiesler, Berthold Viertel and Karl Kraus Between Vienna, Berlin and New York

referred to the “middle teens and early 20’s” as a key period for him in Vienna.5 Kiesler described himself as the third generation of Viennese modernist architects: “You see, [Otto] Wagner was the first generation. Then came Adolf Loos and Josef Hoffmann. I was the third generation … .”6 What is interesting is that Kiesler indicated both Loos and Hoffmann as his “fathers,” although—in his own words— they were in “opposition” to one another.7 This is salient above all because, in contrast to this, Berthold Viertel understood generational affiliation as explicitly non-successive in his retrospective autobiographical look at turn-of-the-century Vienna. The important factor for him was not the actual age of those concerned, but rather a simultaneous experience to which two “generations” reacted differently:

3   Edward Timms, Vienna Circles 1920s [Courtesy of Edward Timms]

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We are experiencing two generations, in brief: that of the fathers and that of the sons. Generally speaking, the fathers are those who try to conserve, the sons are revolutionaries and nihilists. But skepticism does come from the fathers. The fathers also feel like they are fighting a losing battle.8 Viertel thus described rather progressive individuals critical of the status quo as “sons” and rather reactionary individuals as “fathers,” regardless of their age.9 In lists he contrasted the “destructive sons” Crown Prince Rudolf, Karl Kraus and Adolf Loos (but also Adolf Hitler) with the “conservative fathers” Franz Joseph I., Victor Adler, Ludwig von Ficker, and the Wiener Werkstätten (Hoffmann).10 It was and still is very common to think in terms of such contrasts when considering turn-of-the-century Vienna.11 Kiesler was equally aware that tension between antagonistic groups had inspired modern creativity in Vienna: No wonder, as I recall it now, that such groups, fighting it out with each other and against each other, caused the heatlightning and the showers that produced what are now so nostalgically called the ‘creative 20’s.’  12 —Unlike Berthold Viertel, however, he did not take up such a clear position as part of an “opposi­tion in art and life”13 against the “conservative fathers” of the establishment. In recent years, the historians Allan Janik and Steven Beller have used the term “critical modernism” to sum up like-minded individuals, often acquainted with each other, who “opposed” social circumstances in different ways, but who had no manifesto or program and who did not assert their ideas as a group, party or school.14 The critical modernists’ ideas propagated a reform of life (Lebensreform) by means of comfortable clothing, functional housing, progressive education, liberal sexual morals, a new body awareness, and a healthy diet. Kiesler formulated the aims of his unspecified “generation” in a similar vein: We felt that the whole world was going into a new realm of living together in peace and harmony; now everybody would have what had been promised and society finally would be the fulfillment of utopia.15 Although such utopias led to little or no active political or social com­ mitment prior to World War I, they did give rise to various networks outside of Austria.

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Frederick Kiesler, Berthold Viertel and Karl Kraus Between Vienna, Berlin and New York

Frederick Kiesler, the student of architecture and art, may have spent his years “studying” between 1908 and 1914, when he was conscripted, above all in the environs of Karlsplatz—at the Café Museum popular with young architects, at Café Imperial, and at the decidedly notorious Café Central. Key figures in this milieu—some treated with fierce hostility, some idolized—were the satirist and critic of culture, language and society Karl Kraus, whose picture could still be found in the Kieslers’ apartment in New York,16 and his architect friend Adolf Loos. Frederick Kiesler always mentioned these two names as points of identification in his memoirs of Vienna, but it is hard to tell how close he actually came into contact with them as there is no material dealing with the period prior to 1926 in his unpublished papers.17 He probably met his later wife Stephanie Frischer at Café Museum at the end of the 1910s, which may be taken as evidence of regular coffeehouse visits.18 Berthold Viertel, who, as one of Kraus’s col­ laborators, moved in these circles on an everyday basis around 1908, also wrote: “I met my wife in the coffeehouse where I practically used to live, an eternal student, who never got his degree … . All my idols, my teachers lived in the coffeehouse. It was a curious society … . Of course I met my wife there, where else.”19 Further (more substantial) proof of closer ties between Frederick Kiesler and the associates of Kraus and Loos is his portrait painting (1918/1919) of Leopold Liegler,20 Kraus’s secretary at the time. Based on Kiesler’s memories, his library, and the Kieslers’ subsequent corres­ pondence, we may conclude that Frederick and Stefi Kiesler were readers of Kraus and Loos, that they presumably visited their lectures away from the coffeehouses, and probably also noticed Berthold Viertel in these contexts.21 The important thing—as Kiesler himself stressed on various occasions—is that his ideas and accomplishments in Berlin at the time of the Weimar Republic and in Red Vienna must be seen in large part in connection with his links, described above, to “great figures of the early period of the modern movement”22 in Vienna around 1900. The 1920s in Berlin

“Conditions in Berlin in 1922/23 were, in almost every respect, those of theater crisis.”23 Nevertheless, the German culture scene, and Berlin in particular, had always held a special allure for the critical modernists of

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4   Berthold Viertel in Dresden, c. 1920 [Wienbibliothek im Rathaus, Manuscript Department, collection Franz Glück, ZPH 1443, 2.8.1.]

the Habsburg monarchy. The thirty-nine-year-old Berthold Viertel 4  had arrived there in the fall of 1923. As early as 1922—after three years staging new expressionist drama in Dresden—he had come to the big Berlin theaters as a promising young star director and made a name for himself. His consistent success and good contacts encouraged him to live out his great dream and to try his hand as a theater director: in 1923 Viertel founded “Die Truppe” (The Troupe) as a co-operative, avant-garde ensemble theater “beyond trust and stardom, operation and organization” that was to be dedicated to neglected literature from the past and present.24 Although rejecting stardom, establishing a standard fee, and not allowing any interruptions of rehearsals for film shooting, Viertel succeeded in attracting stars from film and theater including Fritz Kortner, Rudolf Forster and Sybille Binder for this experiment.25 “In 1923 when we founded Die Truppe, the dollar was worth more than nine thousand marks, and the French had occupied the Ruhr,” his wife, actress Salka Viertel, remembers.26 But not only the political and economic situation was tense, tensions also soon arose among the company of the unheated, out-of-the-way theater at the southern end of Friedrichstraße.

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Frederick Kiesler, Berthold Viertel and Karl Kraus Between Vienna, Berlin and New York

It is perhaps telling that the stage set, décor and costumes that Franz Singer and Friedl Dicker—young graduates of the Weimar Bauhaus and both also originally from Vienna—designed for The Merchant of Venice triggered the first serious conflicts. According to Salka Viertel, Berthold Viertel is said to have been impressed by Dicker and Singer’s new means of expression that “today … would be greatly admired.” Looking back, she, for her part, was skeptical—“they had made serious mistakes in the costumes, which were too symbolic and stiff, but the sets, at least those I remember, had beautiful colors and shapes. However, Berlin had seen the ‘real’ Venice of Max Reinhardt and did not like it in triangles and cubes.”27 Co-director Ernst Josef Aufricht, who described Viertel, although a director conscious of the work and script, as having a general “lack of confidence in visual matters,” was far more harsh in his judgment: Viertel had become a “victim of the stage designers Dicker and Singer, two people from the Dessau [sic] Bauhaus” and the first premiere on September 12, 1923 had been a failure despite its “brilliant cast.”28 The influential critic Herbert Ihering also diagnosed Viertel with an “un­ clear feeling for art.” What is more, although he believed in the idea of Die Truppe, he had not yet sensed a unity of the company, with many critics agreeing that the star Fritz Kortner had “saved” the play.29 Kortner left the company shortly afterwards and next on the bill was Knut Hamsun’s Livet i Vold (In the Grip of Life) on October 6, 1923— this time there was no stage set to spark off any negative criticism, but Herbert Ihering continued to fault the “lack of inner community” of Die Truppe, excoriat­ing the Viertels, above all Salka Viertel, whom he found to be miscast in the leading role.30 This “justified failure” (as Aufricht also observed) was followed by the “only undisputed success” on November 15, 1923—Georg Kaiser’s highly topical play Nebeneinander (Side by Side) that was set in the “milieu of black-marketeers and inflation profiteers with their greed for pleasure and thrills.” 31 This time, the “bold” decorations were created by Dada artists George Grosz and John Heartfield.32 Die Truppe, staging one play a month in the “cold and wet winter” of 1923 when “the dollar now stood at between two and three billion marks,” was therefore endeavoring to be avant-garde in matters of stage design too.33 In this respect it thus comes as no surprise that in December of 1923, following the premiere of Robert Musil’s Vinzenz oder die Freundin

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be­deutender Männer (Vinzenz and the Mistress of Important Men), Berthold Viertel went to “Vienna to get an attraction.”34 Frederick Kiesler remembered Viertel visiting him in Vienna: “Viertel (who later went to Hollywood) arrived in Vienna, stayed in my studio, and persuaded me to go to Berlin.”35 He wanted Kiesler to design the set for the German premiere of Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones on January 8, 1924.5 , 6  We can no longer tell what made Viertel opt for Kiesler: had he seen Kiesler’s debut work, the electro-mechanical stage design for Karel Čapek’s machine drama R.U.R. at the Theater am Kurfürstendamm in the spring of 1923? Had he read the pieces on theater theory in the Berliner Tagblatt in June of 1923, that—like his own articles—regarded the company and the stage as “organisms,” visualizing new forms of collaboration for a “theater of the times” and harking back to Kraus’s Die letzten Tage der Menschheit (The Last Days of Mankind)?36 Or, as radi0cally modern theater-makers and theorists, did they know each other from the circles of Vienna’s critical modernists? Barbara Lesák felt that Kiesler had a “rather isolated position” as an artist in Vienna as a result of his avant-garde cast of mind—which is precisely what predestined him for Die Truppe, that he later remembered as being “a very poor theater in East Berlin.” 37 So what happened? The hitherto equally unknown actor Oskar Homolka 7 , who took on the lead in The Emperor Jones on the recommenda­tion of Karl Kraus and Bertolt Brecht, became the attraction of the evening and thus a star: He was so effective in this role that the only thing that spoiled the evening was Kiessler’s [sic] ‘Raumbühne’,38 wrote Ernst Josef Aufricht in 1966 in his autobiography, i.e., at a time when Kiesler was already acknowledged in Europe. Salka Viertel’s recollections, also penned in the 1960s, are more impartial, if more diffuse: The sets this time were made by the painter F. Kiesler, and although the jungle was just as geometric as Franz Singer’s Venetian streets, Homolka was able to convey the necessary horror.39 The critics of the evening voiced similar opinions ranging between out-and-out rejection and plain lack of understanding: among the verdicts were a “non-space stage” (Un­raumbühne) and a “drying-room”—“with sheets hanging sideways” (Alfred Kerr) and “overly long pauses for stage changes.” 40

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5 , 6   The Emperor Jones (production of Die Truppe, directed by Berthold Viertel, “Raumbühne” by Frederick Kiesler), playbill, Lustspielhaus, Berlin 1924 [Wienbibliothek im Rathaus, Manuscript Department, collection Franz Glück, ZPH 1443, 2.9.2.5.]

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Although Kiesler had had the vision and the courage (“I apparently had in me the feeling for space and for acting in space.” 41), proclaiming the “Raumbühne” for the first time on the playbill and thus overwriting the traditional “stage set,” he had not had the time, as he himself reca­itulated, to adapt an “outdated stage” so as to make his idea mobile by means of speedy stage changes and to ensure that form, shapes, color, sound, light and mechanics “also played their part”:42 … the emperor appeared and he walked down the incline of the floor; thus space becomes visible. As he hears the beat of a tom-tom, he tries to escape. He starts to run, and as he moves the transfor­mation of the stage begins. The drum beat gets faster and faster, indicating the passage of time, and time merges into space. I carried this inspiration into scenery, designing it kinetically and having it move through the length of the play.43 Lacking the planned “metamorphoses,” the first Raumbühne remained “amateurish” for theater pragmatists of the like of Ernst Josef Aufricht: The thrilling drama in the jungle … could not win through as Viertel had punished us and himself with this stage designer.44

7   The Emperor Jones, stage photograph, Oskar Homolka, Lustspielhaus, Berlin 1924 [Photograph by Zander & Labisch, Theaterwissenschaftliche Sammlung, Universität zu Köln]

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Frederick Kiesler, Berthold Viertel and Karl Kraus Between Vienna, Berlin and New York

No comment is recorded from Berthold Viertel himself, and it is unclear to what extent he backed or came into conflict with Kiesler. However, the two evidently did not part on the best of terms because when Kiesler returned to Vienna to start promoting his next project—the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik (International Exhibition of New Theater Techniques)—at the Musik- und Theaterfest der Stadt Wien (Music and Theater Festival of the City of Vienna), he was apparently bothered by Viertel’s network in Red Vienna. He wrote to Herbert Ihering: Viertel is running around here in all of the underground and aboveground channels.—I am determined not to do anything whatsoever with him.45 This was no doubt an allusion to Viertel’s close ties to Karl Kraus and to his good contacts to the social democratic culture scene, from whom Kiesler was hoping to get the commission. What is more, in a “last act of faith,”46 Berthold Viertel and his Truppe took a clear stand once more in the following weeks, staging and celebrating Karl Kraus and thus making a clear statement against Berlin’s market-oriented culture scene.47 The Sozialdemokratische Kunststelle, in turn, also brought this production to Vienna. Kraus, who thanked Viertel publicly in Die Fackel, addressing him with the informal German “Du” (both signs of the greatest respect), was “touched” by his friend’s achievement and loyalty.48 Later, he was more than willing to take over Viertel’s debts from Die Truppe experi­ment. Herbert Ihering, on the other hand—thrust, like the press as a whole, into the role of adversary by this last production—concluded his report on Die Truppe with a very tough verdict on Viertel: Die Truppe … also destroyed themselves. But gallantly. An uncom­­ promising will sought to prevail here. However, because Berthold Viertel is not an artist, but only a lover of art, because his will is not backed up by skill, he fails to carry through any absolute com­mitment. … Viertel [has] done damage to the cause of idealistic theater with the best will and the most honorable intention. He was regarded as an exponent of artistic theater. Personal failure is foisted on the cause.49 Berthold Viertel described Ihering’s criticism in a letter to Kraus as “the most damning assessment that I have ever received in my life”: Now it will be known for all time that I am no artist and why one must be tough on me, and why the performances of the Truppe

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were not sold out. There has been no inflation, no stabilization, no weariness with theater on the part of the audience, and no bad winter for theater. The other theaters where I did not do any productions did splendidly.50 It seems that battle lines were being drawn. Shortly before, Herbert Ihering had offered Kiesler a platform in the Berliner Börsen Kurier to expound the theory of his idea for a Raumbühne and to explain why it had not worked with The Emperor Jones. What is more, Kiesler maintained a correspondence—albeit a rather one-sided one— with Ihering during this time. Kraus, for his part, made elaborate fun of “stage reformism” in Die Fackel after the further development of Kiesler’s Raumbühne in the theater exhibition at Vienna’s Konzerthaus had made headlines: This Raumbühne, that will live on in the history of theater as the attempt to have the stage driven away by fools. The whole nonsense of a non-existent ‘problem’ contrived out of nowhere and projected into empty space, although the ‘picture-frame stage’ may one day cease to exist because the stage as such may cease to exist, is so annoying that one simply cannot understand how people who represent cultural trends could bring themselves to exhibit such chimeras … even in a collection of curios.51 Here, critical modernism failed to comprehend its own consequences or—to draw on Viertel’s metaphor of the generations: Karl Kraus became the conservative father who no longer understood his own son.52 Exile in the United States—a postscript

Both Frederick Kiesler and Berthold Viertel left Europe as early as the end of the 1920s, embarking on new lives in the United States. Viertel, who arrived in Hollywood in 1928, began to perceive cultural differences more and more keenly after a good start to his career and, as of 1932, felt the need to return to Europe, where he had, on the whole, received greater recognition for his artistic integrity and critical stance. Prevented from returning when the Nazis assumed power, and with England in particular offering no refuge after 1939, the United States became his home in exile. Kiesler, for his part, initially had a difficult time in New York (1927– 1933), that he would later even refer to as “lost years of my life.”53

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To begin with, Stefi Kiesler earned a living for them almost single-handedly as a “Foreign Language Specialist” for the New York Public Library.54 Nevertheless, the couple probably soon made a clear decision to stay in the United States—with both of them becoming US citizens as early as 1936. Although the Kieslers became increasingly successful locals in the 1930s, their circle was a mixture of Americans and European exiles. Meanwhile in Europe, Herbert Ihering took over the job of his dis­ placed Jewish rival Alfred Kerr at the Berliner Tageblatt in 1934.55 And Karl Kraus died in Vienna in 1936 following fierce differences with Berthold Viertel the previous year. Only shortly afterwards did the networks of critical modernist Vienna begin to connect up again in exile circles, with past hostilities apparently being tacitly settled. As of 1939, and specifically in the 1940s, Berthold Viertel’s name begins to feature occasionally in Stefi Kiesler’s diary entries. She lobbied to get Berthold Viertel’s exile anthology of poetry Fürchte dich nicht! (Do not be afraid!) sold and also purchased it for the New York Public Library.56 The second volume of exile poems Der Lebenslauf (The course of life) also featured in the Kieslers’ library in 1947.57 They also frequented “Die Tribüne für Freie Deutsche Literatur und Kunst in Amerika” (The Tribune for Free German Literature and Art in America), where Berthold Viertel staged several productions and organized a Goethe and Kraus evening. The Kieslers were also in attendance on April 29, 1945 when the Tribüne and the Austro American Tribune celebrated Viertel’s sixtieth birthday at the Barbizon Plaza. Various private meetings are also documented.58 Berthold Viertel returned to Europe in 1948, making a determined effort to promote critical modernism in post-war Austria by means of his productions and his autobiographical project. Kiesler’s works became world-famous at a time when the circles of Viennese modernism were long gone—but he did not tire of stressing that the roots of his ideas lay in Vienna and Berlin between 1908 and 1926: The three years 1922, 1923, 1924 were the most fruitful years of my life. What I am doing today are follow-ups of these ideas, and I’m still looking, as I was 40 years ago, for a chance to build them.59

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Thomas H. Creighton, “Kiesler’s Pursuit of an Idea,” Progressive Architecture 42, no. 7 (July 1961), 106. Edward Timms, Dynamik der Kreise, Resonanz der Räume: Die schöpferischen Impulse der Wiener Moderne (Weitra: Bibliothek der Provinz, 2013), 62–64. Berthold Viertel, “Café Central” [vol. II], n. d. [probably December 1948], n. p., K19, A: Viertel, DLA. (Translated from German.) Barbara Lesák, Die Kulisse explodiert: Friedrich Kieslers Theaterexperimente und Architekturprojekte 1923–1925 (Vienna: Löcker, 1988), 33, 49. (Translated from German.) Creighton, “Kiesler’s Pursuit of an Idea,” 106. Ibid., 105. Cf. Dieter Bogner, “Friedrich Kiesler im Spannung­ feld von Adolf Loos und Josef Hoffmann: Ein Ver­ such,” in zwischenräume – zwischentöne: Festschrift für Patrick Werkner, ed. Eva Kernbauer and Bernadette Reinhold (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018), p. 151–157. (Translated from German). Berthold Viertel, “Österreichische Illusionen/ Der Knabe Robert Fürth,” n. d., n.p., NK12, A: Viertel, DLA. (Translated from German.) Karl Mannheim, “Das Problem der Generationen,” in Kölner Vierteljahrshefte für Soziologie 7 (1928); David Scott, “The Temporality of Generations: Dialogue, Tradition, Criticism,” in New Literary History 45, no. 2 (2014), 157–181. Berthold Viertel, “Konzepte,” in Kindheit eines Cherub: Autobiographische Fragmente, ed. Siglinde Bolbecher and Konstantin Kaiser (Vienna: Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, 1990), 292–297 [=Berthold Viertel – Studienausgabe in vier Bänden, vol. 2]. (Translated from German.) Hermann Broch spoke of “aesthetics and/versus ethics,” cf. Hermann Broch, Hofmannsthal und seine Zeit: Eine Studie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 2001); Nike Wagner of “integration and/ versus opposition,” cf. Nike Wagner, Geist und Geschlecht: Karl Kraus und die Erotik der Wiener Moderne (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1982), cf. also Steven Beller, ed., Rethinking Vienna 1900 (New York: Berghahn, 2001), 200. Creighton, “Kiesler’s Pursuit of an Idea,” 109. Berthold Viertel, “Die Stadt der Kindheit,” n. d., n. p., NK09, A: Viertel, DLA. (Translated from German.) Definitions of “critical modernity” based on Steven Beller and Allan Janik in Beller, Rethinking Vienna 1900, 16, 31, 41–43; Allan Janik, Wittgenstein’s Vienna Revisited (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2001), 16–22, 226. Creighton, “Kiesler’s Pursuit of an Idea,” 105. Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation (ÖFLKS), PHO 4208/0. Cf. Lesák, Die Kulisse explodiert, 7–24. Jill Amanda Meißner, “Stefi Kiesler (1897–1963): Künstlerfrau – Vermittlerin – Literatin” (diploma thesis: University of Vienna, 2013), 7.

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81 19 Berthold Viertel, “War Diary” [translation with no cover page], n. d., n. p., K16, A: Viertel, DLA. 20 ÖFLKS, SFP 6275/0. 21 Cf. i. a. Stefi Kiesler, letter to Vera Craener, December 2, 1958, ÖFLKS, LET 2281/0. 22 Creighton, “Kiesler’s Pursuit of an Idea,” 105. 23 Klaus Völker, “Berthold Viertels dramatische Opposition und sein Bemühen um ein Theater der Ensemblekunst im Berlin der Zwanziger Jahre,” in Traum von der Realität: Berthold Viertel, Zwischen­ welt 5, ed. Siglinde Bolbecher, Konstantin Kaiser and Peter Roessler (Vienna: Theodor Kramer Gesellschaft, 1998), 99–120, 104. (Translated from German.) 24 Berthold Viertel, “Wege zur Truppe,” in Berthold Viertel: Schriften zum Theater, ed. Gert Heidenreich, with the collaboration of Manfred Nöbel, with a preface by Herbert Ihering (Munich: Kösel 1970), 252–254. (Translated from German.) 25 Cf. Völker, “Berthold Viertels dramatische Opposi­ tion,” 103; Ernst Josef Aufricht, Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne: Aufzeichnungen eines Theaterdirek­ tors (Berlin: Alexander Verlag, 1998), 50; BZ am Mittag, May 17, 1923. 26 Salka Viertel, The Kindness of Strangers (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1969), 105. 27 Ibid., 106. 28 Aufricht, Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne, 53. (Translated from German.) 29 Cf. i. a. Berliner Börsen-Courier and Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, September 13, 1923. 30 Cf. Herbert Ihering, October 9, 1923, in Von Reinhardt bis Brecht: Vier Jahrzehnte Theater und Film. Zweiter Band: 1924–1929 (Berlin: Aufbau, 1959), 143–144; other opinions can be found in Berliner Börsen Zeitung, Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Vossische Zeitung, BZ am Mittag, October 8, 1923. 31 Aufricht, Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne, 54–55 (Translated from German.); Viertel, The Kindness of Strangers, 107. 32 Berthold Viertel, “Georg Kaiser,” in Heidenreich, Berthold Viertel: Schriften zum Theater, 103–109, 108. 33 Viertel, The Kindness of Strangers, 107. 34 Aufricht, Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne, 56. (Translated from German.) 35 Creighton, “Kiesler’s Pursuit of an Idea,” 111. 36 Cf. Lesák, Die Kulisse explodiert, 42–44 and 70–75. 37 Creighton, “Kiesler’s Pursuit of an Idea,” 111. 38 Aufricht, Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne, 56. (Translated from German.) 39 Viertel, The Kindness of Strangers, 107. 40 Cf. Barbara Lesák and Thomas Trabitsch, eds., Frederick Kiesler: Theatervisionär – Architekt – Künstler (Vienna: Brandstätter, 2012), 26–27 and Lesák, Die Kulisse explodiert, 90. (Translated from German.) 41 Creighton, “Kiesler’s Pursuit of an Idea,” 111. 42 Cf. Frederick Kiesler, “Schauspieler, Bildbühne, Raumbühne,” in Berliner Börsenkurier, March 16

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and 21, 1924; cf. Lesák, Die Kulisse explodiert, 63–90. Kiesler’s dissatisfaction with the execution was also documented by Erica Tietze-Conrat in her diaries, cf. Erica Tietze-Conrat, Tagebücher: Der Wiener Vasari (1923–1926), vol. 1, ed. Alexandra Caruso (Vienna: Böhlau, 2015), 198. 43 Creighton, “Kiesler’s Pursuit of an Idea,” 111. Barbara Lesák described how he later assembled six scene sets from The Emperor Jones so as to demonstrate his original intention and to serve as an example of a “mechanical space scenery” (cf. Lesák and Trabitsch, Frederick Kiesler: Theatervisionär – Architekt – Künstler, 27 and Lesák, Die Kulisse explodiert, 88–90). 44 Aufricht, Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne, 56. (Translated from German.) 45 Frederick Kiesler, card to Herbert Ihering, January 29, 1924, archives of the Akademie der Künste Berlin, Herbert-Ihering-Archiv 1694. (Translated from German.) 46 Viertel, The Kindness of Strangers, 108; Aufricht, Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne, 57–58. (Translated from German.) 47 Berthold Viertel, Karl Kraus zum fünfzigsten Geburtstag (Vienna: Richard Lányi, 1924); Viertel, The Kindness of Strangers, 108. 48 Karl Kraus, Die Fackel 649–656 (1924), 2–10. 49 Berliner Börsen Courier, June 3, 1924. (Translated from German.) 50 Berthold Viertel, letter to Karl Kraus, June 5, 1924, in Viertels Welt – der Regisseur, Lyriker, Essayist Berthold Viertel, ed. Siglinde Bolbecher (Vienna: Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, 1988), 18. (Translated from German.) 51 Karl Kraus, Die Fackel 668–675 (1924), 91. (Translated from German.) 52 Cf. Timms, Dynamik der Kreise, 198–200. 53 Frederick Kiesler, Inside the Endless House (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1966), 419. 54 Meißner, “Stefi Kiesler,” 38–64. 55 In Zuckmayer’s Geheimreport (Secret Report), Ihering is classified as “Group 3 – Special cases, part positive, part negative,” cf. Carl Zuckmayer, Geheimreport, ed. Gunther Nickel and Johanna Schrön (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2002), 118–121. 56 Berthold Viertel, letter to his agent Barthold Fles, January 13, 1942, 69.3136, A:Viertel, DLA. 57 ÖFLKS, PHO 4662/0. 58 Cf. Stefi Kiesler’s calendar in the ÖFLKS. Private meetings are documented, for example, on June 10, 1944, March 7, 1945, August 19, 1946 and December 6, 1946. 59 Creighton, “Kiesler’s Pursuit of an Idea,” 110.

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New Insights into the Close-Knit Network of 1920s Vienna Dieter Bogner and Gerd Zillner

Stefi Kiesler’s calendars kept in the Frederick Kiesler Foundation’s archive, dating from 1930 to the 1950s, feature numerous names of American and European friends and acquaintances with whom the Kieslers were in contact. This information is an inexhaustible trove for researching the couple’s network in the New York arts and cultural scene. On the other hand, research on the Kieslers’ time in Vienna until their departure for New York in 1926 can draw on only little information on their involve­ ment in the city’s arts and culture scene.1 Most of the couple’s personal documents are assumed to have been lost when their apartment in Vienna and their studio were cleared. Failing to return to Vienna from their trip to New York and presumably no longer paying the rent, they were likely evicted.2 Publication of the diaries of Erica Tietze-Conrat 1  has done much to remedy the lack of information. Great thanks and respect are due to the Tietze-Matschiner family and the editor Alexandra Caruso for the excellent publication of these valuable sources.3 With vivid comments about acquaintances and friends, with brief references to personal differences and disappointments, and observations about cultural events, Tietze-Conrat’s notes provide an important insight into part of the cultural network in Vienna between 1923 and 1926. Commendably, in

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1   Erica Tietze-Conrat, c. 1925 [Wienbibliothek im Rathaus, Manuscript Department, partial estate Hans Tietze / Erica Tietze-Conrat, ZPH 1539, 3.4.21.] 2   Hans Tietze, Vienna 1927 [Photograph by Fayer, Vienna; digital image © ÖNB/Wien, Pb 580.555-F 508]

a separate volume the editor lists the main biographical data of the protagonists mentioned in the diaries so that the reader can appreciate the diversity of subjects and disciplines to be found in the cultural scene in which the Tietzes moved and in which the Kieslers were involved. In the first half of the 1920s, for a short time Vienna became a bustling center of the European avant-garde. Thanks to their exhibiting and lecturing activities, Hans Tietze 2  and Frederick Kiesler played an important part in this development. Two exhibitions count among the highlights of this reception of contemporary European art: the Inter­ nationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik (International Exhibition of New Theater Techniques) in September 1924 at the Vienna Konzerthaus, conceived, organized and designed by Frederick Kiesler, and the Inter­ nationale Kunstausstellung (International Art Exhibition)3  at the Vienna Secession, conceived by Tietze himself, that took place at the same time.4 Both shows were organized by the Gesellschaft zur Förderung moderner

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Kunst in Wien (Society for the Promotion of Modern Art in Vienna) that Hans Tietze had founded at the beginning of 1923. The Society’s lecturing and exhibiting activities continued until the beginning of the 1930s. So far, a single entry in the diaries of art critic Arthur Roessler pro­ vides the only information about the acquaintance of the Kieslers and the Tietzes prior to the summer of 1923: on January 30, Frederick Kiesler took part in a preparatory meeting concerning the foundation of the Gesellschaft zur Förderung moderner Kunst initiated by Hans Tietze.5 Presumably, the two men had already met before. Their acquaintance thus probably dates back to 1922, if not earlier, a time at which Kiesler was coming out as a painter in Vienna.6 Amidst the plethora of information contained in Erica Tietze-Conrat’s diaries, the numerous facets of the personal relationships between the Kieslers and the Tietzes are difficult to retrace. With the aim of making it

  3  Internationale Kunstausstellung, poster designed by Frederick Kiesler, Vienna 1924 [MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art, Vienna; digital image © MAK/Georg Mayer]

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easier to grasp and use this information, it will be detached from the overall context below. However, when using this information, one should not lose sight of the close-knit network as a whole. In the following, we will line up the diary entries that mention Frederick and Stefi Kiesler and join them together with comments. We will abandon the chronology of entries in favor of a coherent compilation, wherever it is necessary for the analysis of a certain event. Kiesler’s name appears for the first time on July 16, 1923 and for the last time in an entry of September 20, 1924 concerning the forthcoming opening of the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik conceived and designed by Kiesler. Hence, the diaries cover that important bio­ graphical period in which Kiesler developed the ideas and realized this show, an exhibition that would play a major role in shaping the Kieslers’ future.7 During these fourteen months the name appears almost thirty times, one to three times a month. The mentions increase between the end of October and the beginning of December 1923. Kiesler’s first big success that got him into the European avantgarde was the production of Karel Čapek’s drama R.U.R. at the Theater am Kurfürstendamm in Berlin. This was one of the Robert-Bühnen (Robert Stages) run by the theater entrepreneur Eugen Robert, who also operated a theater in Vienna, the Neues Wiener Theater. The piece was per­formed in Vienna daily from October 19 to November 6, 1923. On October 27, the Tietzes attended a performance together with Lilly and Hugo Steiner. In her diary, Tietze-Conrat praises Kiesler’s “decorations,” albeit noting weaknesses in the plot and in the acting: Evening snack with the Steiners, with whom we drove to Čapek’s R. U. R. in Pippsi (little car). Certainly a stimulating tendentious play with all the pros and cons of the same. Good raw material, should have been processed better. Dialogue unfunny, also no tragic link between the last act and previous acts. The new first couple of robot people should be connected to the earlier ones by an anti­ cipation of love. Dreadful acting. Kiesler’s decorations very good, but wasted on this uninspiring playing-around.8 The discussion about Kiesler’s concept for the planned theater show was in full swing at the time.9 The diaries reveal that Kiesler had invited Hans Richter to give a talk at his studio on November 10. The list of those present—Tietze-Conrat notes Benedikt Fred Dolbin, Max Ermers,

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Fannina Halle, Franz Theodor Csokor and Hans Rodenberg—provides valuable information about Frederick Kiesler’s associates: After 9 pm at Kiesler’s studio large assembly of engineers, poets, artists, art historians (including Dolbin, Ermers, Fannina Halle, Csokor, a terrible actor and Jew called Rodenberg), talk by Berlin painter Richter, repeatedly interrupted by heckling and discussions, who was appearing as a representative of the (misnamed) Constructionists ([J. J. P.] Oud in R’dam).10 Tietze-Conrat’s diary entries also shed light on a number of hitherto unknown details about Kiesler’s time in Vienna. Hans Richter presumably gave Kiesler several issues of his G magazine that Kiesler passed on to influential people in the cultural scene. In this context, Tietze-Conrat helped pave the way for him to contact Alma Mahler-Werfel. With a slightly ironical undertone, she notes on November 19, 1923: In the evening Kiesler and wife, Lia Rosen. Kiesler was to “grapho­ logize” Alma’s handwriting, but had little success. Thought it was a man’s handwriting 4  and so on. I did not tell him who the letter was from—but Lia Rosen recognized the writing immediately and approved of any analysis depreciating Alma. She must have had some unpleasant experience with Alma. Hans had been to see [David Josef] Bach about the theater exhibition, now we shall see what becomes of it.11 The following day, Tietze-Conrat arranged the meeting.12 Indeed, Kiesler succeeded in selling a G subscription to Alma Mahler-Werfel, as noted by Erica Tietze-Conrat on November 28, 1923. Introduced Kiesler to Alma in the afternoon—he handled her very cleverly. She subscribed to ‘G,’ the new magazine he is to edit (G = Gestaltung) and he asked her to work on it too. Irene Hellmann (a Redlich sister who was also there on and off) seemed terribly retrospective. [Franz] Werfel also came and made some good jokes, together with Hans, who came to pick me up.13 Hans Richter and the Kieslers remained close all their lives. Kiesler distributed the G magazine among friends, Richter returned the favor by printing photographs and excerpts of Kiesler’s Raumstadt manifesto. To her great disappointment, Stefi Kiesler’s Typo-Plastiken (Typo-Plastics) created in Paris, that she proposed to Richter for the cover of G, were not used, however.14 Although her works were printed in the Dutch De Stijl

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4   Alma Mahler-Werfel, postcard to Oskar Kokoschka, date unknown [Universität für angewandte Kunst, Kunstsammlung und Archiv]

magazine, this was done using the male pseudonym Pietro Saga probably devised by Theo van Doesburg.15 One of the interesting new insights afforded by the diaries is above all Kiesler’s repeated—but ultimately futile—efforts to use his contacts to the literature and theater scene of Berlin and Vienna in order to get Tietze-Conrat’s play Die Hochzeit des Tobias (The Wedding of Tobias) staged, something that she had longed for so fervently. On July 16, 1923 Tietze-Conrat notes: Because Kiesler is coming out tomorrow to get to know “Tobias,” I went home from the Albertina at about half past four to tidy up the numerous additions, etc., ready for him to read.16 Although the page for July 17 is missing from the diary, Tietze-Conrat notes the following day: Kiesler came round yesterday after all and was rather stunned by Tobias (not so much I). He says: Complete realism, but you can still sense the fourth dimension everywhere. On his advice,

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I wrote to [Elisabeth] Bergner to ask whether she really did intend to perform the piece.17 Two months later, Tietze-Conrat notes that Kiesler had intervened with Alfred Döblin on her behalf, whom Kiesler had apparently met while staying in Berlin on various occasions. Just how close-knit networks were in Vienna is shown by the fact that she got a second opinion about her text from Fritz Lampl, of all people, Frederick Kiesler’s best man. On September 17 she notes: Today I received a very warm anonymous letter from a reader of the Arbeiterzeitung about my poems—and a letter from Kiesler advising me to send the Tobias m[anu]s[cript] to Döblin, as he is one of the judges for the Kleist Award this year. I just phoned Lampl to read it to him before I have it typed out for this purpose …18 One week later, on September 26, this circle met again to discuss further procedure: In the evening I read Tobias to the Lampls and Mrs. Kiesler (I refused to have him and sent him into the next room). Grand succès. Afterwards, they really only argued about which of the three plays should receive the Kleist Award. It was agreed that I was certain to win (oh, these children!) 19 A later entry reveals that Kiesler personally interceded with Döblin on her behalf: Spoke with Kiesler about Döblin, who has read my dramas after all: He welcomed them as a very interesting dramatic achieve­ment, albeit with the personal reservation that the historical background did not appeal to him.20 Stefi Kiesler supported Tietze-Conrat by making a copy of the manuscript, for which she received a basket of fruit from the Naschmarkt, brought to the Kieslers in person on October 24: Had a basket filled with fruit at the Naschmarkt, took it to the Kieslers to thank Mrs. Kiesler for making a copy of Tobias. The Kleist Award was awarded before my manuscript arrived. Kiesler set out his theater exhibition plans to me. I hope he gets to do it—because then he wants to stage Tobias. I don’t believe anything anymore. I read a few poems—with tremendous success, that made me very melancholy as usual.21

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In an entry for November 8, 1923, Tietze-Conrat makes a hopeful/skeptical note of Kiesler’s intention of staging her play at the theater exhibition. The idea came to nothing, among other things due to the correctness of the state official Hans Tietze. The theater show should be really perfect, Vienna city council wants to join in, Hans is speaking to Bach about it next week. If only they could actually stage one of my plays! I talk with Hans about it. He says: “No, if it is organized by the Society, I cannot allow it.” I to him: Then you shall simply have to leave the Society—for my sake …  22 So a performance on the Raumbühne (Space Stage) was unthinkable. She expressed her disappointment in an entry for February 3, 2014, summing up Kiesler’s futile endeavors as follows: Kiesler came round yesterday morning to discuss with Hans the specialized program that he wants to submit to the local authorities. He has put together thirty “crucial” authors. Thinking back, I had a conversation with the Kieslers this last fall, and a few days later with Mrs. Kiesler. Back then, he considered it a done deal that one of my plays would be performed.23 The entries also reveal that Kiesler once again suggested giving Tietze-Conrat’s works to a director to read in spring 1924. However, he recommended submitting them anonymously. Resignedly, Tietze-Conrat adds a comment in parentheses to the entry for March 8, 1924: “likely because of feminism.” The fate of both Tietze-Conrat and Stefi Kiesler as artists reflects the lack of acceptance of female artists in the male-dominated arts and cultural scene of the avant-garde in the 1920s. Kiesler phoned yesterday, he wants to give my two Biblical things to the director or organizer [Renato] Mordo (?), who staged [Ernst] Toller and is now looking for a play for a Raimund theater matinée, and asked if I minded. It is to be anonymous so that he is not biased (likely because of feminism). Lia Rosen is in it. The thought is dreadful—but there’s nothing one can do about it. God knows I imagine Sarah differently. Slender and supple and not that bulky dwarf. Because Mordo is particularly radical, I’m sure nothing will come of it. But I am pleased that Kiesler feels the need to intercede.24 Kiesler continued to lobby for the play. He obviously gave the manuscript not to Renato Mordo, but to the actress Lia Rosen, who wanted to get

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it staged by Max Reinhardt. Apparently, it was more important for Tietze-Conrat to have it performed than to get a perfect fit for the role of Sarah, as she seems not to have objected to Lia Rosen’s intervention: Spoke with Kiesler on the phone today, he gave Tobias and Esther to Rosen (anonymously) and says that she is delighted with them and wants to play Esther with Reinhardt. She is going to show it to Reinhardt right after the première. I cannot believe it all. If Reinhardt does not want to, she would give it to Mordo. I pointed out to Kiesler that [Stefan] Hock has read Tobias.25 Kiesler promoted the plays of Tietze-Conrat over a longer period. However, it is seemingly inconsequential comments in the diaries that bring new insights for Kiesler research and substantiate assumptions for which there had previously been no sources. One interesting comment concerns Kiesler’s “project of reviving house theater [Haustheater],”26 another the differing opinions about the “Russian exhibition” at the Neue Galerie 27, and Kiesler’s meeting with the member of the Hungarian MA group Béla Uitz at George Grosz’s show: On Monday morning I asked about the cap at the lost and found, to no avail, then, after a dreadful ordeal, successfully submitted our passports for renewal, finally met Hans (and Uitz, Kiesler, etc.) at George Grosz’s exhibition. The water-colors are really excellent.28 Tietze-Conrat’s records contain a host of descriptions of social gatherings that afford a good insight into the Society’s network with which Kiesler, as a founding member, was regularly involved. She mentions one such meeting on November 26, 1923, with Otto Neurath and Oskar Strnad among those present: So yesterday was Stoffel’s 2nd big party with Minka and Giserl— and Frau Prof. [Rosa] Dvorak, whom we took along to Fannina Halle at around 6 pm. There was a giant gathering there, the Kieslers, Neurath, [Walther] Eidlitz, Csokor, [Philipp] Menczel, Steiners, [Oskar] Laske, [Georg] Ehrlich, [Victor] Wallerstein (Berlin), Strnad, etc. Fannina was always trying to spark off a smoochy art discus­ sion—following on from Hans’s last talk—but Hans refused. But she would insist on “summing up,” and so Csokor had to do a reading (Rote Straße—then two scenes from a new play), followed by Eidlitz with a beautiful novella, ‘Wladimir.’ 29

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As mentioned at the beginning, Kiesler also lectured on behalf of the Society. He gave one such talk on December 5, 1923 entitled “Individualis­ tic woodcut, cliché and usury,” about which Tietze-Conrat notes positively: Went to Kiesler’s talk with him [Josef Floch], that was really stimu­ lating and fascinating, despite the great length. I was the first to congratulate him in the artist’s lounge after­wards—he had com­ pletely collapsed and it made his head look really lovely.30 The entries also supply new information about preparations for the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik. Tietze-Conrat reports, for example, about a meeting at Fannina Halle’s home: In the afternoon had a theater exhibition meeting with Strnad at Fannina Halle’s. Afterwards, dissonant conversation with [Paul] Westheim, who is staying at Fannina’s place. With me was Gaby Ehrlich, who is badly worn out by dissertation and domestic difficulties.31 A passage from March 15 illustrates that the local authorities of Vienna had officially entrusted the Gesellschaft zur Förderung moderner Kunst with the agendas for the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theater­ technik at the Musik- und Theaterfest der Stadt Wien in 1924, with the Society in turn putting the architect Frederick Kiesler in charge of general planning of the event. Hans did not come home from the Society meeting until 10 pm, Kiesler made a good impression there and has been officially appointed for the exhibition in Sept[ember].32 Despite being disappointed that none of her plays was to be performed on the Raumbühne, Tietze-Conrat supported the exhibition for example by translating Fernand Léger’s article for the catalog. Self-critically, however, she notes that her translation “is not particularly good”:33 I have translated an article by Leger about the modern spectacle (catalog of the theater exhibition), I didn’t find it easy, and it is not particularly good. The last entry to mention Kiesler refers to the opening of the Inter­ nationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik.5  On September 21, 1924, Erica Tietze-Conrat notes: “The theater exhibition has been postponed till Wednesday, we are not traveling until Thursday.”34 However, there is no critical review of the exhibition as the couple traveled south for some time the morning after the opening and the next entry is not until October 1.

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5   Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik, poster designed by Frederick Kiesler, Vienna 1924 [MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art, Vienna; digital image © MAK / Georg Mayer]

We can only speculate about the nature of the personal relationship of the Kieslers and the Tietzes. They were presumably not among Tietze-Conrat’s closest friends, with whom she was on first-name terms. Her comments express great respect for Kiesler’s ideas, but are rather reserved emotionally. One reason is probably the ups and downs and, finally, the failure of Kiesler’s efforts to get the play Die Hochzeit des Tobias and other literary works by Tietze-Conrat staged. As she notes on March 8, 1924: “But I am pleased that Kiesler feels the need to intercede.” The Kieslers and the Tietzes stayed in loose contact in decades to follow, as evidenced by Stefi Kiesler’s calendars. In 1932, Hans Tietze traveled to New York, also taking the opportunity to visit the Kieslers.35 He returned to the United States in 1935. This time he was accompanied by his wife, and the two couples met once again. There is no record of any contact between the two couples for the period following the Tietzes’

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flight and while they were living in exile in the United States. At the meetings in April and May 1935, they obviously discussed a novel by Erica Tietze-Conrat. Now though, unlike in Vienna, it was probably Stefi Kiesler who offered her assistance. Even while traveling back to Europe, on board the Berengaria, Tietze-Conrat expresses her gratitude: You embraced my novel so warmly. I am not a spoilt author, I appreciate being discovered.36 She also mentions to Stefi Kiesler that she had met a “producer” on the ship who would take on “plays or even just ideas for plays.” Tietze-Conrat talks about the advice given her: I should 1) get the manuscript for the novel copyrighted at the Library of Congress in Washington … . I would ask one of my young American friends to take care of the matter so as not to bother you with that too … . 2) Mr. Kalich advised me to give the manuscript in German to Mr. Jacob Wilk (Warner Brothers Story Department) to read.37 The last surviving record of an interaction between the Tietzes and the Kieslers is a letter that Erica Tietze-Conrat wrote to Stefi on August 10. After thanking Stefi Kiesler for her support and encouragement, with a cheerful, ironic undertone she devises a possible incognito, not wanting to appear as an author using her own name. However, her cheerfulness vanished from her words, giving way to a disturbingly clear realization of the impending catastrophe in Europe. Here in Vienna, and indeed all of Europe, things are really bad; the neighborhood is still quite beautiful, but the ground below is trembling too noticeably. Our nerves have suffered terribly; in the evening leisure hours, my husband and I have only one talking point: when has the right time come to send our sons to you across the water. I would prefer to wash dishes over there (and so would my sons) than to go into battle here for—let us say—the Abyssinians. We will only be coming to America, God willing, in winter 1936/37. The Devil willing, earlier. 38

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1

Dieter Bogner and Matthias Boeckl, “Friedrich Kiesler 1890–1965,” in Friedrich Kiesler: Architekt Maler Bildhauer. 1890–1965, ed. Dieter Bogner (Vienna: Löcker, 1988), exhibition catalog, 11 ff.; Barbara Lesák, “Die Theaterbiographie des Frederick J. Kiesler,” in Frederick Kiesler: Theatervisionär – Architekt – Künstler, ed. Barbara Lesák and Thomas Trabitsch (Vienna: Brandstätter, 2012), exhibition catalog, 19 ff.; Gerd Zillner, “Friedrich Kiesler: Biografie,” in Friedrich Kiesler: Architekt, Künstler, Visionär, ed. Gerd Zillner, Peter Bogner, and Dieter Bogner (Munich: Prestel, 2017), exhibition catalog, 15 ff. The contents of their studio in Paris were lost. Although it is no longer possible to ascertain the exact circumstances, they are mentioned in various letters. Cf. Katherine Dreier, letter to Harvey Wiley Corbett, March 25, 1927, Katherine S. Dreier Papers / Société Anonyme Archive. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, box 9, folder 258. With regard to putting their belongings into storage and the loss of the Vienna apartment, cf. Lillian and Frederick Kiesler papers, circa 1910s–2003, bulk 1958–2000. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, box 40, folder 12, Correspondence Chronological, 1940. Alexandra Caruso, ed., Erica Tietze-Conrat: Tagebücher. 3 vols. (Vienna: Böhlau, 2015). Both exhibitions took place as part of the Musikund Theaterfest der Stadt Wien (Music and Theater Festival of the City of Vienna). See: Bogner and Boeckl, “Friedrich Kiesler 1890–1965,” 13 ff.; Barbara Lesák, Die Kulisse explodiert (Vienna: Löcker, 1988), 99 ff. Concerning the Internationale Kunstausstellung and the cultural setting of the two projects, see: Dieter Bogner, “Wien 1920–1930: ‘Es war als würde Utopia Realität,’” in Perspektiven in Bewegung. Sammlung Dieter und Gertraud Bogner im mumok, ed. Dieter Bogner et al. (Vienna: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Koenig, 2017), 325–352. (First printed in alte und moderne kunst, no. 190/191, 1983, 35–48). With regard to the importance of the Society for the realization of the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik see Alexandra Caruso, “Towards a modern attitude in all spheres of spiritual life! The Gesellschaft zur Förderung Moderner Kunst in Wien. From its foundation to planning of the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik,” in Vienna 1924. Hotspot of the avantgarde, ed. Peter Bogner (Vienna: Frederick Kiesler Foundation, 2018), exhibition catalog, 20–29. In his diary, Arthur Roessler notes that he spoke with “Prof. Hoffmann, Prof. Stix, Tietze, Rathe, Ernst, Ankwicz, Grimschitz, Merkl, Kiesler, Hauser, Jungnickel, Lili Steiner, Laske, Tal, Fontana, Dr. Gück, etc.” there, see: Arthur Roessler, diary entry for January 30, 1923, Wienbibliothek im Rathaus, manuscript collection, Arthur Roessler papers, H.I.N.-163772. (We would like to thank Alexander Kaiser for pointing out this note.)

2

3 4

5

6 7

8 9 10

11 12

13 14

15

16 17 18 19

20 21

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Alfred Polgar, “W.U.R.,” Die Weltbühne 45, November 8, 1923, 457. The first surviving diary begins on June 17, 1923. Previous entries have been lost. The last entry for the 1920s dates back to July 12, 1926, by which time the Kieslers were already in New York. Entry for October 27, 1923, Caruso, Erica TietzeConrat, vol. I, 119. (Translated from German.) Entries for October 24 and November 8, 1923, ibid., 116 and 128. Entry for November 10, 1923, ibid., 128. (Translated from German.) Kiesler’s ties to the constructivists associated with De Stijl magazine had deepened at this time. The painter Hans Richter, a member of De Stijl since 1922, was occupied primarily with avant-garde film in the early 1920s. Entry for November 19, 1923, Caruso, Erica TietzeConrat, vol. I, 134 f. (Translated from German.) Entry for November 20, 1923: “Lots of phone calls— among other things to say that Kiesler is coming to Alma’s on Monday.” Ibid., 135. (Translated from German.) Entry for November 28, 1923, ibid., 137. (Translated from German.) Bogner and Boeckl, “Friedrich Kiesler 1890–1965,” 21; Lesák, Die Kulisse explodiert, 189 ff.; Jill Meißner, “Stefi Kiesler (1897–1963): Künstler­ frau – Vermittlerin – Literatin” (diploma thesis: University of Vienna, 2013), 66 ff. Dieter Bogner, “Stefi Kiesler. Avantgarde aus der Schreibmaschine“, in Stadt der Frauen: Künstlerinnen in Wien 1900–1938, eds. Stella Rollig and Sabine Fellner (Munich: Prestel, 2019), exhibition catalog, 193–196. In a letter of July 11, 1926 from New York to the art historian Kurt Rathe, secretary of the Gesellschaft zur Förderung moderner Kunst, Stefi Kiesler writes in a postscript: “If you look at ‘De Stijl’ number 12, you’ll find a piece by me under the pseudonym Pietro Saga,” University of Vienna, Institute of Art History, Institute archive, Kurt Rathe papers (1886–1952), Rathe 6. (Translated from German.) Stefi Kiesler’s Typo-Plastics are among the earliest geometrical works using a typewriter. This mecha­ nical instrument only gained widespread currency in art in the post-war years, in concrete poetry. Entry for July 16, 1923, Caruso, Erica Tietze-Conrat, vol. I, 55. (Translated from German.) Entry for July 18, 1923, ibid., 56. (Translated from German.) Entry for September 17, 1923, ibid., 109. (Translated from German.) Entry for September 26, 1923, ibid., 110. (Translated from German.) Concerning Döblin’s rejection, see the entry for November 5, 1923. Entry for February 1, 1924, ibid., 200. (Translated from German.) Entry for October 24, 1923, ibid., 116. (Translated from German.) The typescript is held in the Kristin Matschiner Archive. Unlike her writings on art history, Tietze-Conrat’s literary work is hardly ever

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22 23

24 25 26 27

28 29

30 31

32 33

34

The Kieslers and the Tietzes

mentioned in the biographical and scientific literature. Entry for November 8, 1923, ibid., 128. (Translated from German.) Entry for February 3, 1924, ibid., 200. (Translated from German.) She reiterated her disappointment in the entry for February 6: “The very next morning I abandoned my decision to call on Alma in the next few days and tell her of my literary disappointments (including Kiesler), and I wrote her a letter that I won’t.” Ibid., 202. (Translated from German.) Entry for March 8, 1924, ibid., 212 f. (Translated from German.) Entry for March 30, 1924, ibid., 220. (Translated from German.) Entry for November 3, 1923, ibid., 124. (Translated from German.) Entry for February 17, 1924, ibid., 205: “Very active yesterday. In the morning, the opening of the Russian exhibition (Neue Galerie), again no pictures, just graphic arts. Unimpressive. Audience divided, Dolbin, [Arthur] Stemmer, Kiesler— elated, the others rather abasso.” (Translated from German.) Entry for April 16, 1924, ibid., 225. (Translated from German.) Entry for November 26, 1923, ibid., 136. (Translated from German.) Tietze-Conrat uses the untranslatable term “kunstschmuserische Diskussion.” Entry for December 5, 1923, Caruso, Erica TietzeConrat, vol. I, 139. (Translated from German.) Entry for March 9, 1924, ibid., 213. (Translated from German.) A meeting of the Gesellschaft zur Förderung moderner Kunst concerning preparations for the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik took place in the apartment of art historian Fannina Halle. Oskar Strnad was to present his model of a Ringtheater at the exhibition in the fall, “a theater in the round conceived on the basis of a moderately historicizing mode of construction” (Lesák, Die Kulisse explodiert, 103). Halle, who was close to Paul Westheim, was a regular publisher in Westheim’s magazines, cf. Alexandra Caruso, “Leben in der Kunst – eine moderne Inszenierung, Hans Tietzes ‘Gesellschaft zur Förderung moderner Kunst in Wien’ (diploma thesis: University of Vienna, 2008), 113–116; Lutz Windhöfel, Paul Westheim und “Das Kunstblatt”: Eine Zeitschrift und ihr Herausgeber in der Weimarer Republik (Cologne: Böhlau, 1995), 240, 286. Entry for March 15, 1924, ibid., 214. (Translated from German.) Entry for August 31, 1924, ibid., 256. (Translated from German.) Cf. Fernand Léger, “Das Schauspiel. Licht / Farbe / Film,” in Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik: Katalog, Programm, Almanach, ed. Frederick Kiesler (Vienna: Würthle & Sohn, 1924), exhibition catalog, 6. Entry for September 21, 1924, Caruso, Erica TietzeConrat, vol. I, 261. (Translated from German.)

35 Stefi Kiesler, letter to Kurt Rathe, July 11, 1926: “What else is new in Vienna? What are the Tietzes, Laske, etc., doing,” University of Vienna, Institute of Art History, Institute archive, Kurt Rathe papers (1886–1952), Rathe 6. (Translated from German.) Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, April 5, 1932 (“Dinner Dr. Hans Tietze & [Alfred H.] Barr”) and April 12, 1932 (“K. dinner with Tietze, [José Clemente] Orosco, [Alma] Reed”), both ÖFLKS, MED 103/0; and February 3, 1935 (“… 4h Dr. Tietze at our place / Dr. Bach at our place / Shapiro and Cheney”), April 18, 1935 (“8 p.m. dinner with Mrs. Tietze”) and May 8, 1935 (“Dr. & Mrs. Tietze here / for dinner”), ÖFLKS, MED 849/0. 36 Erica Tietze-Conrat, letter to Stefi Kiesler, n. d. [on board the Berengaria, Cunard Lines; postmark May 17, 1935], ÖFLKS, LET 2644/0. (Translated from German.) 37 Ibid. (Translated from German.) 38 Erica Tietze-Conrat, letter to Stefi Kiesler, August 10, 1935, ÖFLKS, LET 2645/0. (Translated from German.)

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A   Bauhaus Book T   hat Never Was Torsten Blume

In 1926 László Moholy-Nagy announced a publication by Frederick Kiesler dealing with “Neue Formen der Demonstration. Die Raumstadt” (New Forms of Demonstration. The City in Space) for the series of Bauhausbücher published in collaboration with Walter Gropius.1 This trail­ blazing series was obviously unthinkable without Kiesler. The Bauhaus masters and the main De Stijl artists had recently published books and the aim was now to add some new contributions. The specific reason for including Kiesler in the avant-garde universe was the spectacular Raum­ stadt exhibi­tion design that he had built in 1925 to showcase the Austrian theater section at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts) in Paris. Its impact was above all thanks to the manifesto that he published in De Stijl magazine the same year.2 Kiesler had impressively elevated his seemingly weightless exhibition installation to a vision for a new and open spatial design for entire cities. El Lissitzky had previously drafted comparable visions of spatial and urban develop­ ment with his Wolkenbügel (Cloud Irons). There were also similarities with Lissitzky’s Proun 2, 5  room shown in 1922 at the Erste Russische Kunstaus­ stellung (First Russian Art Exhibition) in Berlin and with designs for rooms and houses created by Theo van Doesburg or Piet Mondrian. Whereas Lissitzky, van Doesburg and Mondrian drafted their new sculptural spatial designs only in drawings, Kiesler also rendered his Raumstadt as a

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practical model for a new, modern feeling of space and life. An enthusi­astic comment by Maurice Raynal in Hans Richter’s G magazine referred to the “boundless­ness, unconditional freedom of space” that “challenges the force of our feeling of life.” 3 The Raumstadt was a refinement on the Leger- und Trägersystem that Kiesler had designed for the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik (International Exhibition of New Theater Techniques) in Vienna in 1924. This freestanding system made up of L- and T-shaped beams was a three-dimensional structure open to all sides that showcased not on­ly the exhibits, but also the space itself by means of linearity and asym­ metrical arrangements. Regarded as active users of space, visitors were additionally encouraged to move around the exhibition.4 One reason that Kiesler’s Bauhaus book was ultimately not pub­ lished may be that he had already left Europe for New York in 1926, the year it was announced, in order to organize the International Theatre Exposition. On the other hand, Lissitzky’s rejection of Kiesler may have induced Moholy-­­Nagy not to pursue the book project. Lissitzky, one of MoholyNagy’s most important friends, feared that Kiesler might “take advantage”

1   Kurt Schmidt, Mechanisches Ballett (Mechanical Ballet), watercolor and pencil on paper, 1923 [Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau]

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of the presentation of his Russian theater works at the New York show, calling him a “plagiarist” who made “great ideas petty.” 5 Van Doesburg, in contrast, was enthusiastic about Kiesler’s exhi­ bition method, writing: This is the first demonstration of how to pre­sent related works suggestively in their relations … . This spatial exhibition method has … shown what the modern exhibition system for demonstra­ting collective works will be like in the future.6 Van Doesburg had met Kiesler in 1923 in Berlin after attending a pro­duc­ tion of Karel Čapek’s R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) and praised Kiesler’s electro­mechanical stage design. Through van Doesburg, a tire­less networker for De Stijl and the “Constructivist International,” 7 Kiesler was able to make contact with the local constructivist group in Berlin. The group included Hans Richter, Willi Baumeister, Werner Graeff, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Moholy-Nagy and also Lissitzky. The Bauhaus was doubtless one topic of conversation in these circles, but also in the Sturm group headed by the gallerist and publisher Herwarth Walden. Van Doesburg’s disappointment with Bauhaus affairs may have played a role in Kiesler’s decision not to go to Weimar, nor to try to connect up with the Bauhaus. He certainly was aware that the Bauhaus had presented itself at its first exhibition in August 1923 and with an exten­sive book publication. Kiesler was interested in the work of the stage depart­ment founded in 1921, headed first by Lothar Schreyer and as of 1923 by Oskar Schlemmer, as well as the theater experiments of Wassily Kandinsky and Moholy-Nagy. It may appear strange that Moholy-Nagy wanted to pay tribute to Kiesler at the Bauhaus with a book publication about his exhibition design as opposed to his works for the stage, but is understandable if you consider that the Raumstadt was essentially a performative staging of space and that the ultimate aim of Kiesler’s stage designs was not to renew theater in the stricter sense. Instead, as spatial art they were a station where one changes (Umsteigestation) 8 from representational art to archi­ tecture. The Bauhaus stage was equally involved in finding new ways of funda­mentally renewing architecture as spatial art. The Bauhaus, Kiesler and many avant-gardists saw analyzing the three-dimensional possibilities of the stage, harnessing all elements of the stage set and stage machin­ ery, and doing away with the proscenium stage in order to create

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innovative spatial relations between the audience and the actors as a suitable way of testing concepts of space in theater that could be applied to exhibitions, house building and urban development. Exhibitors of the Bauhaus stage

The local authorities of Vienna appointed Kiesler curator of the Inter­ nationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik in 1924, a function in which he officially established contact with the Bauhaus. In a letter to Gropius of May 14, 1924 he invited “the theater department of the State Bauhaus in Weimar,” noting that he “would be particularly gratified at this co­ operation.” 9 Gropius replied on May 19: Our stage department has recent­ly completed a number of totally new works. … However, because the best way to present stage things is in actual productions, I would also like to ask if it might be possible to invite us to stage our Mechanisches Ballett [Mechanical Ballet] and the Triadisches Ballett [Triadic Ballet] 1  (Oskar Schlemmer) that we are convinced would be successful in Vienna … . It [the Triadisches Ballett] has shown that it retains its effect on any kind of audience thanks to its light-hearted elements. There appears to have been a great interest in this first opportunity to showcase the Bauhaus stage internationally, even if “the manner of participation in the exhibition [was] not yet quite clear” for Gropius and he offered “designs on a smaller scale” along with “smaller and life-size figurines and costumes and a number of peculiar sceneries.” Furthermore, Gropius announced “a book about our stage experiments so far with numerous illustrations” that “is certain to be finished in time for the exhibition in Vienna.”10 However, the organizational and financial circumstances of the participation proved to be extremely difficult on both sides.11 Kiesler’s visit to the Bauhaus, for example—announced several times—did not take place. On July 23, 1924 the Bauhaus administration therefore wrote to the exhibition management in Vienna: “Mr. Kiesler, whom you had announced, has yet to appear in Weimar. Mr. Schlemmer (the Director of the stage work­­shop) is going away tomorrow for at least one month so that we will not be able to present the costumes for the Triadisches Ballett that have been laid out since Mr. Kiesler announced his visit as they need to be packed up again. Only students from the stage workshop (K. Schmidt,

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G. Teltscher) will be able to show him the Mechanisches Ballett.”12 On September 11, 1924 Gropius was still unfortunately unsure about the participation “despite all our efforts,” stating that “no letters, telegrams or telephone conversations … have been able to clarify the whole affair as the financial question remains unsettled.” 13 In the end he did manage to send two crates of exhibits to Vienna after Kiesler had written on September 10, 1924 that “the reflektorische Lichtspiele [reflecting light games] … have been accepted for performance.” 14 The Bauhaus stage was well represented at the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik. Schlemmer showed stage designs for Paul Hindemith’s operas Das Nusch-Nuschi (The Nusch-Nuschi) (1921) and Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen (Murderer, Hope of Women) (1922) along with designs for the Figurales Kabinett (Figural Cabinet) (1922) and the Triadisches Ballett (1922). The Goldkugel (Golden Sphere) 2  figurine from the latter was also exhibited. Moholy-Nagy featured with two score sketches for a Mechanische Exzentrik (Mechanical Eccentricity). On show were also designs and figurines for the Mechanisches Ballett by the students Kurt Schmidt, Georg Teltscher and Theodor Bogler 15 along with figurine designs and the score of Lothar Schreyer’s piece Kreuzigung (Crucifixion) (1921).16

2   Oskar Schlemmer, Triadisches Ballett (Triadic Ballet), dancer in the costume Goldkugel (Golden Sphere) [Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau]

3   Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, Farblichtspiele (Color-Light-Games), scene photo, c. 1924 [Photograph by Studio Eckner, Weimar, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau]

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But the performance of Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack’s Farblichtspiele (Color-Light-Plays) 3 , 4 , accompanied by piano music, made the biggest impression at the exhibition opening on September 24, 1924. For this purpose, the apparatus was placed directly alongside or on Kiesler’s Raumbühne (Space Stage) in the present-day Mozart-Saal. Enthusiastic, the critic Alfred Sandt described it as follows: An aston­ishing beauty is revealed to the viewer. Not the harmony of color and sound is over­whelm­ing, but rather the unadorned form in its crystal-clear purity. A straight line, a wavy line, a circle, a cube, the simplest of shapes in the realm of natural creation are seen in­ dividually or com­bined, without serving any symbolic expression.17 The audience of the day did not realize that this was a successful interac­ tion of a Bauhaus stage production with Kiesler’s Raumbühne, particularly as the Farblichtspiele were not presented explicitly as a con­tribu­tion of the Bauhaus stage. They certainly did notice the Bauhaus contribu­tions, however. Ladislaus Tuszynski’s cover drawing for the Illustrierte Kronen­ zeitung published on September 25, 1924 suggests as much.5  Captioned “Theater art of tomorrow,” sketches of three Bauhaus contributions featured prominently below the new caricatured exhibition projects: two figurine

4   Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack at the piano next to the apparatus of his Farblichtspiele (ColorLight-Games) with Friedrich Wilhelm Bogler and Marli Heimann during a performance, 1924 [Photograph by A. & E. Frankl, Berlin, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau]

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5   Ladislaus Tuszynsky, Theaterkunst von morgen (Theater Arts of Tomorrow), in Illustrierte Kronen-Zeitung, September 25, 1924, caricaturing works by Lothar Schreyer, Kurt Schmidt and Oskar Schlemmer

designs by Schreyer, a Mensch+Maschine (Human+Machine) drawing by Schmidt, and the Goldkugel figurine from Schlemmer’s Triadisches Ballett as a “Ballet Costume.” In the exhi­­bition catalog, however, the Bauhaus stage was not as clearly recognizable as a single entity, with only one text by Lothar Schreyer about the “Bühne des Menschen” (The Human Stage)18 and scattered illustrations of the works on show. Instead, Germany featured in the form of texts from Sturm circles and the expressionist experiments of the Sturm stage. Herwarth Walden, for instance, wrote about the “Theater,” Wilhelm Wauer about the “Actor,” and Rudolf Blümner about the “Art of Speaking.”

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Gropius nevertheless wrote to thank Kiesler on October 28, 1924: “Only now have I received the theater catalog, and I would just like to let you know how delighted I was with this work. My only regret is that you were not with us … I hear that you are under fierce attack. But this must only encourage your work. I am more than familiar with this and would thus … like to express my sincere sympathies with your work.”19 Kiesler thanked Gropius for this accolade on November 9, 1924, informing him “that Hirschfeld and his comrades have made excellent publicity for the State Bauhaus and aroused new sympathies for it.” At the same time, he regretted that he “had failed to get other Bauhaus events accep­ted despite fighting for months,” as “only very little money had been made available for events.” Kiesler stressed that he had “not omitted to draw the public’s attention to the works of Schlemmer, Hirschfeld and their comrades during the daily guided tours.” In conclu­ sion, he asked Gropius to give his “best, most comradely wishes to Moholy-Nagy, Hirschfeld, Bogler and the two ladies who were in Vienna.” 20 Kiesler presented some more contributions of the Bauhaus stage at the International Theatre Exposition in New York in 1926. This time he exhibited a sketch by Marcel Breuer for Varieté, four works by the Bauhaus student Xanti Schawinsky (Drei Figuren [Three Figures], Tiller Girls, Die zwei Veroneser [The Two Veronese], Maschine gegen Stepptänzer [Machine versus Stepdancer]), and scene plans, sheets on dance theory, for the Tria­disches Ballett and for Varieté by Schlemmer. Like those of Moholy-Nagy (Varieté, Partiturskizze [Score Sketch]) and Farkas Molnár (Das U-Theater [The U-Theater] and photographs), who were featured as representatives of Hungary, these exhibits were not identified as Bauhaus contributions.21 These may have been illustrations that were also printed in the Bauhaus book Die Bühne im Bauhaus (The Theater of the Bauhaus) published in 1925.22 Although Kiesler must have been familiar with this publication, it is not clear whether he propagated it in the exhibition. Stage totality

As early as 1923 when Kiesler had proclaimed a “crisis of theater” in his first piece on theater, calling for a new “stage totality” and the col­ lective fashioning of “the whole stage form,” 23 this had the ring of the tasks that Gropius had formulated for the stage department installed

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at the Bauhaus in 1921: “We are exploring the various problems of space, the body, move­ment, form, light, color and sound. We represent the movement of the organic and the mechanical body, the sound of language, music and noise, and build the stage space and the stage fig­ ures.” 24 Kiesler’s desire for a renewal of the stage “from the ground plan” and Gropius’s demand for a “cleansing and renewal of the modern stage” and its rebuilding “based on the primal foundations of its history” also bear an affinity in terms of content. We see another similarity when Gropius longed for a “common, all-uniting focal point” for the stage that “had lost the deepest relations to the world of human emo­ tion” 25 and Kiesler felt that the theater “should be a dynamic factor of the times” and “grow out of the soil of time.” Kiesler hoped that theater would be renewed by productive “Werk­ kommunen” (work communes) such as Berthold Viertel’s cooperative theater company Die Truppe 26, for which he took on his second stage design in 1923, the German premiere of Eugene O’Neill’s drama The Emperor Jones. Starting out from a scholastic, experimental clarification of traditional theater material, the Bauhäusler focused on the fundamental question of “What is space, how can we apprehend and design it?” 27 Consequently, hardly anyone at the Bauhaus would have shared Kiesler’s provocative demand unchallenged whereby “the arts: painting, sculpture, architecture, music, words, dance, but particularly the re­ presentational arts [must] disappear from theater as indivi­dualistic forms of theater.” After all “creative work” that “[aims] to design space” was to form the foundation of the new school in order to reinvent architecture as spatial art (Raumkunst). For this purpose, Gropius had above all appointed avant­-garde painters such as Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Johannes Itten as teachers. Their artistic compositions, elementary studies of the intrinsic value of colors, and the connections between movement, rhythm and form were intended to prepare students with regard to gradu­ally developing innovative, holistic compositions of space. The aim “with all bodily organs” and by means of intuition as a “metaphysical force” was to “feel the immaterial space of appearance and inner vision,” the “connections between the instruments of its appearance, colors, forms, sounds” and to become aware of the inherent “laws, dimensions and numbers.” By combining the “intellectual idea” with “knowledge and skill”

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6   Oskar Schlemmer and Bauhaus stage workshop, Formentanz (Form Dance), with Oskar Schlemmer, Werner Siedhoff and Walter Kaminsky (dancers), 1927 [Photograph by Erich Consemüller, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau]

with “all the natural laws of statics, mechanics, optics and acoustics,” the “space of vision” could be realized in the “material world.” 28 According to Gropius, stage work and architectural work are both beset by “a host of artistic problems” and those involved must put aside “their own ego” in order to achieve “a higher common vitality of the overall work.” Kiesler had the same basic idea, but worded it much more aggressively: “The arts … must … abandon their independent character in order to become part of a stage totality.” But above all he had demanded that this new “stage totality” 29—as “super-individual dynamic design of space”—be achieved to a significant degree by “bringing stagecraft to life.” 30 The Bauhaus had virtually no resources for largescale experiments for bringing the stage to life with technical equipment. Nevertheless, the Bauhäusler were keenly aware of debates and visions in this context. While Moholy-Nagy had envisaged transforming the stage into a “structural, dynamic system of forces” 31 with the aid of technical devices as early as 1922, Schlemmer took a more cautious approach in view of his particular interest in the human performer. Much like Gropius, Schlemmer, who had taken over management of the stage workshop from Schreyer in 1923, saw it as a special institution

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that offered various “possibilities in terms of a synthesis of the arts.” He was willing to put its activities under the primacy of architecture and the envisaged renewal of architecture as the art of space. In September 1922 he noted in his diary: “The will to synthesis that dominates today’s art, that calls upon architecture to marshal the fragmented fields, so as to lead them to their own unity and to a universal unity, is equally taking hold of theater … .” 32 Schreyer, on the other hand, followed on from his experiences with the Sturm stage, foundering in spring 1923 on his preference for expressionist word art. Having seen his Mondspiel (Moon Play), a Klangsprechen (sound-speach Play) staged together with students, rejected by the majority of the Bauhaus masters and students, he left the Bau­haus. Headed by Schlemmer, the focus now shifted to the human body as material and its relation to the space of the stage. Basing his work on the human being as a creature that sees and acts in three-dimensional space, he attempted to live up to Gropius’s expectations, following the ideas of the Romantic Philipp Otto Runge. According to Runge, emotion and order could be translated into holistic experiences of space by means of strict architectural rules. The ideal to be achieved would thus be sequences of move­­ment in a harmoniously arranged spatial whole that enable us to re­concile the “will to internalization” and the “will to technology.” 33 It was not until 1926 that Schlemmer was able to put his ideas into practice on a specially designed studio stage in Dessau in the form of the Bau­haus­­tänze (Bauhaus Dances) 6 , the “grammar of stage elements,” 34 and “mathe­­­­­­matics of dance.” 35 Unlike Kiesler, who rejected the proscenium stage outright, Schlemmer acknowledged the proscenium as a form that had evolved over time and that served the “need for concentration.” Although he recognized the opportunity that the stage as “the arena for successive and transient action” could offer a “kaleidoscopic play” as “form and color in motion,” in this case it would, however, be an “absolute visual stage” that would only require the human being, if at all, at the “central switch­ board.” 36 Schlemmer would no doubt have agreed with Kiesler that the stage would be “an elastic space.” 37 His aim, however, was to realize the elasticity of the stage space with “man as dancer … trans-formed through cos­tume” 38 rather than by means of technical apparatuses and “bringing stage ma­chinery to life.” 39 For Schlemmer, a format that

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ranges between “Man as Dancer” and stage machinery was the “art figure”; an apparatus or a machine in human form. By “relating the figure of natural … Man to the abstract figure, both … experience an intensification of their peculiar natures.” 40 It was against this background, for example, that he designed giant mechanical figures such as “Die beiden Pathetiker” (The Two Solemn Tragedians)—mounted “on wagons” and with tech­ nically ampli­fied voices—as a contrast to “natural Man” performing on the same stage. From mechanical to total theater

Even if Schlemmer always regarded the human form as the center of any theatrical action, he was nevertheless involved in various “mechanical theater” projects. These included, above all, a Mechanisches Ballett as an apparently mechanical performance of dancing flat shapes devised by Kurt Schmidt, Friedrich Wilhelm Bogler and Georg Teltscher, and an apparatus for Reflektorische Lichtspiele by Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack that put light it­self on stage as a “performer.” Schlemmer’s own contribution to “mechanical theater” was the Figurales Kabinett (Figural Cabinet), a quasimechanical, kinetic relief consisting of automatons, apparatuses and colorful geometric figures that he presented at the Bauhaus carnival party in February 1922. This apparatus, in which colorful two-dimensional fig­ ures were moved around the stage on conveyor belts, performing grotesque motions, never really worked. Even the performance for the Bauhaus Week at Stadttheater Jena in 1923 was only saved from failure by invisible dancers carrying the figures across the stage and Andor Weininger dis­ tracting the audience as master of ceremonies. Schlemmer described this quasi-mechanical pantomime as “half shooting gallery, half meta­physicum abstractum” and as a medley “of sense and nonsense, methodized by Color, Form, Nature, and Art; Man and Machine.” 41 Schlemmer’s Figurales Kabinett never sought to compete with Kiesler’s electromechanical scenery for R.U.R. Kiesler had established himself as an “engineer of stagecraft”42 with the aim of “allowing the ener­ gies of the stage machinery themselves to play.”43 Compared with Schlemmer’s shooting-gallery-style play of shapes and colors, his back­ drop was therefore a veritably gigantic optomechanical futuristic mise-en-scène. What is more, Kiesler had ingeniously deployed various electro­mechanical and optical effects to enlarge space so that the

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audience had the impression of seeing not only events on stage, but also what was going on beyond or far away. Kiesler’s second stage production for Berlin, the scenery for The Emperor Jones for Die Truppe, was announced not as a stage design, but as a “Raumbühne,” a Space Stage.44 He had originally planned to create a mechanical, constantly transforming spatial scenery echoing the metamorphosis of a forest that takes place several times in the course of the play, with the forest consisting of wooden slats, cross-beams, and drapes suspended from the ceiling. Because this was not possible with the available resources, and because the performance thus had to be inter­rupted by long interludes for stage changes, Kiesler later visualized his idea by assembling photos of scenes to create a kind of film strip sugges­ting a seamless sequence of events.45

7   László Moholy-Nagy, Kinetic-Constructive System. Structure with Movement Tracks for Play and Conveyance, drawing and photo collage over blueprint, ink, watercolor on cardboard, 1922– 1928 [Theaterwissenschaftliche Sammlung, Universität zu Köln]

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Moholy-Nagy also designed a similar display for a mechanical stage transformation in 1924 as a Partitur-Skizze einer Mechanischen Exzentrik für ein Varieté (Score Sketch for Mechanized Eccentric for a Varieté) 7 . It illustrated his essay “Theater, Zirkus, Varieté” (Theater, Circus, Variety) 46 published in the fourth volume of the Bauhaus books in which Moholy-Nagy described theater as an “articulated expe­rience” in which “sound, color (light), motion, space, form (objects and persons)” combined to form a “concentration of action.” Just as in painting it was not the content as such which was essential but “the interaction of colors,” so too in literature “it was … the effects which arose from the word-sound relation­ships” which “belonged in the foreground.” For “the logical-intellec­tual content (das Logisch-Gedankliche) of a work of literature was far from its primary aim.” 47 The human being had no place in a “synthesis of dynamically contrasting phenomena (space, form, motion, sound, and light)” and could “at best only [have] a certain range of action, dependent entirely on his natural body mechanism.” 48 Moholy-Nagy thus considered overcoming the inadequacy of human eccentricity (Exzentrik) by means of a Mechanische Exzentrik as a crucial step towards developing the “Theater of Totality.” In this theater, the human being would no longer be pivotal but ultimately a medium of expression that would take its place on an equal footing among all other stage media. In some cases, however, “man as co-actor is not neces­ sary, since in our day equipment can be constructed which is far more capable of executing the purely mechanical role of man.” 49 When Moholy-Nagy tries to describe “how … the theater of totality [shall be] realized,” citing “mirrors and optical equipment … used to project the gigantically enlarged faces and gestures of the actors” as one of many examples, then this appears to hark back to those mirror and projection apparatuses already used by Kiesler in his R.U.R. stage. But he also indicated the idea of “[projecting] films onto various surfaces and further experiments in space illumination,” as developed by HirschfeldMack and Schwerdtfeger for Aktionen des Lichts (Light Actions) 50 since 1922, as possible contributions to a “Theater of Totality.” Moholy-Nagy shared Kiesler’s vision of a theater revolutionized by innovatively organized motion for which the “proscenium stage [was] not suitable.” In this form of stage, he maintained, “stage and spectator are too much separated … to be able to produce creative relationships

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and reciprocal tensions.” And when he writes: “In place of today’s periphery of orchestra loges, a runway joined to the stage could be built to establish—by means of a more or less caliperlike embrace— a closer connection with the audience,” 51 then this sounded almost like a description of Kiesler’s Raumbühne. Film projections were to play a key role in enlarging the stage by means of technical equipment. Kiesler himself had done this to some extent in the R.U.R. production, using film and other optical devices to break through the traditional static of the stage set. Gropius was the first person to adopt these ideas for an entire theater as an architectural apparatus, developing the Totaltheater (or “Design for the Piscator stage”) for Erwin Piscator as from 1926/27. Piscator’s objec­ tive was a “proletarian” and “revolutionary” theater that made use of simultaneous scaffold stages, elevators and conveyor belts. This architec­ tural theater apparatus was intended to break down the boundary between stage and auditorium. In addition, he had already been collecting film projections, title cards, and stage sets by George Grosz, John Heartfield and Moholy-Nagy since the mid-1920s. With the aid of “mecha­ nical means” the aim was to be able to transform the auditorium/stage constellation even during a performance. Gropius stressed that “in a dark stage space … one can build with light,” not limiting the possibilities of “light protection” to projecting films. Similar to Moholy-Nagy in his deliberations for “Das Kommende Theater: Das Theater der Totalität” (The Coming Theater: The Theater of Totality), he emphasized that light still needed to be developed as a medium for artistic representation. The goal of Piscator’s Totaltheater was literally to “overwhelm the audience” by means of simultaneous actions and by means of projec­ tions of light and film. Each member of the audience was to experience himself as a united social community, as a collective mass. Piscator was without doubt familiar with Kiesler’s Raumbühne and the intention of abolishing the auditorium and the stage. Today it is virtually impos­ sible to tell to what extent Kiesler was involved in Piscator’s project. In a telegram of July 24, 1927 to Herbert Ihering, Kiesler claimed that his “vari­ ations of perfect theater [ideales Volkshaus] for Piscator [were] finished” and that he was willing to “collaborate with Gropius.” 52 The performance of Hirschfeld-Mack’s Farblichtspiele in or on Kiesler’s Raumbühne could be seen in this context as a joint full-scale

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mock-up (Bauprobe) for the Totaltheater, as a combination of a stage structure open to all sides and sophisticated light effects. As a per­fect example demonstrating the theatrical encounter of Raumbühne (Space Stage) and Bauhaus stage, this subsequent aggrandizement of meaning would no doubt have appealed to Kiesler.

1 2 3

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In J. J. Oud, Holländische Architektur, Bauhaus­ bücher, vol. 10 (Munich: Albert Langen, 1926). Frederick Kiesler, “Vitalbau-Raumstadt-Funktionelle Architektur,” De Stijl 6, no. 10/11 (1925), 435–37. Maurice Raynal, “Stadt in der Luft,” G: Zeitschrift für elementare Gestaltung, no. IV (1926), 10. (Translated from German.) Frederick Kiesler, “Ausstellungssystem Leger und Träger,” De Stijl 6, no. 10/11 (1925), 138–141. El Lissitzky, letter to Til Brugman, February 5, 1926, quoted after Almut Grunewald, “Friedrich Kiesler. Seine Skulpturen und sein offenes künstlerisches Konzept” (PhD diss., Technische Universität München, 2014), 21. (Translated from German.) Theo van Doesburg, “Das Problem einer aktiven Ausstellungsgestaltung,” Neues Wiener Journal, (October 31, 1924), 5. (Translated from German.) Cf. Bernd Finkeldey et al., eds., Konstruktivistische Internationale Schöpferische Arbeitsgemeinschaft 1922–1927. Utopien für eine europäische Kultur (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 1992), exhibition catalog, 169–177. El Lissitzky coined the phrase in 1923 in reference to his Proun concept, describing it as a “station where one changes from painting to architecture.” David Josef Bach and Frederick Kiesler, letter to Walter Gropius, May 14, 1924, Landesarchiv Thüringen – Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, staatliches Bauhaus, No. 185, 000127. (Translated from German.) Walter Gropius, letter to David Josef Bach, May 19, 1924, ibid., No. 185, 000128 and 000129. (Translated from German.) Cf. Walter Gropius, letter to David Josef Bach, September 11, 1924, ibid., No. 185, 000142. Bauhaus syndicus, letter to David Josef Bach, July 23, 1924, ibid., No. 185, 000134. (Translated from German.) Walter Gropius, letter to David Josef Bach, September 11, 1924, ibid., No. 185, 000142. (Translated from German.) Frederick Kiesler, letter to the State Bauhaus Weimar, September 10, 1924, ibid., No. 185, 000140. (Translated from German.) That the show in Vienna not only included designs but also figurines for the Mechanisches Ballett is evidenced by a telegram from Oskar Schlemmer, who wrote on September 20, 1924:

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“Do not dance Bogler.” Apparently he wanted to prevent a dance production that he considered unfinished and more like student antics from harming the reputation of the Bauhaus stage. Oskar Schlemmer, telegram to Frederick Kiesler, September 20, 1924, Landes­a rchiv Thüringen – Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, staatliches Bauhaus, No. 185, 000145. (Translated from German.) Although only an auditor at the Bauhaus, and a friend of Hans Richter’s, Gert Caden also exhibited three drawings in Vienna that, similar to Kiesler’s built Raumbühne, presented a linear, helical form of movement running around a central structure. The drawn project was called Excentrik Operoid and can be seen as one of many other spatial, sculptural experiments shown at the exhibition that, in one form or another, might be regarded as prototypical anticipations or as parallel variations of Kiesler’s Raumbühne. Alfred Sand, “Vorführungen auf der Raumbühne,” Wiener Morgenzeitung (October 2, 1924), 7. (Translated from German.) Frederick Kiesler, ed., Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik (Vienna: Würthle & Sohn, 1924), exhibition catalog, 46–47. Walter Gropius, letter to Frederick Kiesler, October 28, 1924, Landesarchiv Thüringen – Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, staatliches Bauhaus, No. 185, 000146. (Translated from German.) Frederick Kiesler, letter to Walter Gropius, November 9, 1924, ibid., No. 185, 000147. (Translated from German.) Frederick Kiesler and Jane Heap, eds., International Theatre Exposition (New York, 1926), exhibition catalog. Oskar Schlemmer, László Moholy-Nagy and Farkas Molnár, eds., Die Bühne am Bauhaus (Munich: Albert Lange, 1925). English translation: Oskar Schlemmer, László Moholy-Nagy, and Farkas Molnár, The Theater of the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius and Arthur S. Wensinger, eds., trans. Arthur S. Wensinger (Middleton, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1971). Frederick Kiesler, “Das Theater der Zeit,” Morgenausgabe Berliner Tageblatt, June 1, 1923, in Barbara Lesák, Die Kulisse explodiert. Friedrich Kieslers Theaterexperimente und Architekturprojekte

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1923–25 (Vienna: Löcker, 1988), 42–44, 42. (Translated from German.) 24 Walter Gropius, “Die Arbeit der Bauhausbühne” (1922), in Hans-M. Wingler, Das Bauhaus 1919–1933. Weimar, Dessau, Berlin und die Nachfolge in Chicago seit 1937 (Cologne: DuMont, 1968), 72. (Translated from German.) 25 Walter Gropius, “Die Bühne am Bauhaus,” in Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, ed. Karl Nierendorf (Weimar: Bauhaus-Verlag, 1923). (Translated from German.) 26 The Bauhaus students Friedl Dicker and Franz Singer had previously designed stage sets and costumes for Berthold Viertel in 1921. Dicker had begun studying in the Textile class at Vienna’s Kunstgewerbeschule in 1914, additionally attending courses held by Franz Čižek. A student at Johannes Itten’s private art school in Vienna since 1916, she followed him to the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1919. From 1923 to 1925, Dicker and Singer ran the “Werkstätten Bildender Kunst” in Berlin, also building set designs for Viertel. 27 Walter Gropius, “Idee und Aufbau des Bauhaus,” in Nierendorf, Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar. (Translated from German.) 28 Ibid. 29 Kiesler, “Das Theater der Zeit,” 42. 30 Ibid., 44. 31 László Moholy-Nagy and Alfréd Kemény, “Konstruktiv-Dynamisches Kraftsystem,” Der Sturm 13 (December 5, 1922), 186. (Translated from German.) 32 Oskar Schlemmer, diary, September 1922, in Oskar Schlemmer. Idealist der Form. Briefe, Tagebücher, Schriften 1912–1943, ed. Adreas Hüneke (Leipzig: Reclam, 1989), 95–97, 96. (Translated from German.) 33 Oskar Schlemmer, speech at the opening of the exhibition Herbstschau neuer Kunst in Stuttgart, 1919, ibid., 335. (Translated from German.) 34 Oskar Schlemmer, “Mensch und Kunstfigur,” in Schlemmer, Mohology-Nagy, and Molnár, Die Bühne im Bauhaus, 36. (Translated from German.) 35 Oskar Schlemmer, “Tänzerische Mathematik,” Vivos Voco 5, no. 8/9 (1926), 279–81. (Translated from German.) 36 Schlemmer, “Mensch und Kunstfigur,” 13. English translation: Oskar Schlemmer, “Man and Art Figure,” in Gropius and Wensinger, The Theater of the Bauhaus, 22. 37 Kiesler, “Das Theater der Zeit,” 43. (Translated from German.) 38 Ibid., 44. (Translated from German.) 39 Schlemmer, “Man and Art Figure,” 28. 40 Ibid., 19. 41 Ibid., 40. 42 Kiesler, “Das Theater der Zeit,” 42. (Translated from German.) 43 Ibid., 43. (Translated from German.) 44 Cf. Lesák, Die Kulisse explodiert, 85.

113 45 Kiesler, Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik, 24. 46 László Moholy-Nagy, “Theater, Circus, Variety,” in Gropius and Wensinger, The Theater of the Bauhaus, 49–70. 47 Ibid., 52. 48 Ibid., 52–54. 49 Ibid., 60. 50 Ibid., 67. 51 Ibid., 68. 52 Frederick Kiesler, telegram to Herberg Ihering, July 24, 1927, Herbert-Ihering-Archiv (1694), Akademie der Künste Berlin.

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Frederick Kiesler and the Futurists

Towards an Inter­ national Redefinition of Italian Futurism Raffaele Bedarida

The first significant contact between the Futurists and Frederick Kiesler was in 1923, when he designed the stage set for the Berlin production of   Karel Čapek’s dystopian robot drama, R.U.R.1  (Rossum’s Universal Robots).2, 1  As the actors performed on a stage, Kiesler used multiple projectors and mirror devices to cast filmed images as well as backstage action onto screens, blurring the distinction between actual and projected actors, physical and represented spaces. Multisensory stimuli surrounded the public, activating the entire auditorium on- and off-stage: Kiesler recalled that the Berlin Fire Department squirted water onto the screens from behind the stage to prevent the heat of the projectors from igniting them1; and in front of the stage, “a whole abstract forest of neon lights, brilliantly colored, projecting from the ceiling, walls, and floor flashing on and off. … Lights shone on the audience, the side walls moved.”2 The Futurists had been dreaming of something like this since the early 1910s, when they had theorized immersive, multisensory, and technologically advanced forms of art in their manifestos.3 But their most technologi­ cally daring attempts, especially in theater, had resulted in failure. Giacomo Balla’s 1917 misadventure with Feu d’artifice (firework) served as a powerful cautionary tale: approached by the Ballets Russes to design the sceno­graphy for Igor Stravinsky’s music, Balla proposed a humanless

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1   Noi, special issue on Futurist theater, Rome 1924

ballet, in which the interplay of abstract volumes and colored lights re­ placed actual dancers. His visionary project, however, frustratingly clashed with inadequate technology, producing a disastrous premiere at Rome’s major venue, Teatro Costanzi: most of the show happened in absolute dark­­­ness, with Balla rushing onto the stage, desperately trying to solve tech­­­nical issues and operate the lights himself.4 Stravinsky malignantly remem­bered that “when Balla came out to bow there was no applause.”5 Despite the Futurists’ grandiose declara­tions and their radical theatrical production, most Futurist performances to date had been rather lowtech. Kiesler’s R.U.R., on the contrary, signaled a new range of aesthetic possi­bilities made available by technology.6 It is known that Kiesler’s debut with this innovative work (it was one of the first stage designs to use film and neon lights) generated the enthu­ si­asm of avant-garde artists and gave him prominence in the experimental theater scene. Kiesler recounted, perhaps inflating things, how after the

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second performance of R.U.R. he was cheered by a little crowd including no less than Theo van Doesburg, Hans Richter, Kurt Schwitters, László Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky, and Werner Graeff: “They came in, grabbed me without saying a word, lifted me up and took me six or seven blocks around the corner to a club, where we met Mies van der Rohe and spent the whole night talking about the future theater.”7 Exaggerations aside, historians generally agree that, starting in 1923 and continuing for the rest of his life, Kiesler became an important player within the avant-garde scene and a tireless networker, connecting people and movements across national boundaries.8 But although the encounter and collaboration with the Futurists is commonly acknowledged in the literature on Kiesler, it only appears as a side note. Compared to other movements, such as De Stijl, Constructivism, or, later, Surrealism—which are depicted as the principal coordinates of his intellectual trajec­tory—he appears to have merely crossed paths with Futurism.9 Recent scholarship on Futurism, on the other hand, has increasingly emphasized the vastness of the move­ ment’s international network and the pro­grammatic importance of its global outreach.10 However, the collaboration of the Futurists with Kiesler is at best only mentioned in passing. This article intends to show how Kiesler’s encounter with Futurism was, in fact, a deep and long-lasting affair. I will argue that the collaboration with Kiesler, although never studied in depth, is an important nexus to situate Futurism within the complex system of alliances and collaborations of international avantgarde movements during the interwar period. By analyzing the political subtext of this system, I will position the politics of Futurist theater beyond the national boundaries of Fascist Italy. I focus on Kiesler’s relationship with two protagonists of Italian Futurism during the interwar period: By analyzing the political subtext of this system, I will position the politics of Futurist theater beyond the national boundaries of Fascist Italy. Enrico Prampolini, the most important link between the movement and the European avant-gardes; and Fortunato Depero, the flagbearer of Futurism in America. In doing so, I show that if Kiesler’s relationship with Futurism started out as a strategic move for both Kiesler and Prampolini to expand their respective network internationally, it ultimately led to a mutually influential alliance for the promotion of experimental theater and stage design. His collaboration with Depero, on the other hand, initially revolved around

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theater but ultimately thrived because of their mutual interest in merging avant-garde art and popular culture in New York. Started as part of a post-World War I effort to utilize theater as a tool to deconstruct capitalism and bourgeois social structures, the alliance between Kiesler and the Futurists ultimately occupied a more ambiguous position: one in which the artists simultaneously criticized, flirted with, and were absorbed by emerging culture industry. The Futurists made the first move. In December 1923, Enrico Prampolini co-wrote a letter with fellow Futurist Ruggero Vasari to the Berlin art and architectural critic Adolf Behne, asking for photo­­gra­phic materials on Kiesler’s R.U.R. As they explained to Behne, they were preparing a special issue of the magazine Noi: Rivista d’Arte Futurista dedicated to avant-garde theater and scenography, and they listed Kiesler as a key figure of International Constructivism, whom they wanted to document and promote in their magazine.11 In the early 1920s, the Futurists were experimenting with new strategies to expand their network outside of Italy and reaching out to Kiesler was part of the new plan. If in the prewar period the leader of the Italian movement, F. T. Marinetti, travelled extensively to proselytize abroad, then after World War I he was obsessed with proving two main points: first, that Futurism predated and influenced the other avant-garde movements that had mushroomed during and immediately after the conflict; second, that despite being old and already historicized, Futurism still played a leading role within the international avant-gardes. In his 1924 manifesto, “International Futurism,” Marinetti did this simply by listing a wide range of prominent and emerging artists from all over Europe, America, and Asia, and calling them all Futurists without their knowledge.12 Within the same international campaign effort, Prampolini and Vasari adopted a subtler strategy. By using the magazine Noi and exhibition spaces that they opened in Rome and in Berlin respectively, they traded opportunities for international exposure and established alliances with other avant-garde artists.13 After his successful debut with R.U.R., Kiesler appeared to them as an ideal interlocutor: well-accepted within a variety of avant-garde environments without being fully identified with any of them, he was interested in international networking as much as they were. Loosely affil­iated to the Dutch movement De Stijl, Kiesler demons­trated with R.U.R. that he was interested in two major themes that

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the Futurists were claim­ing as their own trademark: mechanical bodies and technologically immersive theater. The debate on machine aesthetics and the machine emerged as a key field where avant-garde artists realigned themselves after the trauma of World War I, and R.U.R. functioned as a catalyst for such debate. At the 1922 Congress of Progressive Artists of Düsseldorf, which both Prampolini and Vasari attended, a group of artists led by van Doesburg, Lissitzky, and Richter formed the International Section of Constructivists. Rejecting the Expressionist majority as bourgeois and decadent, they supported a functionalist, anti-individualist mode of artistic production. Against the Expressionists’ anxieties about technology, the Constructivists proposed a new type of artist who embraced and mastered the increas­ingly mecha­ nized world. After Düsseldorf, both Vasari and Prampolini worked intense­ ly to re-define their respective position and the position of Futurism on this matter. R.U.R. helped them both in slightly different ways. With his science-fiction drama, L’Angoscia delle machine (The Anguish of the Machines, written in 1923 and published in 1925) Vasari questioned Futurism’s uncritical celebration of technology by envisioning a dystopian future that featured a hybrid machine-human proletariat controlled and enslaved by a master computer. He reviewed R.U.R. positively and acknowledged it as a source of inspiration for his own work. But more than Kiesler’s hyper-technologic design, he appreciated Čapek’s story, which similarly featured a mechanized, dystopian future, characterized by sur­ veil­lance and exploitation.14 If Vasari did not share Marinetti’s celebration of the machine, deeming it simplistic, he did not approve of the Expres­ sionists’ rejection of technological progress either, dismissing it as roman­ tic. He appreciated R.U.R. as a good example of theater “of our mechanical, fast, non-romantic age.”15 Close to a moderate Constructivist faction led by his friend, Ivan Puni, Vasari embraced the tension between being attracted to the machine and exalting it while still recognizing that “mecha­ nization destroys the spirit.” 16 Prampolini, for his part, penned two manifestos in a row: “L’estetica della macchina e l’introspezione meccanica nell’arte” (Machine aesthetics and mechanical introspection in art) published in van Doesburg’s mag­ azine, De Stijl in 1922; and “Arte meccanica,” (Mechanical art), pub­lished in Noi in 1923. He agreed with the Constructivists about the need for a radi­ cally new idea of art and of the creative process inspired by the machine,

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but he accused them of being not radical enough. The Constructivists, Prampolini maintained, superficially emulated the external appearance of the machine and therefore made machine-like art. Instead, he celebrated a new type of interiority or even spirituality of the machine age as the true source of and motor for a new art, which, in turn, could envision a society of the future.17 Whatever he meant by that, he saw it in Kiesler’s R.U.R. During his trips to Germany, Prampolini realized that the most advanced practical consequences of the Futurist theories on theater and technology were happening outside Italy.18 Furthermore, the publi­cation of Kiesler’s R.U.R. in the Constructivist magazine De Stijl in 1923, shortly after the publication of Prampolini’s mani­festo, “L’estetica della macchina” in the same periodical, elo­­­­quently juxtaposed his theories with someone else’s practice. Through the Noi volume, Prampolini claimed paternity for himself and Futurism of the ideas that he was now seeing translated into practice in Northern Europe. Prampolini dedicated a full page of Noi to Kiesler’s scenography for R.U.R., therefore attributing to it an important role within the international “Teatro e Scena Futurista”—as the special issue of the magazine was titled.1  The work appeared alongside some of the pioneers of avant-garde theater. After a large section dedicated to Italian Futurism, the volume presented foreign works without framing them within cohesive movements that could compete with Futurism. Grouping criteria included: ballet companies such as the Swedish Ballet and the Ballet Russe; theaters such as the Kamernij and the Meyerhold in Moscow, and the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin (this is where Kiesler’s work appeared); or stylistic affiliation and location­—“Cubist Scenography” in Paris and “Futurist Scenography” [sic] in Russia, Czechoslovakia, and Lettonia. As Lissitzky, van Doesburg, and Richter were missing, Kiesler played an important role in representing International Constructivism in Prampolini’s publication along with Puni and a few others.19 Prampolini likely saw Kiesler, now officially part of van Doesburg’s De Stijl, as a mediating figure between Futurism and International Constructivism.20 Inspired, like Prampolini, by Henri Bergson’s theories on subjective perception, Kiesler used technology to explore the effects of the machine onto human experience in a way that Prampolini could perhaps reconcile with his own quest for machine-age interiority.

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Although Prampolini gave no textual explanation or rationale for the inclusion of Kiesler in the volume, he forcefully included R.U.R. within a Futurism-centric map of avant-garde theater. Introduced by no less than ten Futurist manifestos—starting with Marinetti’s “International Futurism,” Prampolini’s own “Futurist Scenic Atmosphere,” and Luigi Russolo’s “The Art of Noises,” Noi proposed Futurism as the initiator, connector, and theoretical backbone for the most advanced exper­iments in avant-garde theater in Europe. Far from rejecting Prampolini’s act of appropriation, Kiesler reciprocated when he organized the 1924 International Exhibition of New Theater Techniques in Vienna, a major survey of avant-garde theater in Europe, by putting Prampolini in charge of the Italian section. As a result the exhibit included many of the Futurist artists already promoted in the Noi volume: Anton Giulio Bragaglia, Fortunato Depero, Gerardo Dottori, Virgilio Marchi, Vinicio Paladini, Ivo Pannaggi, and especially Prampolini himself, who had more than twenty pieces on display. Kiesler also gave ample catalog space to Futurist manifestos, including Marinetti’s claim of priority, “We Invented the Anti-Psychological Abstract Theater” (pp. 26–27) and two of the manifestos that Prampolini had published in Noi: Russolo’s “The Art of Noises” (pp. 35–37); and Prampolini’s “Futurist Atmospheric Scene,” which was now inserted ver­ tically (in Italian) and significantly spread across the entire section dedicated to Russian Constructivism (pp. 66–77). In addition, Kiesler invited Marinetti to declaim his manifesto, “International Futurism,” in the performing program of the exhibition.21 Not only did Kiesler endorse the Futurists’ self-appointed role as the initiators and leading force of everything avant-garde, he also acknowledged the importance of the Italian movement and especially of Prampolini for his own work, as the Noi publication had claimed. Prampolini’s theories of an immersive, multisensory, and dynamic theater, which he developed starting with his 1915 manifesto “Futurist Scenography,” anticipated and influenced Kiesler’s practice. Nearly a decade before R.U.R., Prampolini proposed replacing the customary paint­ ed backdrops with dynamic architectural structures, fluorescent gases, and neon lights.22 His idea of stage design as a three-dimensional atmos­ phere and a responsive spatial environment rather than a frame or con­ tainer for the actor proved seminal for Kiesler’s later concept of an “elastic

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architecture,” in which actors and viewers modify and shape the shared space of theater.23 By inviting Prampolini to curate the Italian section, Kiesler responded to the Noi publication and accepted the alliance with Futurism. Contended over by two factions and intrigued by both, Kiesler turned the Vienna show into a forum and himself into a mediator. He had Marinetti and van Doesburg share the stage during the performance program.24 He spent time with Prampolini in Vienna during the installa­ tion and opening days and installed the show in close collaboration with Prampolini and van Doesburg, as documented by many photographs of the three at work. In two carefully staged photographs, Kiesler playfully captured the two souls of the show. One was a homage to / mockery of Futurism: as in many group portraits staged by the Futurists, the sitters, including Kiesler, his wife Stefi, van Doesburg, Prampolini, the art historian Kurt Rathe, and an un-identified woman (Adele Mayer?), compose a symmet­ rical frame for Marinetti, who sits with typical confidence staring into the camera.7, 3  Like a medieval Maestà, the two women behind him and the two men in profile (Kiesler and Prampolini) function visually as angels around an enthroned Madonna. If all this pointed to Marinetti’s importance and charisma, it also dis­missed Futurism’s cult of person­ality and individualism as traditionally humanistic, narcissistic, and— to the horror of any Futurist Übermensch—even feminine. The other homage / mockery photograph was directed at De Stijl 8, 1 : as the exhibition was being installed, Kiesler, van Doesburg, the financial director of the exhibition Benedikt Fred Dolbin, and Prampolini (but not Marinetti, who would never do something so light-hearted) posed for the camera, inhabiting the “L + T” structures designed by Kiesler as display devices. The four men are turned by the structure into exhibited objects or, vice-versa, their presence as actors transforms the structure into a theatrical setting (rather than a display device for reproductions of theatrical settings). Either way, their poses at ninety-degree angles simultaneously celebrated De Stijl architecture’s ability to multiply space through simple means, but also showed the de-humanizing potential of machine aesthetics. The two photographs captured the two negative poles that defined the initial conversation between Kiesler and the Futurists on theater: on the one hand the artist as a genius and as the

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ultimate subject; on the other hand, machine aesthetics as a model for a post-romantic, post-bourgeois collective space. In 1928, Fortunato Depero crossed the Atlantic with the ambitious and unlikely project of conquering New York. Whereas fellow Futurists— Marinetti included—tried to dissuade him from going (“They told me, ‘there’s no art in America’,” recalled Depero) and then followed his adventures from across the Atlantic with a dose of skepticism, Kiesler was one of Depero’s main links to New York and an influential interlocutor during his two years in the city. Although they had met in Europe through Prampolini and the theater exhibitions, their true intellectual encounter happened in New York and revolved around their parallel work merging avant-garde art and popular culture. Depero had participated in the 1924 Vienna show at the invitation of Prampolini (with just two works), but he met and befriended Kiesler the following year in Paris. The occasion was the 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, where Kiesler curated the Theater Section of the Austrian Contribution in the Grand Palais, and Depero was one of the main artists of the Italian section. In an unpublished account of his time in the “Avant-gardist and Futurist Paris,” Depero named Kiesler as one of the most interesting people he met there, along with Constantin Brâncuşi, Natalia Goncharova, and a few others. Emphasizing the internationalism of the environment, Depero described the Café du Dome, where he first met Kiesler, as a gathering place for the “cubists, expres­ sionists, constructivists, zenithists, babilonists from every country.” 25 Kiesler was sharing a table with van Doesburg and with the Serbian poet Branko Ve Poljanski. Coming from the Alpine town of Rovereto and animated by bigger-than-life ambition, Depero was immediately seduced by this cosmopolitan environment and, in spite of his rudimentary French, tried to integrate himself into it. A native German speaker (Rovereto was Austrian until World War I), Depero befriended Kiesler, who helped him find a place to rent in Paris and even shared a studio with him.26 Meeting Kiesler in Paris proved timely for Depero’s future in New York. When they met, Kiesler was getting ready to leave Europe, as the editor of The Little Review, Jane Heap had just invited him to bring the International Theatre Exposition to New York. In the new version of the show (opened on February 27, 1926), because of their friendship as well as Depero’s recent success at the Paris Expo, Kiesler gave Depero greater

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2   Fortunato Depero, Mechanical character from Depero’s Magic Theater exhibited at the International Theatre Exposition, page from The Bolted Book, 1927

prominence than in Vienna. Depero had four pieces illustrated in the New York catalog (as opposed to zero in the previous edition), representing the variety of work he had produced over a decade: a photograph of the 1916 stage setting for Stravinsky’s Song of the Nightingale; the 1918 paint­ ing, I miei Balli Plastici (My Plastic Dances); a pair of 1923 wooden sculp­   tures, Plumed Knights (published here as “Mechanical Figures,” 2  ); and the 1926 robotic mario­nette Personaggio Meccanico (published as “Figure Mechanique”).27 Largely overlooked in Vienna, Depero emerged in New York as a major proponent of actorless theater—a crucial theme of the show. Unlike the Vienna version, whose main sensation was dynamic stage settings, the New York edition gave more emphasis to the idea of an actorless theater and presented the Futurists as the initiators and main proponents of this concept. Specialized and popular media in America picked up the

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message: an alarmed Theatre Magazine wondered, “Will the New Scenery Destroy the Actor?” and newspaper World warned: “All Actors to Be Without Jobs if Futurist’s Forecast Is Right.” 28 They often quoted passages from Prampolini’s manifesto “The Magnetic Theatre and the Futuristic Scenic Atmosphere”—newly translated into English—where he dismissed actors as useless and foresaw a theater of the future as abstract and mechanized. But Depero’s works were reproduced more frequently than Prampolini’s or anyone else to illustrate the concept. The New York Times published his 1920 painting, Città meccanizzata dalle ombre (City Mechanized by Shadows); Vogue illustrated La Grande Selvaggia (The great Wilderness) another robotic marionette from 1918 and called Depero “an Italian prophet of an actorless theatre.” 29 Previously unknown in the US, Depero received his first moment of visibility in this country thanks to Kiesler’s theater show, which in turn played a determining role in his decision to move to New York.30 In the months following the exhibition—and most likely encouraged by it— Depero prepared his now-famous Depero Futurista (better known as the Bolted Book), which was conceived as a portable museum and a means of self-promotion in “Milano, New York, Paris, Berlin,” as the book’s cover proclaimed. In 1928 Depero and his wife, Rosetta, arrived in New York with the Bolted Book still hot off the press. His theater work and his participation in the International Theatre Exposition featured prominently in the book, but the other major com­ ponent of Depero Futurista—advertising and popular culture—was the main field that he could share with Kiesler once in New York. By including in the Bolted Book his ads for Campari, along with his “architettura pubblicitaria” buildings and his manifesto “To the Industrialists,” Depero embraced advertising as the new art form and the modern metro­polis as its medium. As soon as he landed, Depero called New York as a whole a Futurist work of art. In his celebrated 1915 manifesto, “Futurist Recon­ struction of the Universe,” he and co-author Giacomo Balla had proposed turning every detail of the cosmos and every aspect of life into a Futurist work: New York, it turned out, was the closest real-world approximation of that utopian goal. Whereas in Paris he visited artists’ studios and museums to find art, in New York he looked for it in department stores, Broadway theaters, and the urban landscape. He did not bother visiting the Museum of Modern Art when it opened in 1929 because he considered

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the balloons of the Macy’s parade to be the best art in the city. And indeed, in the proto-Warholian Futurist House, which he opened in the Chelsea district of Manhattan, Depero produced ads and pillows for Macy’s, designed covers for Vanity Fair, and conceived sets and costumes for the Roxy Theatre on Broadway. He stopped painting on canvas for the two years he spent in New York and penned his manifesto “Futurism and Advertising Art,” in which he called advertising “the art of the future.” 31 Kiesler had moved in a similar direction. When Depero arrived in New York, Kiesler was working on a book on shop windows. Promoted in 1929 through a booklet, The Modern Show Window and Store Front and published as Contemporary Art Applied to the Store and Its Display, the book relied heavily on Kiesler’s 1928 work designing the windows of the New York department store Saks Fifth Avenue.32, 3 , 4  Using a Futurist language that spoke to Depero, Kiesler saw the shop window as the ultimate form of visual communication in the accelerated and hyperstimulated context of the modern city: “the evolution of the show window”­—he wrote—“is due to one fact: Speed. For this reason, the show window is a modern method of communication.” 33 Similar to Depero’s manifesto “To the Industrialists,” Kiesler saw the collaboration between artists and industry as the truest application of the avant-garde principles that he had experimented with while in Europe. Both Kiesler and Depero identified New York as the right place and as a source of inspira­ tion for such collaboration. Kiesler saw the department store as the new theater and celebrated it as a powerful tool to “reach the masses.”34 As in his work as a stage designer, Kiesler was interested in creating a connection between the small stage of the store window and its audience. Calling the display manager “the impresario of the store,” he declared: “It is the function of the window to establish a contact between street and store. It is the display manager’s task to keep that contact alive and productive.”35 Depero similarly expressed his admiration for Saks Fifth Avenue’s windows, which he described in terms of “fondali plastici” and “scenari,” recycling the language that the Futurists used for their experimental theater. But he also noted, with more admiration than sadness, that the items on display would “cost three or four thousand dollars; a capital for us, poor and wise Europeans.”36 Both Kiesler and Depero declared, using similar words, that American consumerism had disseminated and popularized the best

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achievements of European avant-gardes, and they did not mourn what got lost in the translation process. Kiesler, in fact, was well integrated into the environment of American and European avant-garde artists in New York and helped Depero introduce himself there. Kiesler knew Katherine Dreier and Marcel Duchamp, and their organization, the Société Anonyme publicly endorsed Depero’s first exhibition in New York, at the Guarino Gallery in 1929. Dreier even purchased one of Depero’s collages. Additionally, the magazine of the Société, Quarterly Brochure published two pages from Depero’s Bolted Book.37 Although their support was one of the very rare recognitions that Depero received from the American art world, Duchamp and Dreier barely received as much attention as the Roxy Theatre in his memoirs on

3   Frederick Kiesler, Shop window design for Saks Fifth Avenue, New York 1927 [Photograph by Lorrell]

4   Frederick Kiesler, Shop window design for Saks Fifth Avenue, New York 1927

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5   Frederick Kiesler, Film Guild Cinema (1929), page from Contemporary Art Applied to the Store and Its Display, 1930

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6   Fortunato Depero, Bestetti, Tumminelli, and Treves book pavilion at the 1927 International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Monza, page from The Bolted Book, 1927

his time in New York. Depero also acknowledged Kiesler for having brought to his studio the famous actress and cosmetics entrepreneur, Princess Norina Matchabelli (aka Maria Carmi), with whom Kiesler had founded a school of experimental theater in Brooklyn. Matchabelli became one of Depero’s main supporters in New York and helped organize his show at the Guarino Gallery. But Depero’s main appreciation went to Kiesler’s interest in popular culture. Fascinated with the way the hyper-stimulated environment of the modern city affected perception and attention, both artists moved past modernist functionalism and social concerns in architecture. Depero especially praised Kiesler’s design for the Film Guild Cinema, inaugurated in 1929 in New York’s Greenwich Village, calling it “Cinema ideale” (the perfect movie theater). In his description, Depero emphasized how the entire building took inspiration from a movie camera.5  “The façade is made out of blocks, curves, and gears,” he marveled. “The interior of the theatre is like a trapezoidal funnel. It ends with a rounded curtain, which opens and shuts like the diaphragm of a Zeiss camera.”38 Kiesler’s building, in other words, followed the rules Depero defined in his

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advertising architecture, which declared and promoted its own business. Back in Italy, Depero had designed the pavilion of a publishing house made out of gigantic, three-dimensional letters6  and had penned a mani­ festo where he envisioned “pink and orange pavilions made like coronas and chalices” for beverage brands; “shiny building with corridors and oblique rooms for the curved floors with their rapid turns” for automobile manufacturers; or “pavilions made out of loudspeakers for music producers.”39 While these were temporary structures for commercial fairs, Depero saw in New York a per­manent and ideal environment: not only because, as Depero wrote, the chaotic context of the metropolis made this new mode of visual communi­cation necessary, but

  7 Fortunato Depero, So I Think, So I Paint (1947) with inscription to Frederick Kiesler

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8   Frederick Kiesler with Salvatore and Claudia Scarpitta at Scarpitta’s exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery, New York 1963

also because the same city could function as a megaphone if manipulated correctly. He identified Kiesler’s cinema as an exemplary model.40 Although Depero spent only two years, from 1928 to 1930, in New York, the city became the main focus of his subsequent work and myth making for more than a decade. Once in Rovereto, he produced countless essays, manifestos, radio programs, conferences, ads, and more inspired by the city. He collected many of these, including his writing on Kiesler, in his memoir, So I Think, So I Paint, which he brought to Kiesler when he returned to New York in 1947.41, 7  Many things had changed: compromised by Fascism and penniless, Depero now looked for a safe haven and for business opportunities in New York. Again, he found in Kiesler one of the very few open doors.42 Kiesler’s soft spot for Futurism endured against all odds, beyond political ideologies, and across historical circumstances. Even after the death of Prampolini (1956) and Depero (1960), Kiesler collaborated with Italian artists Piero Dorazio and Salvatore Scarpitta who explored the complicated legacy of Futurism, and helped them promote their work in New York. A photograph of the late Kiesler “riding” one of Scarpitta’s meticulously built and beautifully useless racing cars in the Leo Castelli

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Gallery 8  represents his ultimate homage to Futurism as the first and most paradigmatic of the avant-gardes. For Futurism, on the other hand, Kiesler functioned as a major interlocutor through which the movement reinvented itself in the international context. Beyond the factual collaborations and beyond the opportunities that Kiesler offered to Prampolini and Depero outside of Italy, Kiesler came to represent for both artists an important catalyst for two key moments of discursive shift: when Prampolini re-positioned Futurism within the European avantgardes; and when Depero redefined Futurism’s relationship with mass culture in New York.

*

I extend my gratitude to Günter Berghaus, Jill Meißner-Wolfbeisser, Maria Elena Versari, and Federico Zanoner for their help during my research process. Thanks to Martha Schulman and Philip Polefrone for their invaluable comments on the manuscript.

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Although described in a 1947 lecture on R.U.R. that Kiesler delivered at Yale, there was no documentary evidence for the intervention of the Fire Department in the press of the time, and it should therefore be taken with a grain of salt. Despised by other artists (for example El Lissitzky), Kiesler’s tendency to manipulate autobiographical information was, in fact, a characteristic that he shared with the Futurists and that he might have learned from them. Frederick Kiesler, “Lecture by Frederick Kiesler on His Use of Film in 1922 production of R.U.R. by Karel Čapek: Delivered to Yale School of Architec­ ture, 1947,” in A Tribute to Anthology Film Archives’ Avantgarde Film Preservation: An Evening Dedicated to Frederick Kiesler (New York: Anthology Film Archives, 1977), 30. On the Futurists’ programmatic manipulation of information see Claudia Salaris, “Marketing Modernism: Marinetti as Publisher,” Modernism/Modernity 1, no. 3 (1994), 109–127. For a detailed and vivid description of the event see Stephen J. Phillips, Elastic Architecture: Frederick Kiesler and Design Research in the First Age of Robotic Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 2017), 38–41. Relevant manifestos include: “Futurist Painting: Technical Manifesto” (1910); “The pleasure of being booed” (1911); “The Painting of Sounds, Noises, and Smells” (1913); “The Variety Theatre” (1913); “The Futurist Synthetic Theatre” (1915); and “Futurist Scenography” (1915). See Günter Berghaus, Italian Futurist Theatre, 1909–1944 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 253–263. Robert Craft, Conversations with Igor Stravinsky, 92,

9

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11

12

13

quoted in Berghaus, Italian Futurist Theatre, 263. Chris Salter, Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 2010), on Balla see 9–11, on Kiesler 30–31. Thomas H. Creighton, “Kiesler’s Pursuit of an Idea,” Progressive Architecture 42, no. 7 (July 1961), 109. See Lisa Phillips, ed., Frederick Kiesler (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art in association with W.W. Norton & Company, 1989), exhibition catalog. The only significant exceptions are Barbara Lesák, who reconstructed the circumstances of the encounter between Kiesler and the Futurists, Prampolini and Marinetti; and Stephen Phillips, who discussed the conceptual link between Kiesler’s experiments and Prampolini’s manifestos on theater and scenography. In both cases, however, these are discussed as individual encounters, outside of the frame of Futurism as a whole. Barbara Lesák, Die Kulisse explodiert: Friedrich Kieslers Theaterexperimente und Architekturprojekte 1923–1925 (Vienna: Löcker, 1988); Barbara Lesák and Thomas Trabitsch, eds., Frederick Kiesler: Theatervisionär – Architekt – Künstler (Vienna: Brandstätter, 2012), exhibition catalog; Phillips, Elastic Architecture. The most significant effort in this direction is the series of volumes edited by Günter Berghaus and published by De Gruyter, International Yearbook of Futurism Studies. Enrico Prampolni, letter to Adolf Behne, December 17, 1923, reproduced in Lesák, Die Kulisse explodiert, 35. F. T. Marinetti, “Le Futurisme Mondial,” Le Futurisme, no. 9 (January 11, 1924), 1–2. It was subsequently published multiple times, including two volumes discussed here: Prampolini’s special issue of Noi on theater and Depero’s Bolted Book (see below). Maria Elena Versari has, in fact, documented how

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15 16 17

18

19

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21

22 23 24 25

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Towards an Iternational Redefinition of Italian Futurism

Vasari was highly critical of Marinetti and, through his activity in Berlin, looked for an independent space of action outside of Marinetti’s centralized control. Maria Elena Versari, “Enlisting and Updating: Ruggero Vasari and the Shifting Coordinates of Futurism in Eastern and Central Europe,” in International Yearbook of Futurism Studies, ed. Günter Berghaus (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 277–298. Ruggero Vasari, “R.U.R.: Rezon’s [sic] Universal Robots,” L’Impero, April 16, 1924. As discussed by Berghaus, Vasari reviewed the Paris production of R.U.R.—not the Berlin one, which included Kiesler’s scenography. He also conceived his Anguish of the Machines in 1921; that is, after Čapek’s drama premiered in Prague but before the Berlin produc­ tion. Berghaus, Italian Futurist Theatre, 503–504. Vasari, “R.U.R..” Ruggero Vasari, letter to Guglielmo Jannelli, repro­ duced in Berghaus, Italian Futurist Theatre, 504. Maria Elena Versari, “Futurist Machine Art, Constructivism and the Modernity of Mechaniza­ tion,” in Futurism and the Technological Imagination, ed. Günter Berghaus (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009), 149–175. On the tension between theory and practice in Prampolini’s theater work, see Giovanni Lista, Enrico Prampolini, futurista europeo (Roma: Carocci, 2013). Prampolini requested photographic materials from van Doesburg, who failed to send them. Enrico Prampolini, letter to Theo van Doesburg, February 20, 1924, reproduced in Enrico Prampolini: Carteggio Futurista, ed. Giovanni Lista (Rome: Carte Segrete, 1992), 218. Although Vasari saw R.U.R. in January 1923, Prampolini and Vasari approached Kiesler only in December, after Prampolini saw a reproduction of Kiesler’s scenography in De Stijl. Der Tag, October 21, 1924, cited in Roger Held, “Endless Innovations: The Theories and Scenic Design of Frederick Kiesler” (PhD diss., Bowling Green State University, 1977), 47. This influence is documented in Phillips, Elastic Architecture, 65–76. See ibid., 69. Held, “Endless Innovations”, 47. Fortunato Depero, “Parigi Avanguardista e Futurista (Auto-intervista),” 1926, MART Archives, Rovereto, Dep. 4.1.5. Contacted by Depero’s Parisian landlord, Mr. Guttmann, Kiesler wrote from New York to Depero and urged him to pay his rent. Frederick Kiesler, letter to Fortunato Depero, March 30, 1926, MART Archives. A few months later, Prampolini sent a letter to Depero in Rovereto to inform him that Kiesler had suddenly decided to stay in New York and therefore Mrs. Hertemberg, who owned Kiesler’s and Depero’s shared studio, was going to find new tenants starting in midAugust. Enrico Prampolini, letter to Fortunato

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Depero, August 11, 1926. Published in Lista, Enrico Prampolini: Carteggio Futurista, 81. 27 Jane Heap and Margaret Anderson, eds., The Little Review: Special Theatre Number (Winter 1926), exhibition catalog, 52–53, 95. Reviews indicate that Depero’s presence in the show grew over time: the exhibition catalog only lists two drawings and three photographs (no titles or dates are provided), whereas the New York Times, besides reproducing one of his paintings, describes a mysterious device: “Depero has a device for combining flowers and megaphones.” Kenneth Macgowan, “Stagecraft Shows Its Newest Heresies,” New York Times, February 14, 1926, SM9. Another reviewer wrote about “Depero’s exhibition of Mechanical flowers ‘which move and speak through clusters of mega­ phones that convey the words of the drama.’” Sheldon Cheney, “The International Theatre Exhi­ bition,” Theatre Arts Monthly 10, no. 3 (1926). Scrapbook in the Lillian and Frederick Kiesler Papers, Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Roll n. 127. 28 Gilbert Seldes, “Will the New Scenery Destroy the Actor?” Dance Magazine (March 1926), 32–33, 64. 29 Macgowan, “Stagecraft Shows Its Newest Heresies,” SM9. David Carb, “The New Décor of the Theatre,” Vogue, May 1, 1926, 122–126. 30 Although Depero had expressed interest in New York as early as in 1922, the 1926 show changed that project from speculation to an actual option. It should be mentioned that the theater exhibition happened in concomitance with the show Exhibition of Modern Italian Art, curated at the Grand Central Art Galleries in New York by Christian Brinton under the patronage of the Italian Government. The exhibit featured a room dedicated to Futurism, which gave prominence to Depero. Depero would later ask Brinton to present his show at the Guarino Gallery in 1929 in New York. 31 Depero published the manifesto immediately after his return in Italy, in Fortunato Depero, Numero Unico Futurista Campari (Milan: Davide Campari, 1931). On Depero in New York see my article, “‘Bombs Against the Skyscrapers:’ Depero’s Strange Love Affair with New York, 1928–1949,” in International Yearbook of Futurism Studies 6 (2016), 43–70. 32 Depero praised the Saks windows in a short essay, “Le Vetrine di Saks,” in Fortunato Depero: Un Futurista a New York, ed. Claudia Salaris (Montepulciano: Editori del Grifo, 1990), 67–68. Although in his text Depero attributed the vitrine design to Alexander Archipenko alone, most of his detailed descriptions referred to Kiesler’s work. 33 Frederick Kiesler, Contemporary Art Applied to the Store and Its Display (New York: Brentano’s, 1930), 73. 34 A chapter is entitled “Contemporary Art Reached the Masses through the Store,” 66–68. 35 Kiesler, Contemporary Art Applied to the Store, 73. 36 Depero, “Le Vetrine di Saks,” 68.

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37 The Katherine Dreier Papers host the letter exchange between Dreier and Depero’s friend and business partner, Ciro Lucchi, regarding Depero’s work. Another key figure was the art critic Christian Brinton. Both an old supporter of Futurism in the United States and part of the milieu of Kiesler and Dreier, Brinton had curated the Exhibition of Modern Italian Art of 1926 which included Depero. He curated the 1929 show at the Guarino Gallery. 38 Fortunato Depero, “Cinema ideale,” in Fortunato Depero, Nelle Opere e nella vita (Trento: Mutilati e Invalidi, 1940), 306. 39 Fortunato Depero, “Architettura Pubblicitaria,” in Depero Futurista (Milan: Dinamo Azari, 1927), n.p. 40 See on this my article: “Bombs Against the Skyscrapers”. 41 A copy of Fortunato Depero, So I Think, So I Paint (Trento: Mutilati e Invalidi, 1947), including the author’s dedication to Kiesler, is listed in the “Inventory of Books in the Personal Library of Frederick Kiesler” prepared by Lillian Kiesler in 1983, Special Collection, MoMA Library, New York. The book, now in the collection of the Frederick Kiesler Foundation in Vienna, has Depero’s inscription: “To the Architect Kiesler / whom I admire since 1925 /—in sincere friendship / New York—1948 / January / Fortunato Depero.” 42 In a letter of January 27, 1948 to his wife, Rosetta, Depero wrote that Kiesler had visited his studio the night before and expressed his enthusiasm about his work. Kiesler, in Depero’s account, was going to bring Alfred Auerbach, a manufacturer of furniture, to the studio: it was most likely a way to promote Depero’s decorations made out of Buxus—a wood substitute. MART Archives, Rovereto, Dep.3.3.1.22.55.

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A Report on the Lack of Cooperation Between Kassák and Kiesler Judit Galácz and Merse Pál Szeredi

Lajos Kassák and his journal MA in Vienna

Lajos Kassák was the leading poet, artist and editor of the Hungarian avant-garde. He started his journal entitled MA (Today)—which soon became the most important forum of Expressionism in Hungary—during World War I in Budapest. Kassák and his group supported the 1919 Budapest Soviet Republic; therefore after its collapse they exiled to Vienna to escape the political retaliation of the right-wing regime led by governor Miklós Horthy.1 A large Hungarian colony, mostly consist­ing of political emigrants, was formed in Vienna in the first half of the 1920s. Several Hungarian periodicals and dailies were published in Vienna, and political circles were reformed in Viennese cafés. The Bécsi Magyar Újság (Viennese Hungarian Daily) was the most important forum for leftist Hungarians at the time and its cessation in 1923 disrupted the coherence of Hungarian emigrant circles. Depending on their political standing, more and more Hungarians left for either Berlin (Social Democrats) or Moscow (Communists). It was Horthy’s general amnesty proclamation in 1926 that finally disbanded the remaining group of Hungarian emigrants.2

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After a coerced break of less than one year, Kassák resumed the publication of MA in May 1920. He lived in dire circumstances in Hietzing, a suburb of Vienna, renting a room that also functioned as MA’s head­ quarters. He did his editorial work in various cafés. Kassák was probably counting on progressive Hungarians living in Vienna and in the towns of the Habsburg Empire’s successor states as the primary audience of the Viennese MA. Although MA was banned in Hungary, Kassák continued publishing the journal almost exclusively in Hungarian during his exile. The first few issues published in Vienna carried on with the revolutionary expressionist program, but expanded it in scope beyond the borders of Hungary, addressing artists of the international avant-garde with the manifesto to “all artists of the world.” 3 As he encountered other international movements, Kassák abandoned the motifs of Expres­sionism for the language of Dada and Constructivism, further distancing MA from the revolutionary program of 1919. Besides expressionist and Dadaist journals, MA soon connected to further periodicals representing new artists and “isms.” Kassák needed this strong network for the international positioning of his journal, and he also advertised other kin­dred periodicals on MA’s back cover.4 At the time, journals played an important role in the formation of new networks in the chaotic economic situ­ation that followed World War I. Through these journals, the transnational idea of the avant-garde was able to cross geopolitical and cultural borders, ignoring the hierarchies of centrum (the West) and periphery (Central and Eastern Europe).5 The Austrian Connections to Kassák’s Circle

With his own interpretation of Constructivist imagery, called “Picture Architecture,” Kassák became a member of the “international union of Constructivists,” yet his “MAist” supporters soon abandoned him, declar­ ing his new program to be apolitical, l’art pour l’art and a betrayal of the revolution; criticizing the journal’s “almost conservative obsession with style [that] has become insufferable for every artist who does not want to fashion himself according to Kassák’s agenda.” 6 Those artists who were committed to communism left Kassák’s group one by one, but the real break-up happened in the spring of 1922, when Kassák’s co-editors and brothers-in-law—the painter Béla Uitz and the poet Sándor Barta— both turned their backs on him.7 Kassák soon established a new circle

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around himself, comprised of young Hungarian writers as well as of artists living in Vienna, who were attracted to the program of artistic revival.8 Most of them were at least a decade younger than him1  . Kassák viewed his forced emigration as temporary and was con­ stantly looking for ways to return to Hungary from 1924 onwards. MA’s primary aim still remained the transmitting of international avant-garde art to a Hungarian audience. Kassák found no partners in the Vienna art scene, partly because the Viennese avant-garde initiatives did not form a homogeneous movement, and Kassák himself was not that motivated to develop an Austrian network. His only direct connection in 1920 was to Adolf Loos’ Freie Bewegung (Free Movement), whose downtown gallery provided space for Uitz’s exhibition, organized as the 10th instalment of MA’s exhibition series, launched back in Budapest.9 The list of exhibi­ tions planned by the Freie Bewegung in 1919 featured, among others, “Hungarian artist groups.”10 Loos originally planned to exhibit new works by the Nyolcak (The Eight) during the Hungarian Soviet Republic, but this was ultimately not realized.11 A year later, however, he exhibited Uitz, who showed among others the mural designs he made during the Soviet Republic, including the large-scale composition entitled Humankind.12

1   The Activist Artists in Vienna, (FLTR:) Sándor Bortnyik, Béla Uitz, Erzsi Újvári, Andor Simon, Lajos Kassák, Jolán Simon, and Sándor Barta, Vienna-Hietzing 1922 [Petőfi Literary Museum – Kassák Museum]

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This exhibition introduced Uitz’s work to art historian Hans Tietze, the mastermind of the newly founded Gesellschaft zur Förderung moderner Kunst in Wien (Society for the Advancement of Modern Art in Vienna) 13 who, in the spring of 1923, organized another exhibition for Uitz at the Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie (Austrian Museum for Art and Industry).14 MA was no longer involved, as by this time Uitz was attempting to define himself—in oppo­sition to Kassák—as the con­struc­ tivist artist par excellence in Vienna.15 Therefore, it is no coincidence that Kassák got in touch with Eugen Hoeflich’s journal Das Zelt (The Tent) and the group of young, jewish zionist intellectuals around it entirely through the new “MAist” circle. Several members of Das Zelt’s circle took part in Kassák’s events as musi­ cians or performers. Kassák was introduced to the group by Josef Kalmer and Mirjam Schnabel-Hoeflich, two Austrian artists who had taken an active part in the work of MA from the beginning.16 Kalmer functioned as the responsible publisher of MA (as Kassák was not allowed to publish a journal in Vienna without a permanent Austrian correspondent), while Schnabel-Hoeflich had already been reciting German translations of Kassák’s poems at the activists’ first Viennese matinee in November 1920.17 She also performed some of his poems at the “first German propaganda soirée”2  on March 22, 1925, organized by MA at Eugénie Schwarzwald’s reformist girls’ school in Vienna18 where Mura Zyperowitsch, a dancer of Russian origin and a member of Hoeflich’s circle, performed modern dance compositions too.19 The reports about the night were dismissive; ironic at best.20 Hoeflich made the following note in his diary: the MA activists’ scatterbrained performance that Mir[ jam] offered to help with was exhausting and void. These decadent Hungarian writers are looking for Europe’s apotheosis within life itself, and are trying to make a new age out of the modern era [Neuzeit]—yet they can’t overcome the apotheosis of the newest toilet model. I’ll definitely need a few days to recover from this constructivist performance.21 Kassák and Kiesler’s unrealized cooperation: traces of an argument

Even though we have no documents that testify to the nature of the rela­ tionship between Kassák and Hans and Erica Tietze, that outstanding art historian/art critic couple of Viennese modernism, it is beyond doubt

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2   Participating Artists of the 1. deutscher Propaganda-Abend of MA, (FLTR:) Hans Suschny, Leo Halpern, Mirjam Schnabel-Hoeflich, Günther Hadank, Lajos Kassák, Andor Németh, Paul Emmerich, Mura Zyperowitsch, and Max Kuhn, Vienna, March 22, 1925 [Petőfi Literary Museum – Kassák Museum]

that they were in contact. Tietze keenly promoted the work of Uitz on the Viennese art scene. In February/March 1924, as part of the Russian Cultural Week (a series of events organized by the city’s administration), and with the help of the Gesellschaft zur Förderung moderner Kunst in Wien, Tietze invited the Erste Russische Kunstausstellung (First Russian Art Exhibition)—first shown at the Galerie van Diemen in Berlin—to Otto Kallir-Nirenstein’s Neue Galerie.22 Tietze displayed a fragment of the original exhibition’s avant-garde section, which nonetheless provided a representative overview. The only sources that shed any light on the exhibition are art critiques from the era, but it seems certain that besides Kandinsky’s, Archipenko’s, and Chagall’s works from the 1910s, con­ structivist works like El Lissitzky’s Prouns, Ivan Puni’s “synthetic” paint­ ings and Naum Gabo’s abstract sculptures were also on view.23 Unfor­ tunately, the first exhibition of Kassák’s Picture Architectures took place at the same time, in the Galerie Würthle’s graphics gallery. This almost simultaneous debut of Russian avant-garde and Hungarian constructivist

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  3 Frederick Kiesler, Adele Mayer (?), F. T. Marinetti, Stefi Kiesler, Theo van Doesburg, Enrico Prampolini, and Dr. Kurt Rathe (FLTR) in the class of Franz Čižek in the Kunstgewerbeschule, Vienna, October 16, 1924, published in Pásmo, 1924 [Digitized Periodical Archive of the Institute of Czech Literature, Czech Academy of Sciences]

artists resulted in multiple articles claiming that Kassák was merely an insignificant epigone of the Russian Constructivists.24 One of the most sur­ prising of such claims came from Kalmer, MA’s responsible publisher and Kassák’s translator. In his feuilleton for Die Wage, he wrote the follow­ ing about Kassák’s art: “After having seen Lissitzky’s and Uitz’s works, these second-hand phantasmagorias [Hirnprodukte] are simply uninter­ esting.” 25 It was possibly at these exhibitions that Kassák and Tietze met in person. Tietze was planning to assign him an important role in the Musikund Theaterfest der Stadt Wien (Music and Theater Festival of the City of Vienna) in the autumn of 1924. We know this from a letter by Etel Nagy, Kassák’s stepdaughter, who was still in secondary school at the time, to her mother: “[T]he Konzerthaus Direktion invited Dad [i.e., Kassák] to

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participate in the organization of some kind of International Music Festival.” 26 Unfortunately the family correspondence does not reveal why this cooperation never materialized. Not only did Kassák not participate in the organization of programs, but his works and those of his closer circle were also omitted from the exhibition. Is it possible that the reason for the Activists’ absence was the personal conflict between Kassák and Kiesler? We do have another minuscule, indirect piece of evidence to support this hypothesis. In the trial for defamation involving Frederick Kiesler and Jakob Levy Moreno, the latter’s attorney used Kiesler’s con­ descending and dismissive behavior towards the puppet theater Der Gong and the writer “Ludwig Kascha” (most possibly Kassák) to support the claims stating that Kiesler was a “scoundrel.”27 It is also telling that despite the media hype surrounding the Inter­ nationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik (International Exhibition of New Theater Techniques) in the autumn of 1924, we have no further information about Kassák and Kiesler’s encounter or debate. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Enrico Prampolini, and Theo van Doesburg travelled to Vienna on the occasion of the exhibition; there is a famous group portrait featuring them as well as Kiesler and his wife Stefi, taken in the office of Franz Čižek, professor of the Kunstgewerbeschule (the College of Applied Arts in Vienna).28 According to an entry in Čižek’s guestbook, they visited on October 16 29, 3 —the same day that Kassák also met the artists—yet he did not join them.30 Taking advantage of the presence of these avant-garde artists with opposing views, an astute art critic, Max Ermers, organized a “Futurist congress” in the Hotel Erzherzog Karl’s lobby. He invited the hotel’s guests, Marinetti, Prampolini, van Doesburg, and Levy Moreno (who was suing Kiesler), and also Kassák and his coeditor, Andor Németh. Clearly, Ermers’ intention was to put the artists against each other, and he was partially successful. One of Kassák’s col­ leagues, József Nádass, gave an account of the fierce clash between Kassák and Marinetti: “The argument led to throwing chairs and pounding on tables and almost lapsed into a fight, because by that time Marinetti had already been flirting with Fascism … , and Kassák called Marinetti’s leader a traitor.” 31 As Ermers also reported, the Constructivists criticized Marinetti for his pro-war views and his support for Mussolini. “Marinetti, however, sees no fundamental difference between the various artistic methods. Instead, he traces the discrepancy between Italian Futurists and

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  4 MA, Musik- und Theater-Nummer, cover designed by Lajos Kassák, 1924 [Petőfi Literary Museum – Kassák Museum]

foreign Constructivists back to a difference in racial temperament,” he wrote.32 After the debate, Ermers continues, Marinetti was hungry and asked about a good Viennese restaurant. As the ascetic Constructivists could not re­com­mend him one, the congress shortly came to an end. The humor inherent to the situation was best grasped by van Doesburg in a letter: “Marinetti blew up the Viennese mentality. Oh, Vienna is so bleak and backward.” 33 We can assume, however, that Kassák was nonetheless present at the opening of the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik. Komödie (Comedy), a German-language weekly edited by Sándor Földes, published a review by Kassák on October 4 that even discussed the composition of the audience.34 Kassák gave a detailed account of his objections against the way the exhibition was organized and coordinated. He stressed that the ideological and theoretical background of the exhibited works was not emphasized enough; therefore the whole exhibition reverted into l’art pour l’art entertainment. He also disapproved of the fact that the various stage models were set up too close to each other. As for the exhibition catalog, he criti­cized the overwhelming amount of commercials and adver­ ti­se­­ments. He obviously did not choose Kiesler’s Raumbühne (Space Stage) as an illus­tration, but picked Rudolf Hönigsfeld’s plan for a Theater ohne Zuschauer (Theater without Audience) from the catalog.35 In other

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words, this long text is very telling about Kassák’s sullenness and resentment towards the exhibition’s organizers. MA’s special issue on theater and music4 

In 1924, the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik acted as a cata­ lyst of thinking about the avant-garde stage. A whole series of avant-garde periodicals released theater-related special issues such as Prampolini’s Noi 36 the Bucharest-based Contimporanul 37 and the American The Little Review—prompted by the 1926 International Theatre Exposition.38 Kassák, however, presumably assembled MA’s special issue on theater and music simultaneously with the exhibition in Vienna, as it was published on September 15, before the exhibition opening.39 Through the texts and illustrations, he showed whom he considered to be the pro­ gressive artists building a new type of theatrical space which would allow for previously unknown forms of theatrical experimentation. Kassák’s journals had already been publishing essays on the possibility of reform­ ing the performing arts in the 1910s;40 however, at the begin­ning of Kassák’s time in Vienna, there was a definite dip in enthusiasm towards the topic and it seems that Kassák’s need to be well-versed in the international scene also meant knowing his way around contemporary tendencies in theater theory. MA’s special issue featured Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbühne (Merz-Stage) manifesto41 and Marinetti’s and Prampolini’s proclamations about Futurist theater.42 These writings were complemented with works by those Russian artists that Kassák considered exemplary: a text by Alexander Tairov 43 and photographs of Tairov and Vsevolod Meyerhold’s realized per­ formances, which served as examples of the potential inherent in formal ideas engendered in a constructivist spirit.44 The source of these repro­ ductions was Stavba, a Prague-based architecture periodical edited by Karel Teige which was the first to report on contemporary Russian theatrical experiments in its 1923–1924 volume.45 Naturally, Kassák’s and Kiesler’s thinking were related in many ways; e.g. their interest in stage mechanics and mechanical movement. Kiesler’s performances featured multiple mechanical elements, and these also played an important role in MA’s special issue on theater and music. The theory of theater propagated by MA was closely related to the Bauhaus’ art-based theatrical ideas, whose primary relevance for

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Kassák lay in their explicit focus on mechanics. Beyond this, Kassák’s attraction to the work of constructivist artists at the Bauhaus school also stemmed from their shared interest in dynamism and the movement of machines, which made it possible to reinterpret the relationship between humans and the environment. Thus, MA’s special issue featured reproductions of stage designs by Kurt Schmidt and Georg Teltscher, stage sets from Hannes Meyer’s Co-Op Theater;46 El Lissitzky’s manifesto on the mechanical stage, published as an attachment to his 1923 portfolio Figurinenmappe;47 and László Moholy-Nagy’s film plan, Dynamics of a Metropolis.48 Kassák had first-hand information on the Bauhaus’ thea­ trical experiments: architect Farkas Molnár, who studied at the school, pub­ lished an essay in MA a year earlier under the title “Mechanical Stage.” 49 Kassák’s stand against Kiesler?

The previous examples have shed some light on the ideological similarities between Kassák and Kiesler. When, in his introduction to MA’s special issue, Kassák enlisted a variety of spatial transformations, he also mentioned Kiesler’s Raumbühne. However, Kiesler’s name appears only once in the whole issue, namely in the essay of the Breslau-based architect Günter Hirschel-Protsch, which enumerates artists who did significant research on movement.50 It is possible that besides their personal conflict, this hiatus can be explained by Kassák’s commitment to drama pedagogue Levy Moreno, who accused Kiesler of plagiarism at the opening of the theater exhibition.51 Kiesler designed a completely new structure for the scenery. This was a perpendicularly weighted, spiral construction that rejected the traditional stage setup and introduced a new type of structure to theatrical work. His Raumbühne was the centerpiece at the exhibition in 1924. This example clearly shows that in-depth reflection on the space of the stage, its meaning, and the possibilities of its transformation had been a nucleus of Kiesler’s oeuvre. His later work was also characterized by a transformation of the scenery and theatrical space; e.g. his designs for an Endless Theatre that was aimed at altering the theater building itself, but also at refashioning the relationship between stage and audience. Levy Moreno claimed that Kiesler’s idea of the Raumbühne originated from the improvisational practice that he developed, and he accused Kiesler of stealing his idea.52 His Stegreiftheater (Theater of Spontaneity)

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envisioned a practice in which the boundary between stage and audience is erased: members of the audience can become actors, and actors can become spectators.53 It might be interpreted as a sign of sympathy towards Levy Moreno that in MA’s next issue (January 1925), Kassák published one of the latter’s writings on the Stegreiftheater.54 We cannot, however, be certain that this was an expression of Kassák’s stance against Kiesler. In his unpublished autobiography, Sándor Vajda, a member of Kassák’s circle, gives a detailed account of how Kassák at the time focused almost exclusively on his autobiographical novel, Egy ember élete (A Man’s Life), gradually losing his interest in the Viennese art scene.55 According to Vajda’s account, it was at his and Hans Suschny’s intervention that MA published two texts about the avant-garde scene in Vienna: Josef Matthias Hauer’s essay on atonality in music 56 and Levy Moreno’s text on im­pro­visational theater. This narrative acquits Kassák of the responsibility of expressing his standpoint on the case. This does not, however, alter the fact that this very same issue of MA published a declaration by Viennese architects Rudolf Scherer, Walter Neuziel, and Franz Löwitsch, in which they express their solidarity with Levy Moreno. This declaration was preceded by a letter from the editors of MA, in which they make it clear that they completely agree with its content.57 For new theater art!—Kassák’s theory of theater

There are many similarities between Kassák’s and Kiesler’s ideas about the theoretical foundations of the theater. The Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik had a great impact on artists working in the con­ temporary Austrian scene, including Kassák, who expressed his views on the ideas formulated by Kiesler and other avant-garde artists in MA’s special issue on theater and music. His most comprehensive essay on the theory of theater was published as the introduction to this issue, under the title “Über neue Theaterkunst” (On new theater art).58 He used the most important idea of MA’s stage program, being that “the art of theater cannot be dominated by a single factor.” Artistic creation is a “synthetic creation of form”, in which every component is equally necessary for the final result: “The stage is no more and no less than a constructive play (life-movement), held together from a single point.” 59 As Rita Nemes accurately points out in her analysis of MA’s special issue, the main difference between this text and the theses previously

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expressed in the journal is that here, Kassák regards the issues of theater exclusively as matters of form; focusing on space, movement, and construction.60 This shift in emphasis means that the play and the actors are given a less significant role in the creative process. According to Kassák, artists usually take one of two routes to create a new type of theatri­ cal work. The first direction, taken by Western European artists, inevitably leads to a dead end as its advocates are unable to move on from their naturalist predecessors and the two-dimensional representation char­ac­ teristic of former theater practice. The second route is taken by the Russian artists, who developed a truly revolutionary theater and imagined the stage as a spatial construct. According to Kassák, they were not yet able to overcome the idea of merely solving a single, specific theatrical issue. He brings up the example of Tairov, who was exclusively interested in on-stage movement. Kassák also declares that these expectations can only be fulfilled by a new type of theater director, called “the organizer”, who is able to unify the production. Kassák presumably made his collaged set designs around the same time. Two of them were featured in Tisztaság könyve (The Book of

  5 Lajos Kassák, Stage design, c. 1924–1926, published in Tisztaság könyve (The Book of Purity), Budapest 1926 [Petőfi Literary Museum – Kassák Museum]

  6 Lajos Kassák, Stage design, c. 1924–1926, collage, gouache, paper [Private collection]

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Purity)5 , an anthology published in Budapest in 1926, while two other collages are now in French private collections.61 These collages are much closer to Dada’s playful arbitrariness than to the functionalist theory of theater that Kassák also elaborated on with regard to the 1924 theater exhibition. Among the coulisses built from Kassák’s two-dimensional Picture Archi­tectures, the images feature figures of different types and sizes cut out from illus­trated Viennese magazines; yet no narrative or scenography can be iden­tified in these compositions. Kassák did not experiment any further with stage design after 1926. Summary

Even though there was probably only indirect personal contact between Kassák and Kiesler, there were numerous similarities. A comparison of their activities shows that in Vienna in the 1920s, there was a very active circle of artists who focused on the avant-garde and the formal issues raised by constructivist art. It was through this circle that the activities of Kassák, the Hungarian emigrants, and Kiesler converged. The ideas they subscribed to were best manifested by theater, culminating in the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik in 1924.

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This essay was prepared as a part of the research project of the Petőfi Literary Museum – Kassák Museum K-120779 entitled “Lajos Kassák’s AvantGarde Journals from an Interdisciplinary Perspective (1915–1928)”, supported by the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office.2 Cf. Zoltán Péter, Lajos Kassák, Wien und der Konstruktivismus 1920–1926 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2010); Pál Deréky, Ungarische Avantgarde-Dichtung in Wien 1920–1926 (Vienna: Böhlau, 1991). Lajos Kassák, “An die Künstler aller Länder!” MA 5, nos. 1–2 (May 1920), 2–4. Edit Sasvári and Franciska Zólyom, eds., Lajos Kassák: Botschafter der Avantgarde 1915–1927 (Budapest: Petőfi Literary Museum; Berlin: Berlinische Galerie, 2011), exhibition catalog. Cf. Hubert van der Berg and Lidia Gluchowska, “The Inter-, Trans- and Postnationality of the Historical Avant-Garde: Introduction,” in Transnationality, Internationalism and Nationhood. European Avant-Garde in the First Half of the Twentieth Century, ed. Hubert van der Berg and Lidia Gluchowska (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), ix–xx;

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Gábor Dobó and Merse Pál Szeredi, eds., Local Contexts / International Networks. Avant-Garde Journals in East-Central Europe (Budapest: Petőfi Literary Museum, 2017). György Hernádi (Hercz), letter to János Mattis Teutsch, September 7, 1920. Budapest, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Research Center for Humanities, INV. NO. MKCS-C-I-82/12. Béla Uitz and Sándor Barta married Kassák’s sisters. Already during World War I, Uitz had played a significant role in collecting MA’s art-related texts and reproductions. Barta was still at secondary school when he joined the MA circle in 1917. He became the journal’s co-editor in 1920. Both he and his wife, who published poetry under the pen name Erzsi Újvári, were deeply influenced by the Berlin Dadaists. Later on, Uitz, Barta, and Újvári drifted away from Kassák and became involved with the Proletkult. In 1922 they officially broke up with Kassák and briefly ran their own counter-periodicals against him. This is how József Nádass, Aladár Tamás, Ágoston Erg, Henrik Glauber, Teréz Bergmann, Pál Szegi, Gyula Illyés, Sándor Vajda, and Hans Suschny

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entered the MA circle. Their international debut was in Der Sturm 15, no. 2 (Spring 1924), 70–86. Lajos Kassák, “Uitz Béla,” MA 6, nos. 1–2 (November 1920), 10–12. [H. G.], “Wiener Ausstellungssommer 1919,” Der Cicerone 11, no. 13 (April 1919), 415; Ewald Schneider, Die Künstlergruppe “Freie Bewegung” 1918–1922 (Manuscript, Vienna: Austrian National Library, 1999). Lajos Tihanyi, letter to György Bölöni, March 18, 1919. Budapest, Petőfi Literary Museum, INV. NO. V. 4131/350/2. Published by Valéria Vanília Majoros, Tihanyi Lajos írásai és dokumentumok (Budapest: Monument-Art, 2002), 118–119. Éva Bajkay, Uitz Béla (Budapest: Képzőművészeti, 1987), Cat. No. 305. Hans Tietze, “Wiener Ausstellungen,” Kunstchronik und Kunstmarkt 56, no. 11 (November 1920), 213. Éva Bajkay, Uitz Béla, 48–60; Dieter Bogner, “Wien 1920–1930: ‘Es war als würde Utopia Realität werden,’” Alte und moderne Kunst 30, nos. 190–191 (1983), 35–48. Cf. Josef Kalmer, “Ein ungarischer Maler in Wien. Die Ausstellung Béla Uitz,” Die Stunde, May 18, 1923, 7; Max Ermers, “Kollektiv-Ausstellung Béla Uitz,” Der Tag, June 3, 1923, 8. Ferenc Csaplár, “Die österreichischen Beziehungen Lajos Kassáks und seiner Bewegungen 1920–1933,” Acta Litteraria Acad. Sci. Hung. 29, nos. 3–4 (1987), 285–296; Ágota Ivánszky, “Kassák és a MA körének osztrák kapcsolatai a bécsi emigrációban,” Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 100, no. 3 (1996), 294–312. “A Ma felolvasó estélye,” Bécsi Magyar Újság, November 18, 1920, 7; MA 6, no. 3 (January 1921), 36. “1. deutscher Propaganda-Abend der Zeitschrift MA: Programm,” MA 10, no. 2 (March 1925), n.p. Eugen Hoeflich, “Eine jüdische Tänzerin (Mit drei Bewegungsstudien von Fritz Gross),” Das Zelt 1, no. 4 (April 1924), 130–131. “Kennen Sie ‘MA?’”, Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung, March 24, 1925, 6; “Aktivistischer Abend,” ArbeiterZeitung, March 21, 1925, 8; “MA. Ein futuristischer Kunstabend,” Neues Wiener Tagblatt, March 23, 1925, 6. Eugen Hoeflich (Moshe Ya’akov Ben-Gavriêl), Tagebücher 1915 bis 1927, ed. and commented by Armin A. Wallas (Vienna: Böhlau, 1999), 222. (Translated from German.) “Neue russische Kunst,” Arbeiter-Zeitung, February 17, 1924, 12; Max Ermers, “Eine neurussische Kunstwoche in Wien,” Der Tag, February 19, 1924, 8. Ernst H. Buschbeck, “Russische Kunst,” Neues Wiener Abendblatt, February 28, 1924, 5; Max Ermers, “Jungrussische Kunstausstellung,” Der Tag, March 4, 1924, 4–5; Josef Kalmer, “Russen, Juden, Ukrainer,” Die Wage 5, no. 5 (March 1924), 151–153; Max Ermers, “Rußland und wir,” Die Wage 5, no. 7 (April 1924), 207–210. Merse Pál Szeredi, “Kassák Lajos első kiállítása

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(1924),” Ars Hungarica 43, no. 2 (December 2017), 189–214. Josef Kalmer, “Von der Sezession zur Kunst­ handlung Würthle,” Die Wage 5, no. 4 (February 1924), 120. (Translated from German.) Etel Nagy, letter to Jolán Simon, undated [1924], Petőfi Literary Museum—Kassák Museum, INV. NO. KM-lev. 2044/18. (Translated from Hungarian.) “Zum Punkt ‘Lumperei’ führte er [der Verteidiger] das Verhalten Kieslers gegen das Figurentheater ‘Der Gong’ und ebenso sein Benehmen gegen den Schriftsteller Ludwig Kascha.” “Vor dem Richter,” Der Tag, January 20, 1925, 8. Published by Barbara Lesák, Die Kulisse explodiert. Friedrich Kieslers Theaterexperimente und Architekturprojekte 1923– 1925 (Vienna: Löcker, 1988), 159. For more details see Gerd Zillner, “Kiesler vs. Levy Moreno— Krokodil oder Radio. Der Plagiatsstreit um die ‘Raumbühne’ 1924,” in Design Dialogue: Jews, Culture, and Viennese Modernism/ Design Dialog: Juden, Kultur und Wiener Moderne, ed. Elana Shapira (Cologne: Böhlau, 2018), 391–411. It is worth mentioning that the Gong Theater had Hungarian connections as well. The ensemble, existing only for one year in Vienna, was co-funded by the Hungarian sculptor Béni Ferenczy. They staged several plays in an Expressionist style during the spring of 1924. See “Der Gong-Theater in der Riemergasse,” Die Bühne 1, no. 3 (November 1924), 14; Lili Berényi, “Eine verschollene Schauspieler­ truppe,” Die Bühne 2, no. 9 (January 1925), 49–50. For more details see Flóra Király, “Die Wiener Emigrations­jahre des ungarischen Bildhauers Béni Ferenczy (1921–1932)” (MA Thesis, University of Vienna, 2013), 68–69. Friedrich Kiesler, Adele Mayer (?), F. T. Marinetti, Stefi Kiesler, Theo van Doesburg, Enrico Prampolini and Dr. Kurt Rathe in the class of Franz Čižek in the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna, published in Pásmo 1, nos. 5–6 (November 1924), 11. Kiesler’s manifesto “Die Kulisse explodiert” was published in the same issue of Pásmo. Franz Čižek, “Tagebücher”, Wien Bibliothek, Nachlass Franz Čižek, INV. NO. ZPH 48917–3.4. Despite the fact that Kassák also visited Franz Čižek, his signature is to be found in Čižek’s guestbook with the date June 5, 1924. Čižek also visited Kassák’s exhibition in the Würthle Gallery in February. He wrote in his diary: “11 Feb. 1924. In der Ausstellung Kassák (Ungar Konstruktivis­ tische Arbeiten. 8 Nummern der Ze. MA gekauft” (Wien Bibliothek, Nachlass Franz Čižek, INV. NO. ZPH 48917–3.2). József Nádass, “Kassák Lajossal az emigrációban,” Kortárs 12, no. 10 (October 1968), 1629. (Translated from Hungarian.) Max Ermers, “Futuristenkongreß im Hotel Erzherzog Karl,” Der Tag, October 18, 1924, 4. (Translated from German.) Theo van Doesburg, letter to Walter Dexel, November 11, 1924. Published by Walter Vitt, ed.,

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A Report on the Lack of Cooperation Between Kassák and Kiesler

Hommage á Dexel (1890–1973). Beitrage zum 90. Geburtstag des Künstlers (Starnberg: Keller, 1980), 82–83. (Translated from German.) Cf. Merse Pál Szeredi, “MA/De Stijl. Theo van Doesburg esete a magyar avantgárddal,” Enigma 24, no. 90 (2017), 74–90. Lajos Kassák, “Die Wiener Internationale Theatertechnische Ausstellung,” Komödie 5, nos. 39–40 (October 1924), 3–4. Frederick Kiesler, ed., Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik (Vienna: Würthle & Söhne, 1924), exhibition catalog, 67. Noi 2, nos. 6-7-8-9 (November 1924). Contimporanul 4, nos. 55–56 (March 1925). The Little Review. Special Theatre Number 11, no. 2 (Winter 1926). MA 9, nos. 8–9 (September 1924). During the early years of MA, both the theoretical writings on theater and the reviews of plays were written by János Mácza. He summed up his theories on Expressionist theater in his “dramaturgy” entitled Total Stage, published by MA in Vienna in 1921. Mácza moved to Košice in 1921, where he directed Proletkult plays and finally emigrated to Moscow in 1923. Kurt Schwitters, “Die Merz-Bühne,” MA 9, nos. 8–9 (September 1924), 4. Formerly published in MA 6, no. 3 (January 1921), 29. Its source is Kurt Schwitters, “Die Merzbühne,” Sturm-Bühne 1, no. 8 (1919), 3. F. T. Marinetti, “Teatro antipsicologico astratto, di puri elementi e il teatro tattile,” MA 9, nos. 8–9 (September 1924), 3. Cf. F. T. Marinetti: “Dopo il Teatro sintetico,” Noi 2, nos. 6-7-8-9 (November 1924), 3–4. Enrico Prampolini, “Scéne dynamique futuriste (Manifeste),” MA 9, nos. 8–9 (September 1924), 11. Its source is Enrico Prampolini, “Scénographie futuriste,” Der Futurismus 1, no. 4 (1922), n.p. Alexander Tairov, “A színpadi atmoszféra,” MA 9, nos. 8–9 (September 1924), 9–10. Its source is a chapter from Alexander Tairov, Das entfesselte Theater (Potsdam: Kiepenheuer, 1923). MA 9, nos. 8–9 (September 1924), 1–3. Stavba 2, nos. 1–2 (1923). Werner Möller, ed., Das Prinzip Coop. Hannes Meyer und die Idee einer kollektiven Gestaltung (Dessau: Bauhaus, 2015). El Lissitzky, “Die elektro-mechanische Schau,” MA 9, nos. 8–9 (September 1924), 9. Its source is El Lissitzky, Die plastische Gestaltung der elektromechanischen Schau. Sieg über Sonne, Moskau 1913 (Hannover: Kestner Gesellschaft, 1923), n.p. László Moholy-Nagy, “Egy nagyváros dinamikája,” MA 9, nos. 8–9 (September 1924), 8–10. Farkas Molnár, “A mechanikus színpad,” MA 9, nos. 8–9 (September 1924), 6. Günter Hirschel-Protsch, “Das Bewegungsdrama,” MA 9, nos. 8–9 (September 1924), 15. Veronika Darida, Színház-utópiák (Budapest: Kijárat, 2010), 234. Cf. Lesák, Die Kulisse

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explodiert. 52 Kiesler’s working method also triggered his being accused of plagiarism. He was an artist well informed about all the advancements of avant-garde arts and new technology and he was keen on apply­ ing these experiments to a commercial environment. He used these avant-garde experiments and ideas quite freely in his works in stage-design, commer­ cial design, architecture and sculpture. 53 Jakob Levy Moreno, Das Stegreiftheater (Potsdam: Kiepenheuer, 1923). 54 Jakob Levy Moreno, “Rögtönző színház—Théatre immediat,” MA 10, no. 1 (January 1925), 4. Kassák received the 1924 anonymous edition of Das Stegreiftheater (Potsdam: Verlag des Vaters/ Kiepenheuer, 1924), as noted in MA 9, nos. 6–7 (July 1924), back cover. 55 Sándor Vajda’s autobiography, unpublished manu­ script, first half of the 1970s. Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Lukács Archives, dossier no. 4–5, 49–60. Cf. Lesák, Die Kulisse explodiert. 56 Josef Matthias Hauer, “Atonális zene,” MA 9, no. 5 (April 1924), 5–6; Josef Matthias Hauer, “Zur Einführung in meine ‘Zwölftönenmusik,’” MA 9, nos. 8–9 (September 1924), 16. 57 Rudolf Scherer, Walter Neuziel, and Franz Löwitsch, “Erklärung,” MA 10, no. 1 (January 1925), 12. (Translated from German.) Cf. Rudolf Scherer, Walter Neuziel, and Franz Löwitsch, “Die Raum­ bühne,” Neue Freie Presse, September 24, 1924, 1. 58 Lajos Kassák, “Über neue Theaterkunst,” MA 9, nos. 8–9 (September 1924), 2. The same in Hungarian: “Az új színházművészetért (A bécsi zenei és színházi ünnep alkalmából),” Diogenes 1, no. 38 (September 1924), 16–19. Revised version in Hungarian: “Az új színházművészetért,” in Lajos Kassák, Tisztaság könyve (Budapest: Horizont, 1926), 57–60. The same in German: “Für die neue Theaterkunst,” Die Bühne 3, no. 106 (November 1926), 13–14. 59 Kassák, “Über neue Theaterkunst,” 2. 60 Rita Nemes, “Raumstationen 1924–2004. Vor 80 Jahren erschien das Musik- und Theater-Sonderheft der Wiener Zeitschrift MA,” in Mitteleuropäische Avantgarden. Internationalität im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Pál Deréky, Zoltán Kékesi, and Pál Kelemen (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2006), 87–100. 61 Kassák, Tisztaság könyve, Images 2 and 3.

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Frederick Kiesler and  Theo van Doesburg

Influence and Elaboration Laura McGuire

The Dutch artist and architect Theo van Doesburg stands as one of the most significant influences on the development and direction of Frederick Kiesler’s early architectural career. In the manuscript for a retrospective 1961 interview for Progressive Architecture, Kiesler explained that it was van Doesburg who had “discovered” him and helped him to become a better-known figure in the European avant-garde.1 During the 1920s in Europe, and after his emigration to the United States in 1926, Kiesler operated as a conduit for van Doesburg, taking his theoretical postulates and elaborating them in three-dimensional form. And even after van Doesburg’s death in 1931, Kiesler would maintain a clear fidelity to his mentor and remain a lifelong promoter of the De Stijl movement. The two first met in 1923, by which time van Doesburg had become a strong voice in the European avant-garde discourse. After forming the De Stijl group with Piet Mondrian in 1917 (and soon joined by Bart van der Leck, J. J. P. Oud, Vilmos Huszár, and Anthony Kok), he spent the next few years painting, designing, and developing his theories. He pro­ moted these through De Stijl magazine and in public lectures, formulating in its first year of publication an aesthetic of “elementary plastic art” composed of line and color, and of “the fourth dimension,” in which he posited that art could represent a fourth dimensional realm of time.2 By the end of 1917, he had developed the grounds for a modern

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architecture that embodied a space-time relationship by eliminating mass in favor of colored, rectangular planes.3 Van Doesburg traveled to Germany at the end of 1920 in order to meet Hans Richter and Viking Eggeling, and also to visit the Bauhaus at Weimar. Greatly displeased with the school’s emphasis on craft and the Mazdaznan mysticism of Johannes Itten, he returned again in April 1921 to set up his own competing course in architecture based on De Stijl concepts. In 1922, he published an important essay, “The Will to Style” (which he had already presented in Jena, Weimar, and Berlin), in which he laid out the basic principles on which much of his subsequent theory was grounded. He described the architectural program of De Stijl as embodying the ideas of openness, clarity, truth, simplicity, synthesis, mechanical form, collectivity, and relation, among others. He argued, moreover, that the nature of art was to relieve the tension between the human psyche and its environment, and this was best embodied in a fragile balance of sliding planes and taut orthogonal and oblique lines.4 Later that year, van Doesburg further articulated his ideas in the essay “The New Aesthetics and Its Realization,” a critique of the nascent Functionalism and the New Objectivity promoted by his colleagues in Germany, especially in the published views of Mies van der Rohe, which appeared in 1923.5 van Doesburg insisted that construction (espe­ cially that based on rectilinear repetition) did not necessarily result in plastic architecture, but that architects needed to concern themselves primarily with the problem of understanding architecture as a form of unified, physical energy composed of the discrete energies of space, material, and color. An iron bridge, for example, would be plastic architecture, if its materials were “organized into a unity which expresses a maximum of energy.” 6 Moving from the page to real world application, van Doesburg organized the Kongress der Union Internationaler Fort­ schrittlicher Künstler (Congress of the International Union of Progressive Artists) in Weimar in September 1922, promoting De Stijl’s aims as a digestible series of points; foremost was that a work’s essential plastic unity resulted from an objective organization of elements. He also main­ tained that the problem of this organization was something to be approached objectively and collectively.7 In contrast to van Doesburg, Kiesler spent the late years of World War I as an infantryman. He was also stationed in Vienna in the

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Kriegspressequartier, the military organization responsible for artistic and propaganda programs.8 After the war ended, he married a young intellectual named Stephanie (Stefi) Frischer. In October 1921, Kiesler left the summer apartment they had rented in Hernals, and embarked on a journey to Berlin—for reasons unknown.9 Kiesler may have been aware of avant-garde discussions in Germany, but it is not known if he interacted with van Doesburg or De Stijl members during his time in Berlin in 1921/22. Berlin was already brewing with new visions concerning the advancement of society through art and architecture that were being articulated by a loosely affiliated band of radical artists including van Doesburg, but Hans Richter, El Lissitzky, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Werner Graeff, Naum Gabo, László MoholyNagy, and others. Kiesler may have encountered De Stijl magazine during his trip. And upon returning home to Vienna later that year, he would have found that the Vienna-based Hungarian modernist magazine MA, featured an essay and paintings by van Doesburg.10 While in Berlin, Kiesler’s most significant contact was the pro­ gressive Hungarian director, Eugen Robert, principal of the Theater am Kurfürstendamm. It was Robert who invited him to design the stage settings for the Berlin premiere of Karel Čapek’s science fiction play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) in 1923. Kiesler designed a futuristic, expressionist setting with mechanically inspired motifs for a two-month run that began in March.11 His set design of “flashing gadgetry” was met with a tepid critical response, but it did attract the positive attention of van Doesburg, who introduced himself, along with Kurt Schwitters, Hans Richter, Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky, Werner Graeff, and Mies van der Rohe, one evening after the production.12 Kiesler recounted that the group spent the rest of the night in deep discussion at a nearby club. They emerged afterward as friends.13 He returned to Vienna in May. But soon he was back in Berlin again to design the settings for a January 1924 production of Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones. That year would prove to be critical in Kiesler’s developing personal and creative relationship with van Doesburg. In early 1924, the art historian Hans Tietze recommended to the city government that Kiesler should organize a special exhibition of progressive theater arts in conjunction with the recently inaugurated Musik- und Theaterfest der Stadt Wien (Music and Theater Festival of the City of Vienna). Tietze undoubtedly knew of

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Kiesler’s recent contacts in Berlin, and he recognized that Kiesler might prove an important link to the networks of the international avantgarde. In August, Kiesler wrote to van Doesburg, requesting images from him that he could use in the catalog for the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik (International Exhibition of New Theater Techniques), set to open in September. He was also able to secure an official lecture slot for van Doesburg, who came with his wife, Nelly, to Vienna to see the exhibition.14, 1  In the short period since he had left Berlin, Kiesler had readily absorbed many of van Doesburg’s formal and spatial ideas. By the time the exhibition opened, Kiesler had completely removed all hints of the Expressionism that had tinged his earlier stage settings. His designs for the exhibition—a poster whose bold red and black geometrical graphics were rooted in international Constructivism, his Leger und Träger (L+T) display furniture, and the significant Raumbühne (Space Stage)

  1  Benedikt F. Dolbin, Theo van Doesburg, Frederick Kiesler (seated), and Enrico Prampolini (FLTR) at the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik (International Exhibition of New Theater Techniques), Vienna 1924

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built for dance and theater performances—all expressed characteristics based on van Doesburg’s earlier writings, and quite likely on recent discussions between the two artists. The L+T system was the most overtly Neoplastic of all of Kiesler’s designs for the show 2 . Leger and Träger referred explicitly to the two types of standardized components that comprised the system. He constructed twelve Leger-type components, comprised of a 3/4:1/4 ratio of horizontal and vertical members. These primarily provided space for models and objects, which could either be hung from the flat vertical panels or placed on the horizontal platforms. The Träger-type compo-nents provided a vertical display space for pictures and photographs. Both were colored according to the energetic “work” they performed: the vertical members were painted black, and the horizontal ones were colored white. Dia­ gonal elements and the slatted display panels were painted gray or in a primary color.15 Kiesler arranged these structures within the exhibition hall with narrow distances between them, creating a labyrinth through the displays. He explained in a 1925 article for De Stijl that the whole exhibition was supposed to have been darkened and lit only by small incandescent lamps; the walkways would have been covered with sound-deadening linoleum,

  2  Frederick Kiesler, Leger und Träger (L+T system), Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik (International Exhibition of New Theater Techniques), Vienna 1924

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Frederick Kiesler and Theo van Doesburg

cork, or rubber.16 Although cost likely prevented the execution of all of these details, L+T system was a remarkable achievement. No other exhi­ bition design in Europe had yet approached its marked three-dimen­ sionality and its attention to directing the spatial-temporal move­ment of the visitor. Similarly, one of Kiesler’s manifestos for the exhibi­tion catalog, “The Rail­way Theater,” emphasized the time-dimension as a cri­ti­ cal element of architecture, drawing a firm connection with van Doesburg’s emphasis on a temporal fourth dimension in art.17 For his part, during his sojourn in Vienna, van Doesburg published a short piece in the Neues Wiener Journal, “The Problem of an Active Exhibition Method: Viennese Impressions,” in which he lauded Kiesler’s design (without specifically naming him), confessing that he was “completely surprised by the new form … which I have not yet found in any city in the world.” He noted especially its active and movement-centered quality that flew in the face of “criminal” frontal methods of hanging artworks. He also raised the proceedings of the recent Düsseldorf congress, suggesting that Kiesler’s L+T system was a step in the right direction.18 It is still unclear when Kiesler officially joined the De Stijl group—whether it was in 1923, 1924, or 1925—but if van Doesburg had any doubts about Kiesler’s talent, the exhibition surely would have convinced him. In that same year of 1924, van Doesburg had published his most detailed statement on architecture, “Towards Plastic Architecture,” in De Stijl. In sixteen points, van Doesburg laid out his grounds for “elementary” plastic architecture, composed of “function, mass, plane, time, space, light, color, and material.” He envisioned open, floating, anti-cubic architectural “space-cells,” composed of balanced relation­ ships between unequal parts.19 In terms of its formal arrangement, color, space, and usage, L+T system seemed to connect directly to all of van Doesburg’s stated aims. Kiesler again took up van Doesburg’s call the following year in his design for a Raumstadt (City in Space) at the Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (International Exposi­ tion of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts) of 1925. The visit, however, did not go smoothly at first; when Kiesler arrived in Paris, he was met by van Doesburg and Nelly, who invited him to stay with them in Meudon. Believing it was too inconvenient to travel there, Kiesler decided to stay in a nearby hotel. This sparked a major conflict between the

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3   Frederick Kiesler, Raumstadt (City in Space), Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts), Paris 1925

friends: Van Doesburg wrote an apologetic, but acerbic letter to Stefi (who had remained in Vienna) that “his excellency,” the “Count Kiesler,” had been overwhelmingly arrogant in his refusal and that their friendship had ended.20 Putting personal relations aside, Kiesler forged ahead with his design. Perhaps because the Netherlands government had declined to allow any Dutch members of De Stijl to participate in the exhibition, Kiesler felt an acute obligation to demonstrate his own version of De Stijl to fairgoers as a way of showing his affiliation with the group. Building on his L+T system, he constructed a large suspended framework of beams of irregular lengths, inset with panels painted in primary colors. The structure displayed works by Austrian theatrical designers. As a tactic to convey that the structure’s function was a stage setting for stage settings, Kiesler darkened the exhibition space and positioned spotlights on the structure. The effect served to eliminate any sense of architectural enclosure3 . The City in Space was striking enough to repair Kiesler’s friendship with van Doesburg. This was helped along, too, by Kiesler’s aid in organizing a protest and petition against the exclusion of his Dutch colleagues. Kiesler much later recounted that on the day after the opening,

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Frederick Kiesler and Theo van Doesburg

he discovered van Doesburg in the exhibition hall gazing at the City in Space with Piet Mondrian. Kiesler reported (perhaps not without some con­ceit) that van Doesburg said admiringly to him, “you have done what we all hoped one day to do. You did it.” 21 But Kiesler also gave van Doesburg due credit. A pamphlet manifesto, titled “Counter-Archi­ tecture,” which he distributed at the exhibition, boldly referenced van Doesburg’s recent Counter-Composition paintings. It also called for the future modern city to be suspended in a system of tension above the ground.22 Van Doesburg would feature Kiesler’s work on the L+T system and City in Space projects, as well as publish Kiesler’s manifesto, “Organic Building—Space City—Functional Architecture” in De Stijl later that year.23 The manifesto constituted a further elabo­ration of van Doesburg’s principles from “Towards Plastic Architecture,” describing a floating, space-time city set free of rectilinear cubes. Despite Kiesler’s accomplishment, 1925 was a rocky time in his marital life. Perhaps contemplating ending their marriage, in the late summer Stefi Kiesler went to stay with the van Doesburgs at their house in Meudon, where she developed a romantic relationship with one or both of the couple.24, 4  After three weeks, Stefi returned to Paris and Kiesler.25 She remained romantically involved with Theo, however, and he wrote her several love letters over the fall and winter, describing his devotion and calling her his “muse,” among other pet names.26 It is unclear if Kiesler was aware of or condoned the rela­ tionship, which was destined to end soon anyway with the Kieslers’ departure of France for America in mid-January 1926. Frederick Kiesler had been invited by Jane Heap, the editor of The Little Review magazine, to curate and design the International Theatre Exposition in New York City. The city would soon become their new home; the Kieslers would stay there permanently while Theo and Nelly remained in France. There are only a few extant letters between the Kieslers and van Doesburgs from the period of the late 1920s, although there were undoubt­ edly more. All of them capture a significant degree of professional frustration. Although it was a success, the theater exposition in New York faced financial difficulties, and there were problems with Jane Heap. Heap also proved problematic for van Doesburg, who wrote to Kiesler to accuse her of stealing his artwork, which he had loaned in connection with an unrealized De Stijl exhibition.27 Kiesler tried, and failed, to arrange

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for the art patron, Katherine Dreier, to meet van Doesburg in Paris to see his work. After waiting the whole afternoon, van Doesburg wrote to Kiesler in frustration, “She wrote to me that all artists were always very satisfied with her and that no one has ever had a bad experience with her! Ridiculous and stupid, she does not come at all and does not even write me why.” 28 In mid-1926, Stefi wrote to the van Doesburgs about her difficulty adjusting to American culture and how she longed to return to Paris: [Americans] are completely superficial and have a sense that the whole world is theirs, and they are stingier than the biggest miser in Europe. All they can do is to build their office buildings with technical mastery and otherwise copy European culture in the most ridiculous and most terrible ways … . The artist is a surplus on which one does not spend money. Unless he is dead, or is called Rembrandt, or a rich hysterical woman wants to have a relationship with him … . There is no warm atmosphere anywhere in this country. Everything is cold to the point of unconsciousness.29 Kiesler appended a note to her letter about the lingering post-World War I, anti-German sentiments the couple were experiencing in New York: “We are all tainted,” he wrote.30

4   Stefi Kiesler and Nelly van Doesburg, Clamart 1925

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Frederick Kiesler and Theo van Doesburg

Despite their serious troubles adjusting to American life, Kiesler was able to realize one De Stijl-inspired commission, the Film Guild Cinema, which opened in early 1929.5  Its cool, black façade was broken up with asymmetrically arranged windows and a composition of thick, white linear projections. In 1930, Kiesler would publish an image of the building next to De Stijl-collaborator J. J. P. Oud’s Café De Unie in his first book, Contemporary Art Applied to the Store and Its Display (1930). Contemporary Art Applied to the Store and Its Display was an exposé of contemporary retail window design, yet it was also a vehicle for the promotion of De Stijl concepts to an American audience and to the retail marketplace. In various short essays, images, and captions, he captured portions of van Doesburg’s earlier writings, often using similar language as his friend. The introductory essay emphasized van Doesburg’s concept of artistic unity achieved through the arrangement of plastic elements, and through the rest of the text Kiesler lauded works by De Stijl artists as some of the best examples of contemporary art and design. He also republished “Organic Building, Space City, Functional Architecture,” with the added title, “Manifesto of Tensionism,” which referenced van Doesburg’s principle that plastic expression was achieved by the careful and balanced arrangement of disparate elements.31

5   Frederick Kiesler, Film Guild Cinema, façade elevation, New York 1929

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6   Theo van Doesburg, Stefi Kiesler, Hans Arp, Frederick Kiesler, and Nelly van Doesburg, Paris 1930

Kiesler may have shown his manuscript to van Doesburg when he and Stefi reconnected with their old friends during a trip to Paris in 1930. They visited the van Doesburgs at their new house in Meudon and saw many other acquaintances from the Paris art and literature scene, including Tristan Tzara, Christian Zervos, Mondrian, Edgard Varèse, Bravig Imbs, and Hans Arp, among others .32, 6  After returning to New York later that year, Kiesler wrote to van Doesburg to complain about the professional and economic difficul­ ties created by the Great Depression.33 It must have been one of the last letters that he received from Kiesler. Van Doesburg had been battling with illness throughout 1930 and he died of heart failure in March 1931. The Kieslers would remain in close contact with Nelly for the rest of their lives. As a relic of their friendship, she sent them a photograph of Theo lying peacefully on his deathbed 7 . A year after Theo’s death, Kiesler penned an obituary, which was published in De Stijl and in the American avant-garde journal Shelter

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Frederick Kiesler and Theo van Doesburg

(which was published by Buckminster Fuller). It was not so much a remembrance as a bitter complaint that van Doesburg had labored for naught, and that the Functionalists, the promoters of the New Objectivity, and the publishers who had ignored him would only now, after his death, laud him as an important theorist: Now, all magazines will print him; now: in France, in Germany, in Russia, in Switzerland, America, Holland. Now, developments will build his houses; now: in Stuttgart, in Moscow, in Berlin, in Zurich, in den Haag; now the International Congress of [Modern] Architects will claim him as one of their own, now that he is dead; now publishers will ‘hit’ upon a bonanza of nine rejected manu­ scripts, now … But even now and still now, they and those parasites will find consolation for their own utter inadequacy: that he was but a theorist.34 This passionate and vitriolic memorial, which foregrounded the early 1920s debates between van Doesburg and the Functionalists, would have been comprehensible in Germany and the Netherlands, but was much less so for an American audience. Ironically and despite Kiesler’s dire predictions, van Doesburg’s legacy and contributions to interwar avant-garde architectural discourse would remain generally unrecognized until the 1970s. Van Doesburg’s ideas may have had the most long-lasting impact on Kiesler’s architecture of any of his other friends and collaborators.

7   Deathbed portrait of Theo van Doesburg, 1931

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Kiesler continued to promote van Doesburg’s anti-Functionalist and anticonstructive position well into the 1930s and 1940s, with projects like his Space House, in which he posited a rounded, “anti-cubic” structure with no internal supports, divided by sliding interior partitions. Recalling key points from van Doesburg’s essay, “The Will to Style,” Kiesler argued that the house would balance the conflict between inner world and the external environment for the inhabitant. Moreover, the shell-like skin echoed van Doesburg’s call for an architecture “comprised in a single monumental plastic expression.” 35 In 1949, Kiesler would again take con­ temporary architects to task for designing from ground plans and creating nothing but static, rectilinear enclosures in his essay, “PseudoFunctionalism in Modern Architecture.” 36 After World War II and until the end of his life, Kiesler adhered firmly to the idea that van Doesburg’s theories had been the most crucial to the development of the modern movement Europe, and even more important than the work and theories of Bauhaus designers.37 Unfortunately, despite giving lectures and inter­views in which he attempted to give van Doesburg his due, Kiesler’s voice was virtually lost in a postwar American design scene that celebrated the significance of Bauhaus protagonists above all.38

Frederick Kiesler, edited typescript for Progressive Architecture interview, Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation (ÖFLKS), TXT 6748/1. 2 Theo van Doesburg, “Grootmeesters der beeldende kunst: I,” Eenheid, no. 357 (December 8, 1917). 3 Joost Baljeu, Theo van Doesburg (London: Studio Vista, 1974), 32. 4 Theo van Doesburg, “The Will To Style” (1922), in Baljeu, Theo van Doesburg, 117–119, 123. 5 Mies van der Rohe, “Bürohaus,” G, no. 1 (July 1923); “Bauen,” G, no. 2 (September 1923). 6 Theo van Doesburg, “The New Aesthetics and Its Realization” (1922), in Baljeu, Theo van Doesburg, 127–131. 7 Theo van Doesburg, “Statement to the International Union of Progressive Artists. Creative Demands of De Stijl,” in Baljeu, Theo van Doesburg, 126–127. 8 Kriegspressequartier, Kunstgruppe: Akten 33, Kunstgruppe, KPQ-Mitglieder, Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Kriegsarchiv, Vienna. 9 Frederick Kiesler, Meldezettel, October 29, 1920. Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv, Vienna. 10 Theo van Doesburg’s work appeared in MA 7, 1

no. 7 (1922), 35, 37, 44–45. 11 Fritz Engel, “Theater am Kurfürstendamm,” Berliner Tagblatt und Handels-Zeitung, March 30, 1923; Carl Einstein, “W.U.R. Herr Kiesler in rotgewürfelter Bettdecke erstickt. Samuel Butler kreist Riesen­ welle,” Der Querschnitt, no. 3 (1923), 75. 12 Thomas Creighton, “Kiesler’s Pursuit of an Idea,” Progressive Architecture 42, no. 7 (July 1961), 109. 13 Ibid. 14 Frederick Kiesler, letter to Theo van Doesburg, August 24, 1924, ÖFLKS, LET 989/0. 15 Frederick Kiesler, “Ausstellungssystem Leger und Träger,” De Stijl 6, no. 10/11 (1925), 138–141. 16 Ibid. 17 Frederick Kiesler, “Das Railway-Theater,” Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik (Vienna: Würthle & Sohn, 1924), exhibition catalog, 11. 18 Theo van Doesburg, “Das Problem einer aktiven Ausstellungsmethode,” Neues Wiener Journal, October 31, 1924. 19 Theo van Doesburg, “Towards Plastic Architecture,” (1924), in Baljeu, Theo van Doesburg, 142–147.

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Frederick Kiesler and Theo van Doesburg

20 Theo van Doesburg, letter to Stefi Kiesler, April 22, 1925, ÖFLKS, LET 997/0. For Kiesler’s account of the quarrel, see the original annotated typescript of the 1961 interview for Progressive Architecture, ÖFLKS, TXT 6748/1. 21 Frederick Kiesler, annotated typescript of 1961 interview for Progressive Architecture. ÖFLKS, TXT 6748/1. 22 Frederick Kiesler and Maurice Raynal, La ContreArchitecture, Paris, May 15, 1925. 23 Frederick Kiesler, “Ausstellungssystem Leger und Träger,” De Stijl 6, no. 10/11 (1925), 138–141; Frederick Kiesler, “Manifest. Vitalbau – Raumstadt– Funktionelle Architektur,” De Stijl 6, no. 10/11 (1925), 141–147. 24 Stefi Kiesler’s diary, April 11, 1953, p. 442, ÖFLKS, TXT 6886/2. 25 Wies van Moorsel, Durchschnitt reicht nicht! Nelly van Doesburg 1899–1975 (Zurich: Niggli, 2003), 146–148. 26 Theo van Doesburg, letters to Stefi Kiesler, November 28, 1925, ÖFLKS, LET 996/0; December 1, 1925, LET 995/0; January 12, 1926, LET 990/0. 27 Theo van Doesburg, letter to Frederick Kiesler, May 2, 1927, ÖFLKS, LET 992/0. 28 Frederick Kiesler, letter to Theo van Doesburg, March 18, 1926, ÖFLKS, LET 991/0; Katherine Dreier, letter to Theo van Doesburg, April 5, 1926, LET 974/0; Theo van Doesburg, letter to the Kieslers, April 13, 1926, LET 998/0. 29 Stefi Kiesler, letter to Theo and Nelly van Doesburg, April 26/May 2, 1926, ÖFLKS, LET 6192/0. 30 Ibid. 31 Frederick Kiesler, Contemporary Art Applied to the Store and Its Display (New York: Brentano’s, 1930), 49. 32 Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, August 23–October 17, 1930, ÖFLKS, MED 844/0. 33 Frederick Kiesler, letter to Theo van Doesburg, November 17, 1930, ÖFLKS, LET 993/0. 34 Frederick Kiesler, “Homage to Theo van Doesburg,” De Stijl, dernier numéro (January 1932), 53–54; “In Memoriam: Theo van Doesburg,” Shelter 2, no. 3 (April 1932), 29. 35 Baljeu, Theo van Doesburg, 124. 36 Frederick Kiesler, “Pseudo-Functionalism in Modern Architecture,” Partisan Review 16, no. 7 (July 1949), 738–741. 37 Frederick Kiesler, “The Gropius–Moholy–Axis,” undated letter, ÖFLKS, TXT 7139/0. 38 Creighton, “Kiesler’s Pursuit of an Idea,” 109. The original manuscript of the interview contains more on van Doesburg: ÖFLKS, TXT 6748/1. Kiesler also frequently mentioned van Doesburg in lectures during the 1950s.

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Frederick Kiesler and Piet Mondrian

“… We Can Have Tea at My Place and Play a Little ‘Jazz’ ” 1

Tilo Grabach

In an interview 2 from 1947, Frederick Kiesler  described Piet Mondrian1  with the aid of almost all of the common clichés that have stuck to this day: Mondrian never married, but liked to dance with beautiful women; he had decorated his studio and listened to jazz while he was painting; he was so taken with New York that his pictures suddenly became lavish. But not a word about any personal relationship between the two artists, nothing to indicate that they had known each other better at one time. In fact, the two probably met for the first time at the Exposition Inter­ nationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (International Exhi­ bition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts) in 1925, although we can assume that they had already been familiar with each other. A picture of Kiesler’s stage design for Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R. had been reproduced in the May/June issue3 of De Stijl in 1923, with several articles appearing in issue number 10/11 from 1924/25.4 We can also assume that Kiesler was familiar with Mondrian’s works and writings, that had wide currency having been published in the De Stijl, Merz and G magazines, among others.5 The June 1924 issue of G, a magazine published by Hans Richter, that featured a piece by Mondrian, also lists Frederick Kiesler as a member of its staff—making it highly unlikely that he would have over­ looked Mondrian.

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Frederick Kiesler and Piet Mondrian

Frederick Kiesler and his wife Stefi 2  finally met Piet Mondrian in person at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris. Mondrian is sure to have seen Kiesler’s spatial con­ struction here, the Raumstadt (City in Space) that was based on the design principles of De Stijl. The exhibition took place during a critical period for the group: there had been fierce quarrels between Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg, culminating in Mondrian’s “excommunication.” Kiesler, on the other hand, was a dedicated follower of van Doesburg and during the Paris exhibition even organized a protest against De Stijl not being admitted to the Dutch section.6 Mondrian, in contrast, explicitly did not support Kiesler’s appeal.7 In connection with the conflicts between van Doesburg and Mondrian, Piet Mondrian’s and Frederick Kiesler’s names were first men­ tioned together in a letter of 1925: “Yesterday Does[burg] informed me that Mondrian was finished for De Stijl on September 25. Well, it seems he has found a substitute in Fritze Kiesler,” 8 Adolf Behne wrote to Walter Dexel with an undertone of irony. Not least by means of this clever involvement in the conflict, Kiesler succeeded in consolidating his position in the aesthetic community. However, he cannot have been a substitute for Mondrian for particularly long as Jane Heap, publisher of the Little Review theater magazine, noticed him during the exhibition in Paris. She invited Kiesler to New York to take part in another theater exhibition9 and Frederick Kiesler and his wife Stefi left Europe as early as January 19, 1926.

1   Portrait of Piet Mondrian, Image was used by Frederick Kiesler for lectures on De Stijl [© 2018 alamy]

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So even though the atmosphere of Mondrian and Kiesler’s first meet­ ing in 1925 probably was not good, the two nevertheless stayed in loose touch. The reason may have been Kiesler’s tremendously communicative nature and his wholeheartedness, as may Mondrian’s wish to rope in everyone he knew to arrange potential sales. His financial situation at the time was more or less disastrous. To begin with, Kiesler had to reposition himself in New York, never forgoing the opportunity for grand, audience-grabbing gestures. Even on his arrival, the press reported that Kiesler traveled with more than forty crates—and he proudly posed for photos with them.3  But Kiesler’s hopes were soon dashed. The broad middle-class public regarded his exhibition in New York as a symbol of European decline, with only few positive reviews. He nevertheless succeeded in projecting himself as a member of the inner circle of the European avant-garde, soon becoming an authority for his American colleagues to look up to. What is more, he managed to win over one of the major patrons, the collector Katherine Dreier. She was preparing a trip to Europe in search of

2   Stefi Kiesler, Paris 1925 [Photograph by Otty von Wassilko]

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Frederick Kiesler and Piet Mondrian

suitable exhibits of modern art for an exhibition of the Société Anonyme. The Kieslers recommended that, besides Theo van Doesburg, she should definitely call on Piet Mondrian in Paris.10 The correspondence between Theo van Doesburg and Frederick Kiesler shows that Dreier did not show up at van Doesburg’s despite a firm appointment.11 Instead, however, she had taken two of Piet Mondrian’s pictures on commission, Tableau I, 1926 (B176)12 and Tableau II, 1926 (B177), showing them at the International Exhibition of Modern Art at the Brooklyn Museum from November 19, 1926 to January 10, 1927—the first Mondrian paintings ever to go on show in the United States.13 Upon receiving the catalog of the show, van Doesburg considered this an affront and an intrigue on the part of Mondrian.14 Van Doesburg’s reproaches had no repercussions for the Kieslers’ relationship with Mondrian. They were still in need of patronage in New York and therefore helped Katherine Dreier look for exponents of the European avant-garde. Besides, encouraging the avant-garde in general was important to Kiesler. Mondrian, on the other hand, will have thought highly of Kiesler for getting him an opportunity to exhibit in New York that would open up a new market for him.

3   Frederick Kiesler upon arrival in New York, 1926 [Photograph by Underwood & Underwood]

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Not working out as planned, the Kieslers were stuck in New York without any funds after the International Theatre Exposition. While main­ taining contact with van Doesburg and also continuing to contribute to the De Stijl journal, no correspondence between Kiesler and Mondrian is known to exist from this period. The next contact, albeit indirect, only came about in 1930, with Kiesler dedicating a separate section of his book Contemporary Art Applied to the Store and its Display 15, published in 1930, to Piet Mondrian.16 The text illustrates Kiesler’s by now more objec­ tive appreciation of Mondrian. He attempts to give the reader an under­ standing of Mondrian’s radical formal vocabulary by explaining its basic principles: eschewal of the illusion of space and the representation of objects, reduction to few colors, presentation of unstable balances by means of arranging the visual elements asymmetrically. Furthermore, Kiesler drew attention to Mondrian’s importance for the modern design of utility items. Mondrian is not known to have responded to the book. Frederick and Stefi Kiesler returned to Paris briefly in the late sum­ mer of 1930 to take care of various formalities that would later allow them to become United States citizens.17 Stefi Kiesler’s diary reveals that they often met Mondrian during their stay, introducing him to Alexander Calder, among other people.18 On October 13, they even attended a per­ formance of Calder’s Circus together with Fernand Léger, Le Corbusier, Carl Einstein and others. Kieslers’ relationship with Mondrian deepened during this stay. It may have been Mondrian who intensified contact with the Kieslers, particularly with Stefi. Meetings on four consecutive days shortly before the Kieslers were due to return, for example, suggest that this may have been the case. A short letter to the Kieslers reveals that they also had the privilege of visiting him in his studio: “… we can have tea at my place and play a little ‘jazz.’”19 Perhaps he was hoping to get them to help with more sales in the United States, where there was a growing interest in European modernism and where a circle of prospective, expert buyers for his works was slowly developing. After the Kieslers departed, Mondrian continued to correspond with them, if irregularly. What is more, he tried to make his own New York contacts available to Frederick Kiesler too. A letter to Hilla Rebay, for example, reveals that he wanted to introduce her to Katherine Dreier through Kiesler: “I also spoke of you to Kiesler, a friend of Miss Dreier and a great modern architect in New York. You will certainly meet him one day because he is very well known in modern

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Frederick Kiesler and Piet Mondrian

circles.” 20 When the two met six months later, Kiesler would indeed be Rebay’s favorite for designing the envisaged museum building for the Solomon Guggenheim collection.21 What is more, Mondrian continued to view the Kieslers above all as a source of information about the American market. This intention is made clear in a letter from Stefi Kiesler to Katherine Dreier of February 4, 1931: “Dear Miss Dreier, I wrote Mondrian after the opening of your exposition at the ‘New School,’ giving him a detailed account of the impor­ tance of the place and particularly of the exposition. I further told him that his pictures are in perfect shape and exceedingly well hung … .” 22 Mondrian had presumably asked Stefi Kiesler to go and see the show and report to him, fearing that his pictures might not be displayed appro­ priately in the exhibition organized by Dreier. In the following years, contact with the Kieslers remained sparse, with only one postcard from Mondrian of December 21, 1932 having survived in which he reports that times were difficult but that he was able

4   Piet Mondrian, Blue, Blanc et Jaune (Blue, White and Yellow), oil on canvas, 1932 [Denver Art Museum Collection, Gift of Charles Francis Hendrie Memorial, 1966.185; digital image courtesy of the Denver Art Museum; Piet Mondrian © 2017 ES Mondrian / Holtzman Trust]

5   Piet Mondrian, Chrysantemum, oil on canvas, c. 1910, whereabouts unknown, formerly collection of Stefi and Frederick Kiesler, published in Michel Seuphor, Piet Mondrian. Leben und Werk (1957)

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to sell something from time to time.23 The Kieslers were not doing particularly well either, and it was probably Stefi Kiesler’s job at the foreign languages department of the New York Public Library that helped them keep their heads above water. We can assume a further, indirect contact with Mondrian in 1932. The shirt manufacturer and collector Sidney Janis traveled to Paris on June 16, visiting Mondrian in his studio and purchas­ ing a painting.24 This visit was probably arranged by Frederick and Stefi Kiesler. The Kieslers had known the Janises at least since 1930 as Harriet Janowitz, née Grossmann, worked at Kiesler’s Planners Institute. Kiesler and Mondrian came into contact again in 1934, if not earlier. Mondrian was stepping up his efforts to sell pictures in the United States. He had given two of his paintings to his friends the artist couple Eugene and Gwendolyn Lux, who had moved to New York the same year, for them to sell there. One of the two, Composition with Blue and Yellow (B235)4 , caught Frederick Kiesler’s interest. A letter from Mondrian to the Kieslers of September 6, 1934 confirms the sale of the picture to them: “ … I am infinitely grateful for your great help and for the sale of the ‘blue’ painting that Lux was so kind as to take to New York with him. I have been able to sell such paintings for at least 2000 francs, and this is roughly what I got for this one thanks to your help and Lux’s … .” 25 Mondrian’s next surviving letter to the Kieslers is dated December 23, 26 1937. It reveals that they must have asked Mondrian to sell them another picture. It appears that they wanted to help him financially by buying a painting and that they had not asked for a particular work. Mondrian refused their offer to buy a picture, noting that, for a year now, he had had a gallerist—Valentine Dudensing—in New York representing his exclusive rights in America. He suggested that the Kieslers contact him—which they seem not to have done. At the end of the letter, Mondrian mentioned for the first time that he could imagine living in New York, but ruled out this possibility for the time being due to lack of money and his age. It appears that the Kieslers wrote back urging Mondrian to come to New York in view of the political situation, as his very personal letter of September 30, 1938 from London, where he had fled just days before, indicates such an offer:  … You shall be astonished to see me at London. The danger of war came nearer and nearer and I wrote to friends in London also. They advised me to come there as soon as possible. There was no time to wait for your answer, America is so far.

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Frederick Kiesler and Piet Mondrian

… I have had this morning the great pleasure to receive Your nice letter and offer. It was so good to me to see your warm friendship and appreciation of my work. I thank you so much. I hope to come one day, but now on the moment it is impossible for me to come, and danger of war has gone at least for some time. So it is better I stay here and see what later on may be possible. I should like to do later on the lectures because I had always great interest in the esthetic development of our surrounding (architecture) and the ordening [Dutch for order] of life. I see you are member of Columbia University: please think of me if I could done there something so that I should have a situation of which I could to subsist on. … Valentine Dudensing wrote me at end of latest season that it had been very bad. So he had nothing sold of my things. But perhaps next season will be better. At any case I should like later on to come to America. It should be a pleasure to me to see you both back again. Knowing that you will think of me when time is there, always your Mondrian … .27 With this reply Mondrian left his options open, but the fact that he was considering giving up his position as a full-time artist in order to take on a job as a lecturer is a clear sign of a crisis. Only rarely had he had to make such concessions, and so he was now reviewing his options for earning a living. He was thus familiar with American laws that simplified immigration for those invited to take on a lectureship. No evidence of further contacts exists until 1941. Only when Mondrian did indeed flee to New York with the help of Harry Holtzman did he get in touch with the Kieslers again. In a brief letter he suggests a meeting.28 They saw each other again for the first time in more than ten years at their penthouse on January 12. In the evening they went to a screening of the League of Composers,29 for Mondrian another chance—arranged by Kiesler—for him to make contacts in a new environment. The diaries kept by Stefi Kiesler show that they now kept in touch regularly, if not frequently. They probably also met at exhibition openings, lectures or parties.30 In a letter of October 6, 1941, Mondrian appears to make reference to the Kieslers recently visiting his studio when he writes: “… I like to tell you that I am very happy you appreciated my work again.

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This time it was naturalistic work, but that is the same to me. After my show 31 I hope to offer you one of the flowers you saw … .” 32 On March 24, 1942 Mondrian contacted Charmion von Wiegand on this matter: “… At the Ernst show I saw Stephy [sic] Kiesler who was very kind and will come to you to fetch the flower … .” 33 This picture is probably one of three chrysanthemum pictures of 1909/10 that were on show at Dudensing’s gallery. It caught Stefi Kiesler’s interest, so that he made her a gift of the picture as a sign of his esteem.34, 5  Only few of Mondrian’s acquaintances in New York received such a token of affection.35 On January 23, 1942, a few days after the Dudensing exhibition opened, Stefi Kiesler noted in her diary: “Abstract Artist at Nierendorf.” That evening, Balcomb Greene held the only lecture ever written by Mondrian.36 Among the audience was Frederick Kiesler, a frequent visitor to public events in New York’s art world. One of the last entries in Stefi Kiesler’s diary that feature the name “Mondrian” is dated April 25, 1942: “Kiesler with Peggy, at 2 o’clock went home with her (Sweeney, Mondrian), had dinner with Mondrian.” 37 At this meeting they may well have discussed Peggy Guggenheim’s inten­ tions of opening a gallery in New York based on Kiesler’s plans, asking Mondrian for his opinion.38 Even though the diaries make no further mention of meetings with Mondrian, we can assume that the two artists met once in a while at various occasions. The penultimate entry concerning Mondrian made by Stefi Kiesler in her diary on February 3, 1944 reads: “11.00 funeral Mondrian Union Chapel, Lexington Avenue 52 (Kiesler to cemetery).” 39 Kiesler was thus among the more than 200 guests at the funeral ceremony in honor of Mondrian who died on February 1.40 He also attended the funeral proper along with a few others, perhaps twenty figures from the artist’s aesthetic community.41 The final entry mentioning Mondrian in Stefi Kiesler’s diary is dated March 23, 1944, seven weeks after Mondrian’s death: “4.30–6.30. Mondrian Studio, 15 East 59.” Harry Holtzman had opened Mondrian’s live-in studio to the public for six weeks. Kiesler came on the second day to have another look at the rooms. Looking back at the points of contact in the lives of Piet Mondrian and Frederick Kiesler allows us to put the two men’s relationships into

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the context of the avant-garde that was shifting from Europe to the United States. Before Frederick Kiesler gained recognition as an artist in Vienna, Berlin, Paris and New York, he tried to establish contact with leading artists, collectors or other protagonists of the avant-garde.6  In particular, he got involved in campaigns that attracted public attention, with Kiesler either acting as the instigator or actively embroiling himself in existing conflicts pertaining to affairs of the artist communities—for instance the dispute between Mondrian and van Doesburg. His self-confident dis­ position as an artist stood Kiesler in good stead, he understood the action schemas and the grammar of the field of art and deployed them

6   Group portrait at Peggy Guggenheim’s apartment, first row: Stanley William Hayter, Leonora Carrington, Frederick Kiesler and Kurt Seligmann; second row: Max Ernst, Amédée Ozenfant, André Breton, Fernand Léger and Berenice Abbott; third row: Jimmy Ernst, Peggy Guggenheim, John Ferren, Marcel Duchamp and Piet Mondrian, New York on July 2, 1942 [Photograph by Hermann Landshoff; © bpk / Münchner Stadtmuseum, Sammlung Fotografie / Archiv Landshoff]

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purposefully. His intuition for the processes and structures of the avant-garde allowed him to operate in such a way as to achieve his aims and strengthen his own position. His asset was his vast circle of acquaintances and friends among avant-gardists, with no discrimination between Americans and Europeans. His relationship with Piet Mondrian also reflects his function as a connector. Although there was some overlap between the two men’s circles until the end of 1925, their relationship with the other pro­tagonists differed. While Mondrian afforded himself nearly total autonomy as a member of the leading avant-garde, stylizing his life almost religiously and devoting himself uncompromisingly to his art, Kiesler was a brilliant networker who introduced many European avant-gardists to New York’s artists, gallerists, collectors and museum folk even after mov­ing to the United States. Mondrian made ample use of this ability of Kiesler’s to establish contacts. Particularly in 1930 in Paris, he intensified their hitherto loose contacts, staying in touch over the next ten years by means of letters, even if some amount of self-interest may have played a part. After Mondrian’s flight in 1941, Kiesler was among the first people he visited in New York. Through Kiesler he was able to make new contacts or renew old ties. Over the next two years, the two men met fairly frequently, but Mondrian had quickly formed his own aesthetic community and was thus no longer reliant on Kiesler’s ability to build networks.

1

2 3 4

5

This is a greatly abridged version of the chapter on “Piet Mondrian and Frederick Kiesler” from my dissertation: Tilo Grabach, Kiesler, Glarner, Barr. Ansätze zur Rekonstruktion einer Aesthetic Commu­ nity um Piet Mondrian (Weimar: VDG, 2015), 60–89. “Design’s Bad Boy,” Architectural Forum 86, no. 2 (February 1947), 88–91, 138, 140. Frederick Kiesler: Stage design for R.U.R. (pictured), De Stijl 6, no. 3/4 (1923), 40 f. Frederick Kiesler, “Ausstellungssystem Leger + Träger,” De Stijl 6, no. 10/11 (1924/25), 137–146; with a portrait of Kiesler on the cover, a piece on the L+T Installation with illustrations (145), and his “Appel de Protestation” (141–146). In addition to those in De Stijl, Kiesler was probably also familiar with the following publications: Hermann Visser, “Neue holländische Malerei,” Das Kunstblatt 2 (1918), 319–320; Lajos Kassák/

6 7 8

9

László Moholy-Nagy, Uj müvészek könyve (Vienna: Julius Fischer, 1922); “Mondrian,” Merz 6 (October 1923), 52; “Mondrian,” Merz 8 (April–July 1924), 74; “Piet Mondrian 1919,” G 3 (June 1924), 33. What is more, Kiesler had had the opportunity to see some original Mondrians at the Große Berliner Kunstausstellung (Great Berlin Art Exhibition) in 1923, at the Internationale Kunstausstellung (International Art Exhibition) in Vienna in 1924, and at the L’Art aujourd’hui show in 1925. See note 4, “Appel de Protestation.” “10 Jaren Stijl 1917–1927,” De Stijl 7 (1927), 557. Adolf Behne, letter to Walter Dexel, in Walter Vitt, ed., Hommage à Dexel (1890–1973). Beiträge zum 90. Geburtstag des Künstlers (Starnberg: Josef Keller Verlag, 1980), 96. International Theatre Exposition at the Steinway Hall, New York, from February 27 to March 15, 1926.

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10 Cf. Frederick Kiesler, letter to Theo van Doesburg, March 18, 1926 ÖFLKS, LET 991/0; additional letters exist to Hans Richter and Amédée Ozenfant also of March 18, 1926, Katherine S. Dreier Papers / Société Anonyme Archive, Yale Collection of Ameri­ can Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. 11 Theo van Doesburg, letter to Frederick Kiesler, April 13, 1926, ÖFLKS, LET 998/0. 12 The abbreviations after the titles of the paintings refer to the numbering system used in the catalog drawn up by Joop M. Joosten / Robert P. Welsh, Piet Mondrian. Catalog Raisonnée (Munich: Prestel, 1998). 13 Cf. also Nancy J. Troy, Mondrian and Neoplasticism in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery, 1979), 61–62 and International Exhibition of Modern Art, cat. Brooklyn Museum (New York: Société Anonyme, 1926), 48–49. 14 Cf. Theo van Doesburg, letter to Frederick Kiesler, May 2, 1927, ÖFLKS, LET 992/0. 15 Frederick Kiesler, Contemporary Art Applied to the Store and its Display (New York: Brentano’s, 1930). 16 Frederick Kiesler, Contemporary Art Applied to the Store and its Display (New York: Brentano’s, 1930), 28–30. 17 Cf. Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, August 12 to October 18, 1930, ÖFLKS, MED 844/0. 18 Stefi Kiesler’s calendar indicates seven meetings with Mondrian during their stay in Paris in 1930, some together with other acquaintances: September 14; October 2; October 3; October 11; October 12; October 13; October 14. (The day they went to see Calder’s Circus.) 19 Piet Mondrian, letter to Frederick and Stefi Kiesler, October 9, 1930, ÖFLKS, LET 169/0. (“… nous pouvais prendre le thé chez moi et faire un peu de ‘jazz’”) 20 Piet Mondrian to Hilla Rebay, October 10, 1930; quoted after: Joan Lukach, Hilla Rebay. In Search of the Spirit in Art (New York: Braziller, 1983), 65. At the time, Rebay was still working as an artist but was already advising Solomon R. Guggenheim with regard to setting up his collection. 21 Cf. Lukach, Hilla Rebay, 135. 22 Stefi Kiesler to Katherine S. Dreier, February 4, 1931. Katherine S. Dreier Papers / Société Anonyme Archive, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. This refers to the Special Exhibition arranged in Honor of the Opening of the New Building of the New School for Social Research, presented by The Société Anonyme, January 1–February 10, 1931. 23 Piet Mondrian, letter to Frederick and Stefi Kiesler, December 21, 1932, ÖFLKS, LET 1688/0. 24 Composition with Red and Blue, 1933 (B239). 25 Letter printed in Joosten/Welsh, Piet Mondrian, Vol. 2, 365. The Kiesler’s owned the painting until 1945. It is noteworthy that the Kieslers sold the picture shortly after Mondrian’s death.

26 Piet Mondrian, letter to Frederick and Stefi Kiesler, December 23, 1937, ÖFLKS, LET 1689/0. 27 Piet Mondrian, letter to Frederick and Stefi Kiesler, September 30, 1938, ÖFLKS, LET 1690/0. 28 Piet Mondrian, letter to Frederick and Stefi Kiesler, January 3, 1941, ÖFLKS, LET 1692/0. 29 Cf. Stefi Kiesler’s calendar (big), 1941, ÖFLKS, MED 855/1. 30 For example on February 1, 1941 at the welcoming party for Fernand Léger and Mondrian organized by George L. K. Morris. Stefi notes further meetings for February 3 and October 10, 1941. On January 19, 1942 they attended the opening of Mondrian’s solo exhibition at the Valentine Gallery. 31 This refers to the Mondrian retrospective at Dudensing’s gallery, January 19 to February 7, 1942. 32 Piet Mondrian, letter to Frederick and Stefi Kiesler, October 6, 1941, ÖFLKS, LET 1694/0. 33 Quoted after: Herbert Henkels, “Mondrian. A Life in Pictures 1872–1944,” in Mondrian. From Figuration to Abstraction (Seibu Museum of Art, Tokyo: The Tokyo Shimbun, 1987), exhibition catalog, 227. 34 It seems likely that this is the painting Chrysanthemum, c.1910 [C66] described as lost in Joosten/Welsh, Piet Mondrian, Vol. 2, 1998. Frederick Kiesler, letter to Harry Holtzman requesting a valuation for a chrysanthemum oil painting by Mondrian also supports this assumption (Frederick Kiesler, letter to Harry Holtzman, June 7, 1965, ÖFLKS, LET 1329/0). According to Gerd Zillner, ÖFLKS, September 20, 2017, the Archives of American Art, Washington D. C. contain documents suggesting that the painting had been destroyed during framing as a result of inexpert handling by a craftsman. 35 In addition to Kiesler, these were Katherine Dreier, Fritz Glarner, Carl Holty, Herbert Matter, James Johnson Sweeney and Charmion von Wiegand. He had appointed Harry Holtzman as his heir. 36 Cf. Tilo Grabach, Kiesler, Glarner, Barr, 103–104. 37 Stefi Kiesler’s calendar (big), 1942, ÖFLKS, MED 843/1. 38 Marguerite [Peggy] Guggenheim, letter to Frederick Kiesler, February 26, 1942, ÖFLKS, LET 482/0. Regarding Kiesler’s designs and the interior for Art of This Century, see also MMK / ÖFLKS, eds., Friedrich Kiesler. Art of This Century (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2002) and Susan Davidson / Philip Rylands, eds., Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler. The Story of Art of This Century (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2004). 39 Stefi Kiesler’s calendar (big), 1944, ÖFLKS, MED 859/0. 40 Cf. Jay Bradley, “Piet Mondrian, 1872–1944. Greatest Dutch Painter of our Time,” Knickerbocker Weekly. Free Netherlands 3, no. 51 (February 14, 1944), 24. Bradley lists fifty-one of the guests by name, including Kiesler. 41 Virginia Pitts Rembert, “Mondrian, America, and American Painting” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1970; Ann Arbour/Michigan 1971), 92.

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Frederick Kiesler and Hans Richter

“To   the Excellent Actor and Con­­vincing Minotaur” Jill Meißner-Wolfbeisser

ˇ Frederick Kiesler’s stage design for Karel Capek’s R.U.R. in 1923 in Berlin was not only his breakthrough as an artist, but also paved his way into the social circles of the international avant-garde. No wonder that he would idealize this key turning point in his life in later years. According to Kiesler, Theo van Doesburg rushed backstage with his “gang” after the second performance to congratulate him—“the gang” was Kurt Schwitters, Hans Richter, László Moholy-Nagy, Eli [sic] Lissitzky, Werner Graeff and Theo van Doesburg. They came in, grabbed me without saying a word, lifted me up, and took me 6 or 7 blocks around the corner to a club where we met Mies van der Rohe and spent the whole night talking about archi­ tecture and the future theater … it seemed to each of us as though we were indivi­duals who had known one another for a long, long time.1 What Kiesler makes sound like love at first sight, Hans Richter describes with rather less enthusiasm in his memoirs: This ‘modernity’ enthralled Does, ever the believer in progress … and left me cold. After the performance, we waited for the inventive creator. We congratulated a very small, muscular man who immediately monopolized the conversation, expounding in his most

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Frederick Kiesler and Hans Richter

delightful Viennese dialect the importance of theatrical innovations in an extremely interesting manner.2 Although barely older than Kiesler, Richter had already made far more progress in his artistic career by the early 1920s. He had joined the Dada group in Zurich and had been working together with the Swede Viking Eggeling in Berlin since 1918. Their joint experiments would lead to the invention of abstract film.3 While he had viewed Kiesler’s “electromechanical” scenery for R.U.R. with skepticism, his enthusiasm for Kiesler’s next stage set for Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones was unqualified: I do not recall ever having seen a more imaginative and yet simple set … . The trials of the Negro Emperor Jones as he wanders through the jungle: this consisted of simple suspended canvas drapes without any painting, but positioned all over the stage, causing the wanderer to lose his way, as if in a jungle. Here and there, a spot­light would hit the ‘walls,’ the man, the trail. From nothing he had created an un­canny world. For me, this is among the most consum­mate of Kiesler’s creations, a masterpiece in its simplicity.4 Kiesler’s “mechanical space scenery”5 took the form of a four-sided funnel with a bright red base inclined towards the audience. He replaced the conven­tional painted set of the picture-frame stage with spatial interventions and light effects. Makeshift wooden walls and suspended lengths of fabric created an ominous, expressionist setting. As he [the Emperor] hears the beat of a tom-tom, he tries to escape. He starts to run, and as he moves the transformation of the stage begins. The drum beat gets faster and faster, indicating the passage of time, and time merges into space. I car­ried this inspiration into the scenery, designing it kinetically and having it move through the length of the play,6 Kiesler notes. It is easy to under­stand Richter’s fascination in view of this description. Kiesler’s preoccupa­tion with time, space and rhythm can be seen in the context of Richter’s own experiments, his scroll paintings, and abstract films (Rhythmus 21, 23 and 25) that, together with Eggeling’s Symphonie Diagonale, would go down in history. A few months later, Kiesler published four performance photographs flanked by two painted stage funnels in the catalog for the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theater­technik (International Exhibition of New Theater Techniques).

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 “To the Excellent Actor and Con­v incing Minotaur”

  1  Frederick Kiesler, “Film strip” montage of stage photographs from The Emperor Jones, published in the catalog of the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik (International Exhibition of New Theater Techniques), Vienna 1924

2   Page spread from G: Material zur elementaren Gestaltung (no. 1, July 1923) with film strip of Hans Richter’s Rhythmus 21 [Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University]

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Frederick Kiesler and Hans Richter

They are composed so as to form a kind of film strip with a vertical time­ line to the right. Formally, this representation of The Emperor Jones echoed Richter’s visualization of his Rhythmus experiments that he printed in his periodical G – Material zur elementaren Gestaltung.1 , 2  Richter visited the Kieslers in Vienna, and their friendship deepened; the typescript Der Filmhans from the unpublished papers of Stefi Kiesler reads: … Hans Richter, a good friend of ours, who rang at the door of our apartment in Daungasse, Vienna VIII, early one Sunday morning in 1923 … , waking us from deep sleep—stood there with a little suitcase in his hand. The little suitcase gave off a peculiar, rather offensive smell. Hans cheerfully announced that he had just come back from Italy and intended to stay with us for a while. So we sat down to a cozy breakfast. With some pride, Hans opened the little suitcase, producing an over-ripe Gorgonzola cheese with a smile of satisfaction. I was greatly relieved that the ominous olfactory mystery had been solved thus delectably.7 Looking back, Richter recalled substantial meals, including an introduc­ tion to Viennese dessert culture (“yeast dumplings with ‘Powidl.’ ”)8 Stefi Kiesler prided herself on having introduced the Berliner to “Bein­ fleisch [beef shin] and Salzburger Nockerl, Leberknödlsuppe [liver dumpling soup] and Linzertorte.” 9 The Kieslers took Richter to the LoosBar, the Prater and were “at pains to convert the Berliner to the Viennese dialect.”10 Erica Tietze-Conrat’s diary of November 10, 1923 makes note of a lec­ture given by Richter in Kiesler’s studio that was “repeatedly inter­ rupted by heckling and discussions.” Among the audience were Benedikt Fred Dolbin and Franz Theodor Csokor.11 Given their mutual appreciation, it comes as some surprise that Kiesler did not exhibit any of Richter’s works at the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik at the Wiener Konzerthaus in 1924 and that he did not print an article by him in the catalog. They met again in Paris in 1925, where Kiesler was designing the Austrian theater section for the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts). Van Doesburg and Richter were equally impressed by his Raumstadt (City in Space), and it was published in both the De Stijl 12 and G: Zeitschrift für elementare Gestaltung journals.13

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While De Stijl emphasized the display character, in G it was embedded in an architectural context.14 Incidentally, Richter later claimed that he had only made Kiesler a member of the G editorial team because the illustrations of the Raumstadt had turned out extremely small due to the abundance of material.15 In a letter to Theo and Nelly van Doesburg, Stefi Kiesler even jokingly compared them to stamps.16 Indeed, the third issue of G of June 1924 already listed Kiesler as a member of the editorial team. In addition to the Raumstadt, Richter later above all recalled Kiesler’s plans for redesigning the Place de la Concorde: In Paris the small giant was conducting a tireless fight for the recognition of his unorthodox plans and unorthodox personality. For more than two years he designed, drew and fanatically discussed a project that was great and truly Kieslerian in its unreasonableness. A project that would have placed him alongside Corbusier and Picasso and above himself if it had been built.17 Richter’s description is one of the few surviving records of the project. He stylizes his friend as an unrecognized visionary, at the same time point­ ing out Kiesler’s yearning for fame. Denied the recognition he craved in Europe, Richter argues, he decided to seek it in the “New World.” In fact, he went to New York at the invitation of Jane Heap in order to curate the International Theatre Exposition together with her. This time he had also brought along works by Richter and his collaborator Eggeling who had died one year previously. In the special issue of the avant-garde periodical The Little Review, that served as the catalog for the exhibition, the details of Richter’s and Eggeling’s exhibits are contradictory and incomplete. An article by Hans Richter entitled “Rhythm” is printed on page 21; interestingly, above this Kiesler placed his “film strip” of The Emperor Jones. A few pages later, there follow images from a Richter film listed there as “SteigenFallen” (now known as Rhythmus 23).18 The exhibits “The part ‘Rhythmus’ 1921/22” and “Photograph” are listed under numbers 597 and 598.19 Eggeling’s contribution to the show is not listed, but a picture of “Horizontal-Vertical” (Horizontales-Vertikales Orchester, 1919) can be found on page 78. With the aid of later documents, we can piece together that Kiesler brought four films with him to New York: Lillian Kiesler, his second wife and widow, described in 1975 how after Kiesler’s death she had

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discovered a number of old film reels in a closet that had turned out to be Léger and Murphy’s Ballet Mécanique, Walter Ruttmann’s ExcelsiorReifen, Richter’s Rhythmus,20 and Eggeling’s Symphonie Diagonale. Kiesler had obviously kept them after the 1926 theater exhibition, making it his task to promote European avant-garde film in New York. Typescripts among Kiesler’s unpublished papers, for example, show that he held a lecture on these films in 1934.21 And when Richter wrote to Kiesler in 1937 asking him to give his and Eggeling’s films to the Museum of Modern Art, Kiesler pointed out the expenses and efforts involved in storage, upkeep and dissemination.22 Also in Kiesler’s possession was Eggeling’s study for Horizontales-Vertikales Orchester III, that he may have purchased in 1923 while visiting Eggeling’s studio in Berlin and exhibited at the International Theatre Exposition.23 And so we have heard nothing from Hans for almost twenty years. And one day the phone rang in our New York apartment (and if I remember correctly, it was just as early in the morning) and a cheerful voice announced ‘This is Hans Richter, I’m in New York—

 

3  Hans Richter, Hans Arp and Frederick Kiesler at a party at the Kieslers’ apartment, New York 1949

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without the Gorgonzola.’ He came round straight away and looked exactly the same as he had then. Lively and buoyant, immac­­ulately elegant as always … , a little grayer, a little thinner, but full of hope to ‘design’ things [voller Hoffnung auf ‘Gestaltung’].24 This is how Stefi Kiesler describes their reunion with Richter in the “New World.” 25 By the time Richter arrived in New York in 1941 through the good offices of his former neigh­bor in Berlin Hilla von Rebay after years of fleeing, Kiesler already had the worst years of his American odyssey behind him. His wife Stefi’s position at the New York Public Library and his bread-and-butter job at the Juilliard School of Music earned them a living. Although his visions were acknowledged in expert circles, they hardly ever left the drawing board. Nevertheless, Kiesler made the impression of having “arrived” on the recent émigré Richter: As befitting his status, he was living in an elegant penthouse. Armed with his sharp-tongued dressage whip, he would make his guests jump through hoops, occasionally handing out lumps of sugar: arro­ gant, intelligent and aware of his size, a circus director, the manager of a publicity agency or simply a lion-tamer.26, 3  At a lecture that he was invited to give by Jay Leyda, Richter met Irving Jacoby, who asked him to teach at his newly established Institute of Film Techniques at the City College of New York.27 Jacoby left the institute shortly afterwards, making Richter director; this position not only earned him a living but also brought him into contact with a younger gener­­ation of film-makers. Teaching was thus the basis of Kiesler’s and Richter’s livelihood, whereas they engaged in their creative work as a “sideline.” After a hiatus of fifteen years, Richter began painting again, additionally working on various film concepts.28 Richter had a wide network of friends from Europe to fall back on in New York. It is thus no surprise that he had his first solo exhibition in more than twenty years at Peggy Guggenheim’s museum gallery Art of This Century. In addition to Guggenheim’s art collection, Kiesler’s innovative architecture also housed temporary exhibitions. In this so-called Daylight Gallery, Richter exhibited four scroll paintings (Prelude, Stalingrad, Liberation of Paris, Momentum of Invasion), several organic and inorganic paintings, and film stills from Rhythmus 21 and the as yet unfinished Dreams That Money Can Buy in October and November 1946 .29, 4  Kiesler contributed the text for the booklet:

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4  Hans Richter in his exhibition at Art of This Century’s Daylight Gallery, New York 1946

If the artist is an image of his time, then Hans Richter is a true artist; because what else expresses so much the character of our time as the struggle for the secret of continuity. Has not science entered, finally, into the inner heart of matter and brought forth the nucleus of such knowledge? But the artist, naturally, has done it long ago. (The vision of art precedes that of science.) As early as 1919 Richter changed the individual presentation of pictures to a con­tin­ uous one, namely that of a scroll. And after many years of ventures, he has now, in 1945, returned to his original scrolling. This, too, is continuity. One returns to oneself. One is eternally coming home. Thus we say that he or she has arrived.30 Kiesler gives Richter the status of pioneer and artist who taps the pulse of the times. He sees him as walking the same path, the quest for “Continuity” (Richter would presumably call it “Rhythm”). He also alludes to Richter’s fate as an émigré: home in the sense of coming home to oneself, in the sense of assuring oneself of one’s identity instead of clinging to a particular place.

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The question of identity as a displaced person in exile is also the underlying theme of Richter’s first feature film Dreams That Money Can Buy, that was financed in large part by Peggy Guggenheim and her housemate Kenneth Macpherson and that is thus regarded as an “Art of This Century Films, Inc.” production. Produced on a shoestring budget, with a cast of amateur actors with the exception of the lead, shot at night and on the weekend during Richter’s spare time and with the unpaid support of his friends and students, it eventually gained many admirers, winning the award for “Best Original Contribution to the Progress of Cinematography” at the 1947 Venice Film Festival. Dreams That Money Can Buy is an interdisciplinary synthesis of the arts that unites visual arts, music and poetry in the film medium; Richter himself spoke of “film poetry” 31 or “essay film.” Describing the creative process, he wrote: In editing I experienced the hypnotic poetry of which the visual language of film is capable, and I lived there as a painter wandering through time-space and space-time. It was and remained of secondary importance whether a particular ‘story’ came out of it. It is not only out of habit that we expect a film to give us stories. The flow of images always creates a ‘story,’ whether it was planned to be a story or not … Stories are created even when abstract forms follow abstract forms.32 His approach to film was an intuitive one, he did not want people to analyze the images with their intellect, instead they targeted the viewers’ unconscious directly, a “mixture of fairy-tale and psychoanalysis.” 33 The surrealists had long been exploring dreams as an expression of the unconscious, as had the Kieslers. In the first issue of the surrealist magazine VVV, Frederick Kiesler published an article entitled “Some Testi­ monial Drawings of Dream Images.” 34 In the course of the 1940s, Stefi Kiesler assembled an extensive collection of portrayals of dreams in litera­ ture, but never completed the planned anthology. Dreams That Money Can Buy was created as a result of Hans Richter and Fernand Léger’s decision to finally realize their long-standing idea for a collaboration in exile in New York. The project grew as Richter secured the support of further “old comrades-in-arms of the avant-garde” 35: My old friends from lamented Europe: Duchamp, Man Ray, Max Ernst and the American Calder contributed materials. Duchamp his

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Frederick Kiesler and Hans Richter

Rotoreliefs, Calder mobiles, Max Ernst collages, Man Ray a poem. I turned it all into a film. So in the midst of war, I made a very unwarlike document of friendly collaboration.36 Although the work process was highly collabora­tive, Richter headed the project as a “Spiritus Rector,” with authorship shifting to editorship. This may be seen as an expression of the trauma of war and the experience of exile, as a consequence of “alienation” and “displacement.” 37 Film­maker Cecile Starr recalled Richter’s collaborative work process: It seems he worked best when he had kindred spirits around him to fire his imagination. They fuelled his creativity. If it hadn’t been for Eggeling, Richter may never have made his first abstract film (the reverse is probably true too). Richter certainly had his own ideas, but he seems to have needed someone to say ‘let’s do that now and see what comes out of it.’ Richter rarely copied himself, let alone anyone else, but he was good at picking up and using other people’s ideas.38 Richter would discuss privately screened film sequences with his friends before returning to the cutting table to make changes that would once again be screened and discussed, and so on. Although Kiesler was not directly involved in Dreams That Money Can Buy, he did design the accompanying film booklet. The theme of fragmentation/collaboration is evident here again: to each dream the catalog devotes a double page with a brief description and portrait of the artist; the portrait is shown on the right page in each case, albeit only one half—with Richter’s face completing the other half. Richter is shown at the back, with the preceding pages cropped to leave Richter’s face half uncovered.5  The next film that Richter made was 8 × 8: A Chess Sonata in 8 Movements, a study on chess. Not that he was a passionate chess-player like Duchamp or Kiesler; instead he was fascinated by how chess symbolically mirrors life. There were many chess aficionados in surrealist circles. Julien Levy, for example, devoted an exhibition to the game in 1944/45 entitled The Imagery of Chess.39 8 × 8 once again brings together various of Richter’s friends, a host of well-known names from the world of art, literature, music and architecture. The film consists of eight moves, book­ended by a prolog and an epilog. Kiesler makes his grand appearance in the final eighth sequence “Check the King.” In his film review following the premiere at the Fifth Avenue Playhouse

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 “To the Excellent Actor and Con­v incing Minotaur”

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5  Dreams That Money Can Buy, film booklet designed by Frederick Kiesler, page spread presenting Marcel Duchamp’s dream sequence, 1947

in New York in March 1957, chief editor of the Aufbau journal Manfred George empha­sized this scene: … in a particularly amusing final piece, ‘Check the King,’ this final episode of all games of chess is presented as a parable of torero and bull, with the Spanish architect Jose L. Sert playing the torero and New York architect and stage designer Frederick Kiesler … playing the bull.40 Today it is thought to have been lost; several short excerpts were used later by Richter in Dadascope.41 Various typescripts at the Getty Research Institute give an idea of the scene as planned: a matador, played by Josep Lluís Sert, wanders through a “String Labyrinth”—the association with Duchamp’s exhibition design Sixteen Miles of String is inevitable—finally arriving at the “lair of the Bull-King (Minotaur),” where Kiesler makes a highly dramatic appearance wearing a bull’s head. Torero-Sert challenges Minotaur-Kiesler to battle. Richter would later write: When I needed a minotaur for my film 8 × 8, … I offered this ‘bullrole’ to the little lion-tamer. He was thrilled. In tails and white tie, with a black red silk-lined cape and a real bull’s head, he dashed around the scene snorting, accompanied, as he had always wanted

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6   8 × 8, film still with Josep Lluís Sert as torero and Frederick Kiesler as Minotaur, filmed at Sert’s home on Long Island, 1953

7   Frederick Kiesler with bull’s head at the set of 8 × 8, dedication verso: “To the excellent actor and convincing Minotaur,” 1953

to be, by not seven, but at least several beautiful girls, his harem.42, 6  The outcome of the battle—a third architect acting as umpire: Paul Lester Wiener43—varies in the typescripts. One says: “For once the bull is the victor!” In another version, Kiesler has to “die.”44 The sequence was shot at Sert’s house on Long Island in March 1953. In the following months, Stefi Kiesler’s diary makes note of shooting for other scenes as well as evening meetings with a few friends to view and then discuss the footage.45 Richter had already studied the myth of the Minotaur extensively, considering that he was planning to make a film on this topic after Dreams That Money Can Buy, around 1948–1952.46 Kiesler was also apparently well acquainted with the legend. In the exhibition architecture for the Exposi­ tion Internationale du Surréalisme (International Surrealist Exhibi­tion) in Paris in 1947,47 whose central theme was the “New Myth,” he integrated a kind of “wayfinding system” around the third and final section of the show, Le Dédale. A “Fil d’Ariane” (Ariadne’s thread) painted on the walls guided visitors through this labyrinth of Daedalus past twelve altars designed by artists.

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After 8 × 8, Richter devoted himself increasingly to painting, sculpture and writing (he retired from City College in 1956) and only worked on one other film project: Dadascope, a film collage of Dada poems and visual poetry in two parts.48 “To these Anti-poems, I have made an Antifilm, a kind of film collage in which I have not used stories, but rather visual associations along with the associations of words and sounds evoked by the poems.”49 Excerpts from the lost bullfight episode from 8 × 8 can be found here accompanying Marcel Janco’s poem “Souvenirs” and Hans Arp’s “Poupoupoup” (both Part 2). To Janco’s words, we see Kiesler the “Bull-King” repeatedly, and sometimes mirrored, running out of a gate, rearing up and finally confronting Sert the matador. In Arp’s poem, a young woman’s arm is seen sensuously waving a red veil—wakening Kiesler the enraged “Bull-King” who battles a red cloth. This is followed by the rotating image of a naked female torso, another brief bullfighting scene in close-up, and finally the celebrated bull bowing like a victorious torero as he is showered with roses. Frederick Kiesler and Hans Richter were involved in each other’s life and work for more than forty years. Both tend to be neglected by art historians as they are hard to classify in view of their wide-ranging acti­vities. Toward the end of his life, Richter attempted to “correct” the official art historiography and to present his own version of the people and events in various books, never forgetting to mention the often-over­ looked Kiesler. Kiesler did not live to see this written record of Richter’s decades-long appreciation and friendship; it is another document among the unpublished papers that testifies to their attachment: a well-worn vintage print of the “small giant” with his bull’s head on the set of 8 × 8. There is a dedication from Richter on the back: “To the excellent actor and convincing Minotaur.” 50 , 7 

1

Thomas H. Creighton, “Kiesler’s Pursuit of an Idea,” Progressive Architecture 42, no. 7 (July 1961), 109. 2  Hans Richter, Köpfe und Hinterköpfe (Zurich: Die Arche, 1967), 77. (Translated from German.) 3 Cf. Stephen J. Phillips, Elastic Architecture: Frederick Kiesler and Design Research in the First Age of Robotic Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2017), 48–51. 4 Richter, Köpfe und Hinterköpfe, 77. (Translated from German.)

Frederick Kiesler, ed., Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik: Katalog, Programm, Almanach (Vienna: Würthle & Sohn, 1924), exhibition catalog, 24. 6 Creighton, “Kiesler’s Pursuit of an Idea,” 111. 7 Stefi Kiesler, “Der Filmhans,” undated typescript [c. 1947], ÖFLKS, TXT 7289/0, 2. (Translated from German.) 8 Richter, Köpfe und Hinterköpfe, 78. (Translated from German.) 5

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9 Kiesler, “Der Filmhans,” 2. (Translated from German.) 10 Ibid. (Translated from German.) 11 Alexandra Caruso, ed., Erica Tietze-Conrat: Tagebücher (1923–1926). Band I: Der Wiener Vasari (Vienna: Böhlau, 2015), 128. (Translated from German.) 12 Frederick Kiesler, “Manifest: Vitalbau – Raumstadt – Funktionelle Architektur,” De Stijl 6, no. 10/11 (1924/1925), 141–147. 13 Frederick Kiesler, “La Cité en l’Air,” G: Zeitschrift für elementare Gestaltung, no. IV (1926). 14 Cf. Klaus Müller-Richter, “Friedrich Kieslers ‘Stadt in der Luft,’ ” in Mies van der Rohe, Richter, Graeff & Co.: Alltag und Design in der Avantgardezeitschrift G, eds. Karin Fest, Sabrina Rahman and Marie-Noëlle Yazdanpanah (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2013), 105. 15 Cf. Richter, Köpfe und Hinterköpfe, 78. 16 Cf. Stefi Kiesler, letter to Theo and Nelly van Doesburg, April 26, 1926, ÖFLKS, LET 6102/2, 3. In the same letter, she complains that she had sent Richter twenty designs for the cover of the next issue of G without receiving any reply. Going by the pseudonym of Pietro Saga, she had already published several typewriter images (“Typoplastiken”) in De Stijl. 17 Hans Richter, Begegnungen von Dada bis heute: Briefe, Dokumente, Erinnerungen (Cologne: DuMont Schauberg, 1973), 141. (Translated from German.) Richter dates the meeting to 1927; in fact it was 1925. 18 Cf. Jane Heap and Margaret Anderson, eds., The Little Review: Special Theatre Number (Winter 1926), exhibition catalog, 32. 19 Cf. Heap and Anderson, The Little Review, 42. 20 It is not clear which Rhythmus film this is. 21 Cf. Frederick Kiesler, “Wadsworth Atheneum Lecture,” December 16, 1934, ÖFLKS, TXT 7023/0 and TXT 7198/0. Also, “The Motion Picture 1914– 1934. Eighth Program. The Experimental, Abstract, Amateur Film and the Animated Cartoon,” program announcement of the Wadsworth Atheneum, ÖFLKS, CLP 7233/0. 22 Cf. Hans Richter, letter to Frederick Kiesler, March 17, 1937, ÖFLKS, LET 1766/0; and Frederick Kiesler, letter to Karl Nierendorf, December 22, 1938, ÖFLKS, LET 1718/0. 23 Richter wanted to buy the drawing from Lillian Kiesler in 1971 and donate it to the Yale University Art Gallery. She refused and later gave it to the Anthology Film Archives to be sold and attract donations. The drawing was offered to the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, but eventually ended up at the Centre Pompidou in Paris (inventory number: AM 1981–35). Correspondence relating to this matter is held at the ÖFLKS. 24 Kiesler, “Der Filmhans,” 3. (Translated from German.) 25 Stefi Kiesler’s calendar lists the first meeting on May 11, 1941 (“7.30 dinner at Hans Richter”);

regular meetings ensued: Richter is mentioned five times in May 1941, four times in June, twice in July, and four times in September. Two of Richter’s letters to the Kieslers of September 1941 reveal that he had had to vacate his apartment at 210 East 68th Street by the end of September and that he was looking for new accommodation as of October. He considered renting a room in the Kieslers’ penthouse, requesting a rebate on the first month’s rent and asking them to call him back. This appears not to have worked out. 26 Richter, Begegnungen von Dada bis heute, 142. (Translated from German.) 27 Cf. Cecile Starr, “Bemerkungen zu Hans Richter in den USA,” in Hans Richter: Malerei und Film, ed. Herbert Gehr and Marion von Hofacker (Frankfurt am Main: Deutsches Filmmuseum, 1989), exhibition catalog, 30. 28 Cf. Jeanpaul Georgen and Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek e.V., eds., Hans Richter: Film ist Rhythmus (Berlin: Freunde der Dt. Kinemathek, 2003), 149–156. 29 Cf. Hans Richter 1919–1946 (New York: Art of This Century, October 21–November 12, 1946), exhibition brochure, n.p. 30 Frederick Kiesler, “Hans Richter,” in Hans Richter 1919–1946, n.p. The underlying typescript is held in the ÖFLKS (TXT 2969/0). 31 Herman G. Weinberg, “30 Jahre Experimentalfilm. Hans Richter hat niemals am Wert des reinen Experiments gezweifelt,” in Georgen, Hans Richter: Film ist Rhythmus, 129. 32 Hans Richter and Herbert Read, Hans Richter (Neuchâtel: Éditions du Griffon, 1965), 114. (Translated from German.) 33 Cecile Starr, “Bemerkungen zu Hans Richter in den USA,” 33. (Translated from German.) 34 Cf. Frederick J. Kiesler, “Some Testimonial Drawings of Dream Images,” VVV, no. 1 (June 1942), 27–32. 35 Weinberg, “30 Jahre Experimentalfilm,” 128. (Translated from German.) 36 Richter and Read, Hans Richter, 114. (Translated from German.) 37 Cf. Nora M. Alter, “Hans Richter in Exile,” in Caught by Politics. Hitler Exiles and American Visual Culture, ed. Sabine Eckmann and Lutz Koepnick (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 223–243. 38 Starr, “Bemerkungen zu Hans Richter in den USA,” 37. (Translated from German.) 39 Cf. Larry List, ed., The Imagery of Chess Revisited (Long Island City, NY: The Isamu Noguchi Founda­ tion and Garden Museum, 2005), exhibition catalog. 40 Manfred George, “Zwischen Freud und Lewis Carroll,” Aufbau, March 8, 1957, 16. (Translated from German.) 41 The author has not yet been able to find the complete scene as featured in the premiere version. 42 Richter, Begegnungen von Dada bis heute, 142. (Translated from German.) 43 It is probably no coincidence that three architects were chosen for the episode involving the Minotaur

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44 45

46

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48 49 50

 “To the Excellent Actor and Con­v incing Minotaur”

and the mythical labyrinth devised by the architect Daedalus. Getty Research Institute, Hans Richter Papers, folder 7–9. Entries in Stefi Kiesler’s diary pertaining to 8 × 8 are dated March 18, 1953 (shooting at Sert’s home on Long Island), April 23, 1953 (screening and discussion at Sert’s), August 19, 1953 (shooting at Richter’s home in Southbury, with Julien Levy and Jacqueline Matisse, among others). Cf. Rudolf Künzli, “Hans Richters Filmprojekt ‘The Minotaur’ (1948–52),” in Gehr and von Hofacker, Hans Richter: Malerei und Film, 112–116. The exhibition catalog includes images from Dreams That Money Can Buy (pp. XIV and XV). It is not known whether Richter’s film was screened at the exhibition. Dadascope Part 1 (1956–1961), Part 2 (1968). Richter and Read, Hans Richter, 123. (Translated from German.) ÖFLKS, PHO 1060/0.

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George Antheil, Kiesler’s First American Friend

“ Wild Bird” Meets “Face of the Future” Mauro Piccinini

Frederick Kiesler and George Antheil had much in common. They both came from the province and made a name for themselves for the first time in Berlin in 1923. From there, both achieved their next successes mostly in Paris and New York. They were curious, self-assured and multi­ faceted artistic personalities, always ready to seize every opportunity to become famous and rich, being this opportunity, sometimes, even the appropriation and reworking of some intuition or creation of a colleague. They both knew very well how to use the press and how to make useful friends in the newspapers. Composer George Antheil was born in Trenton, New Jersey, into a family of German emigrants from Palatinate and West Prussia. In Trenton they were living in a German-speaking, not fully integrated community, where young George (actually Georg Karl Johann) learned German before English, a thing that later helped him very much when, having decided to become a concert pianist, he was sent over to Berlin to make his way in Central Europe (still the reference point for musical education and revered curricula). As young Kiesler was able to study in Vienna thanks to yearly subsidies, so could Antheil study in Philadelphia and later tour Europe thanks to the rich patroness Mary Louise Curtis Bok, who allowed him to make his big break, financing him for more than a decade. As soon as Antheil settled in Berlin (July 1922),

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with the intention to study with Arthur Schnabel, he decided to become exclusively a composer, a consequence of his meeting and brief acquain­ tance with Igor Stravinsky during the last weeks of October. He began composing mostly for his own repertoire, and introduced his piano works (and his first symphony) to Berlin audiences, soon attracting the atten­tion of many avant-garde artists and critics, such as Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt, the young composer and musicologist who invited him to join the musical section of the Novembergruppe (November Group). When Kiesler appeared in the German capital to create the scenery for Čapek’s R.U.R., Antheil was in Berlin, having almost finished his tour (with many return engagements) which had led him to Vienna, Budapest, Munich, Dresden, Frankfurt and Leipzig. He had made many friends by then, and probably become acquainted with Kiesler too, although there is no correspondence or memoirs to substantiate this.1 For sure, Antheil had seen R.U.R., which was one of the sensations of the season, and which, with its rallying cry about mechanization, could not fail to attract a futurist composer such as Antheil, who had works entitled Sonatina Death of Machines, Airplane Sonata, Mechanisms, and whose own playing style and musical expression resembled that of a cold, unsentimental player piano. Both artists left an inflation-plagued Berlin at the beginning of spring. Kiesler already had in mind an exhibition dedicated to innovations in the theatrical arts, which he was able to organize in Vienna at the end of 1924 with the substantial help of the city council; while Antheil, invited by Stravinsky to attend the premiere of Les Noces (The Wedding) (June 13, 1923), found in the “Ville-Lumière” the ideal environment to develop his own talent as a composer. Taken under the wings of the American expatriate literary com­munity, he was soon in everybody’s good books, especially at Shakespeare & Company, the bookshop in Rue de l’Odéon run by Sylvia Beach, the publisher of Joyce’s Ulysses. He even found a place to live in the mezzanine above the bookshop, so that a visit to both Sylvia and George became a must for every up-to-date and curious artist from across the Ocean. Antheil estab­ lished a particularly tight and fruitful partner­ship with Ezra Pound, poet and amateur composer who even wrote a booklet partly about him: Antheil and the Treatise on Harmony, published in 1924. The young Antheil found in him a paternal figure and, during the Twenties, gladly

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accepted Pound’s guidance in the artistic world, using his connec­tions in the French salons and his acquaintances with many French artists as a stepping stone for his career. Ballet mécanique, Antheil’s most important work, conceived for a battery of player pianos, xylo­phones and percussion (siren, airplane motor and buzzers inter alia), came out of a collabora­ tion with Pound, the French painter Fernand Léger and U.S. cameraman and filmmaker Dudley Murphy. The work developed as an abstract film with a “synchronisme musicale” by Antheil himself (although his final achievement, more than twice the length of the movie, was never actually synchronized with it). While Antheil was still composing the piece, Léger and Murphy had finished the shooting and, in a first cut, the “images mobiles” (as Léger called his Ballet mécanique) were premiered in Vienna, at the Inter­nationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik (Interna­ tional Exhibition of New Theater Techniques), organized by Kiesler, on Septem­ber 24, 1924.

1   Page from photo album of George and Böske Antheil depicting Frederick and Stefi Kiesler, Paul Stefan and George Antheil in Paris in 1925 [Library of Congress; © Estate of Peter R. Antheil]

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At that time, formal relations between France and Austria were still cool. Only some artists from the left wing felt the need to mend and collaborate, and Léger and Kiesler were to go on record for their openmindedness.2 The fact that only one French newspaper commented on the Viennese theatrical exhibition speaks for itself.3 Kiesler arrived in Paris in March 1925, invited by architect Josef Hoffmann to design the Austrian theater section for the Exposition inter­ nationale des Arts décoratifs et industriels modernes (International Exhi­ bition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts). One of the first people he visited, accompanied by music critic Paul Stefan, was George Antheil.4 Some snapshots1  document their visit and their lust for life and fun. That was at the end of March or the beginning of April, and when Stefan went back to Vienna he related his trip for Die Bühne: The “Austrians in Paris” had looked primarily for Austrian-German spots and restaurants, and they had visited Jan Śliwiński (pseudonym of Hans Effenberger) and his Galerie Au Sacre du Printemps. Śliwiński, a friend of Adolf Loos, was then trying to print the difficult score of Antheil’s First Violin Sonata. Of his wanderings in the Quartier, Stefan also recalled “the exotic music instruments of the small American composer George Antheil.” 5 Böske (Erzsébet) Markus, then Antheil’s fiancée (they were to marry in October), remembered Kiesler’s appearance in her late, unpublished memoirs: Kiesler liked it so well in Paris, that he decided to stay there after the exposition and we became very good friends. He had a most original way of communicating in French … as at the time he did not speak it. When we went to restaurants, he just drew pictures of things he wanted to eat and was never disappointed. He loved the Ballet mécanique which was somewhat in the same ideology of his architecture, and we saw lot of each other. He had a very nice Austrian wife. Kiesler was very short and hence somewhat Napoleonic in his bearing. But he knew the humor of it and as I had a fabulous fur coat (that originally belonged to George) a voluminous affiar [sic] Siberian cat and beaver collar, which we put on Kiesler and photographed him in a typical Napoleonic pose.6 During that summer, George and Böske got to know quite a few of the Austrian artists and helpers, many themselves struggling to make ends meet, and who had got this unique opportunity to come to Paris. Josef Hoffmann, added Böske,

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in his days was very advanced, but of course now with Kiesler’s way-out ideas, he seemed slightly outmoded, and also slightly jealous. He was an older man, and hard of hearing and it seems that he was one of the early supporters of Schoenberg, and naturally no-one could resist the joke of having an almost deaf man support the dissonant music of Schonberg [sic]. 7 It was a world of artists connected more through their shared artistic ideals than through language: Léger could speak only French, a language which Antheil did not understand, so that he needed his wife to translate or write letters for him; but at least he spoke German, and it was natural for many German and Austrian artists to keep in contact with him, and through Antheil, being introduced to other American expatriates then in the Latin Quarter. In 1925 Antheil, who kept also a room in the Hôtel Helvétia in rue de Tournon8 where he composed during the day, hosted there at night not only fellow composer Virgil Thomson but also the Kieslers and some German acquaintances, such as Stuckenschmidt and Hans von Wedderkop, editor of the influential art review Der Querschnitt. A series of collaborations ensued: Stuckenschmidt and Śliwiński played four hands on the organ the Finale of Mahler’s Third Symphony at the official opening of the Austrian Pavilion.9 Stuckenschmidt wrote an article which Hemingway corrected, Wedderkop published the latter’s first poems, and Kiesler put Antheil into contact with David Josef Bach,10 who had great influence in the City Council of Vienna, in order to organize an all-Antheil concert there. And, to repay him, Antheil tried to encourage Pound to take an interest in Kiesler, publishing some of his pictures: If you print and take up Kilser [sic], he will play your opera in Vienna. He is president of the Theater Fest there, and besides a very good friend of mine. He has an enormous influence in Vienna, and is besides a wild bird, who will take a chance on anything that’s utterly different. I really think that Kiesler is more important in Germany than Stuckenschmidt. The former is more energetic than the latter, who is merely one of the most important ultra-modern critics in Germany, with a great deal of influence in his home town … Humburg … Humbug.11 Pound had written his opera Le Testament de Villon as an autodidact, but with the help of some friends, among them Antheil himself. Some arias of the opera had been performed in 1924, but a premiere of the whole

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thing was still pending. Antheil tried to convince Pound that the opera could be done in Vienna: I want a score of “Le Testament”. I am absolutely certain I can get it done in Vienna, if you let Kiesler, who I ASSURE you can do it, do the staging (that’s not the directing). He has told me himself that he would do it. Everybody understands French in Vienna, and there is a mutual sympathy there.12 Pound, however, wavered: I have no objections to Kiesling, about whom I know nothing wotcbloomin ever. BUT I HAVE GOT TO SEE AN HEAR MY SINGERS before I agree

to anything definite. [sic]  13 Nothing came of these Viennese projects, as was also the case with other undertakings Antheil discussed with Kiesler and Theo van Doesburg during that summer in Paris. One of these is mentioned in another letter from Antheil to a friend in New York: My opera. Cyclops. A part out of Ulysses, arranged by Joyce himself. Stage plans by Kielser [sic] of Vienna (the greatest living authority and stage director and designer) and Doesburg of Holland. Still unfinished. Lasts for hours without ONE PAUSE .14 Of this much discussed and over-publicized opera, almost nothing remains.15 When in May Edward Cushing, reporter of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, came to interview Antheil—now a much-discussed name in the States—he described him as twenty-three years old, he resembles the average American youth of that age … . Polish parentage is accountable for the pronounced planes of forehead and cheeks, for the heavy lips and the decidedly arched eyebrows. “The face of the future,” pronounced Kiesler, the Viennese theatrical architect and stage designer.16 The relationship between Kiesler and Antheil wasn’t, however, always a bed of roses; probably because of their respective better halves. When George left Paris for Tunis (and Böske for Luxeuil-les-Bains in the Haute-Saône), they both asked Sylvia Beach not to let the Kieslers have their apartment. George was the most explicit: Should Mme Kiesler, who I thoroughly dislike, ask you if she can use this room at 12 rue de l’Odéon tell her no; you’d rather not. I don’t think she will, but she might; they are awfully broke, and there is no

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place for her to stay (except, naturally, with Kiesler, in my hotel room). I can’t well tell her, and she has been angling for it … . It was through Kiesler’s influence that I got my big Vienna concert. They think (that is she thinks!) that they can ask anything now, and I’ve already done a lot.17 Kiesler, however, was one of those catalysts who attracted other artists and in Paris (probably through Loos) he in the meantime had got in touch with Tristan Tzara, who, in turn, introduced him to Jane Heap, editor of The Little Review together with Margaret Anderson. Anderson and Heap had published the review from Chicago and New York, relying heavily on Pound’s advice. In 1921 Anderson, who was then living with French singer Georgette Leblanc, invited Antheil to spend some months with them in Bernardsville, New Jersey, where—in a sense—George had his baptism by modernist fire, reading Joyce, Pound and Sherwood Anderson, admiring pictures of Brâncuşi’s sculptures, and so on. However, by 1925 his relation­ ship with Anderson and Heap was not that good anymore, and with Tzara it had never developed. A well-known picture, taken at the Grand Palais of the great Parisian exhibition, documents not only Antheil’s visit but also the psychological setting of the different personalities and their relation­ ship with each other, with Kiesler and Antheil taking most of the scene.18, 2   Jane Heap recounted her first casual meeting with Kiesler in a letter to her friend Florence Reynolds: I was going to type this letter and include in it a story of a trip around the Exposition—with the dictator of Art of the Soviet Republic, an Austrian theatre designer, Tzara, two German Dadaists—and six Tunisians in costume … but my typewriter has been out of order—I will have to do it later.19 It was Tuesday, July 14, 1925. A visit for a coffee in the Viennese pavilion, with the acquaintance of “an Austrian theatre designer”, turned into a project to bring to New York a similar exposition of theatrical inno­ va­tions as displayed by the same Kiesler in Vienna. After only a week, Heap spent the night “with van Doesburg and wife, Man Ray, Kiesler, Tzara, etc.” 20 When Lawrence Langner—playwright, author and co-founder of the Theatre Guild 21 of New York—came to Paris, Heap finally found the money needed for the new project, and Kiesler was definitely hired as its Jack-of-all-trades. In October, Kiesler was organizing the future New York exhibition while still living in Rue de Tournon, and still on good

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terms with George. Both artists had resorted to some publicity stunts to attract the attention of the general public: Kiesler had announced during a press-release his own plan for a utopian city built in the sky, a sort of steel-and-glass palafittes fifty meters above the ground; an idea which reached the New York Times and gained the first page of the Figaro.22 Antheil, at almost the same time, had staged his own probable death in the Sahara desert in order to attract attention to the first performance of his Ballet mécanique (although only in a partial one-player-piano-only version).23 Then, on January 19, 1926, Stefi and Frederick Kiesler sailed for the States on the SS Leviathan, bringing with them trunks and trunks of material for the future exhibition, which was to open on February 27. In spring, they did not have any news of Antheil, and so Stefi wrote to the van Doesburgs asking for news of him: Say, what happened to George Antheil? Do you see him sometime? Write us in detail about him. Has he done much work? 24 The Antheils and the Kieslers probably reunited only during March–April 1927, when Antheil finally returned to New York to present his own works, including a final version of the Ballet mécanique with one player piano, ten pianos, xylophones and percussion. Certainly, the Kieslers did not miss the famous Carnegie Hall concert of April 10, but we do not have any documents until 1931, when Stefi’s calendars registered Antheil’s visits during his increasingly frequent returns from Europe (in the meantime he had moved from Paris to Vienna, and then to Cagnes-sur-mer on the French Riviera). Whereas in 1925 Antheil was the musician labeled as the new Stravinsky, a series of fiascos (such as the over-publicized Carnegie Hall concert) had seriously endangered his career. In late 1931 Antheil was back in Trenton, visiting New York daily, where he was working with John Erskine, head of the Juilliard School of Music and librettist of Helen Retires, Antheil’s new opera. Kiesler and Antheil frequently met at parties and teas until mid-1932, when Antheil went back to Cagnes on a Guggenheim Fellowship. In the meantime, new and old acquaintances of George had become friends of the Kieslers too, such as Muriel Draper, Paul Bowles, Bravig Imbs (who in 1925 had been a music student of Antheil) 25, Alexander King (illustrator and cartoonist who had spent a vacation in Tunis with the Antheils in 1927), J. P. McEvoy (a frequent guest in Cagnes), and even the young composers Jerry Moross and Bernard Herrmann.

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2   Group photograph in front of the Raumstadt including i.a. George and Böske Antheil, Theo and Nelly van Doesburg, Juan and Josette Gris, Frederick and Stefi Kiesler, Konstantin Melnikow, László Moholy-Nagy, Auguste Perret, Tristan Tzara, Agathe Wegerif-Gravestein, Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, Paris 1925; Frederick Kiesler (in profile) and George Antheil (with white glove) at the center

The Kieslers were now well-integrated in the New York socialite world and had many musical friends—always very modern in their tenden­ cies and more often than not leftist—such as Edgard Varèse, Carlos Salzedo, musical inventors such as Thaddeus Cahill and Léon Theremin, and dancers Sophie Delza and Martha Graham. It was however George who introduced Kiesler to John Erskine, ensuring him a long collaboration in the staging of operas at the Juilliard School in New York (and a steady income for more than twenty years). Right before sailing for America defi­ nitively, Antheil wrote a postcard to the Kieslers mentioning that he wanted to see them.26 Finally, a cooperation planned many years before came into being. Erskine remembered: The school presented Helen Retires on March 1, 2 and 3, 1934. The sets and costumes were designed with extreme originality by

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  3 The audience at the premiere of the opera Helen Retires with i.a. Böske Antheil, the Juilliard School faculty members John Erskine, president; Ernest Hutcheson, dean; Rubin Goldmark, composition teacher; fellow-composers George Gershwin, Virgil Thomson, Paul Bowles and Roger Sessions, the “ballet-crowd” Muriel Draper, Lincoln Kirstein, George Balanchine, Juilliard Graduate School, New York, February 28, 1934 [Courtesy of The Juilliard School Archives]

Frederick Kiesler, a friend of George’s who has continued to design scenery and costumes for Juilliard operas, and in conjunction with the Architectural department of Columbia University, has given at the School a valuable class in stage design.27 The opera, which had a premiere for invited guests only on February 28 3 , fell through as it revealed itself to be an ill-conceived mismatch of oldfashioned and verbose puns conceived by a watered-down humorist like Erskine; Puccinesque music (with a touch of jazz) from a reformed composer, and Surrealist, cumbersome costumes often hindering the acting and—most of all—the audibility of the singing.4  Erskine would later admit that his libretto

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had grave faults. The text was occupied with ideas rather than with physical movement which could be followed by the eye. Frederick Kiesler’s settings to a degree made up for this defect; with the exception of a few scenes, the opera was fascinating to watch.28 Some critics found Kiesler’s expedients funny and effective (such as the retro-projections and Helen’s arriving at the “Island of the Blest” by means of a submarine shown in a motion picture). Clearly, when put to the test, the partnership between the two friends did not work. It probably also initiated a split between the two, with friends lining up on one side or the other.29 While Antheil found other fields of activity in ballet, and especially in the movies, Kiesler stayed; as he proved able to face the needs of a school, building sets with very simple materials, with many effective light projections and the possibility of bringing costumes and setting into proper color harmony with minimum effort and minimum expense. The opera remained the event of the season, but clearly demonstrated that

4   Helen Retires (libretto by John Erskine, music by George Antheil, and sets by Frederick Kiesler), scene with Mourners, Priest, Helen, and Eteoneus in Act I, Juilliard School of Music, New York 1934 [Photograph by Samuel H. Gottscho, courtesy of The Juilliard School Archives]

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it was not from Antheil’s pen that the long-awaited “American opera” would be written.30 In due time, George ended up in Hollywood, writing scores for secondary movies. When Kiesler wrote him in 1941 asking for a copy of the score of Helen Retires to be lent for the retrospective of ten years of operas at the Juilliard School,31 Antheil was glad to hear again from him, but had to ask who would pay for the postage: “An unpleasant question, especially for anyone living in Hollywood, and supposed to be earning $50,000 a week” 32—he admitted ironically. Now he had to main­ tain his family, with a four-year-old son, but thanks to his versatility he was able to earn money writing articles on endocrinology, military pro­ visions and even advice for the lovelorn. After many years seeking success in various musical fields (sym­ phonies and chamber music in the Forties, opera, cinema and television in the Fifties), he was in New York when he bumped into Kiesler again, by chance, in 1957. He joyfully wrote back to his wife: Frederick Kiesler and I have become very good friends again, deciding to forget all of the past, except our walks together in the early days in Paris.33 They promised to exchange visits, but they never did. Antheil died of heart failure on February 12, 1959, overworked and with a Broadway musical half-orchestrated in the drawer. Kiesler was too busy to notice the news in the New York Times, and only sent a letter of condolences to Böske in mid-April.34

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Regrettably, only two letters and a postcard from Antheil to Kiesler reached us. Léger had resigned as a member of the historical Parisian Salon des Indépendents in 1923 for its too-nationalistic concerns. In it, Gabriel Bossy asked his readers: “Is it known in France that right at this moment in Vienna, in Austria, in that Austria which doesn’t automatically have an anti-French feeling (far from it!), is it known that an ‘International Exhibition of the New Theater Technique’ is taking place? I don’t think so.” Source: “Pour notre art théâtral / De l’Exposition de Vienne à l’Exposition des Arts décoratifs,” Comoedia, Paris, October 7, 1924, 2. (Translated from French.) Evidence here points to the fact that they knew each other already. Paul Stefan, “Tage, Nächte in Paris,” Die Bühne 2,

no. 36 (July 16), 1925, 25. (Translated from German.) From 1922 to 1937 Stefan was also editor of the Musikblätter des Anbruch. 6 Böske [Elizabeth] Antheil (George’s wife, 1903– 1978), untitled autobiography, typescript draft, 42, Library of Congress, Music Division, George and Böske Antheil Papers, box 17, folder 2, 42. 7 Ibid., 43. Böske is, however, most probably confusing Hoffmann with Adolf Loos, who was then also in Paris. 8 It is the same hotel that during the late Thirties hosted the refugee Joseph Roth and his friends. 9 Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt, Zum Hören geboren. Ein Leben mit der Musik unserer Zeit (Munich: R. Piper & Co. Verlag, 1979), 86. 10 Bach was the Director of the Sozialdemokratische Kunststelle (Social-Democratic Arts Council) and was mainly responsible for the Musik- und

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Theaterfest der Stadt Wien, 1924, where Kiesler’s theater exhibition was hosted. George Antheil, letter to Ezra Pound, July 16, 1925, enclosed in Ezra Pound, letter to Olga Rudge, July 18, 1925, Yale University, Beinecke Library, Olga Rudge Papers, Ycal Mss 54, box 2, folder 40. George Antheil, letter to Ezra Pound, c. August 10, 1925, Yale University, Beinecke Library, Ezra Pound Papers, Ycal Mss 43, box 2, folder 69. Ezra Pound, letter to George Antheil, August 17, 1925, Indiana University, Lilly Library, Antheil Mss. George Antheil, letter to Stanley Hart, March 4, 1925, Library of Congress, Music Division, Stanley Hart Papers, Antheil Collection, box 3, folder 11. Antheil Musical Supplement, This Quarter 1, no. 2 (October 1925), 22–24. Edward Cushing, “George Antheil, Master of Mechanical Music, Composes for Batteries of Player-Pianos,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 4, 1925, 101. George Antheil, letter to Sylvia Beach, August 10, 1925, Princeton University, Firestone Library, Sylvia Beach Papers, box 1, folder 35. Böske’s letter (ibid., box 1, folder 31) is dated August 28: “I don’t want the Kieslers to come in.” Published in G, (Hans Richter’s review), no. 4 (March 1926), 10. Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation (ÖFLKS), PHO 239/0. Jane Heap, letter to Florence Reynolds, July 16, 1925, Paris, in Dear Tiny Heart – The Letters of Jane Heap and Florence Reynolds, ed. Holly A. Baggett (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 107. Jane Heap, letter to Florence Reynolds, Wednes­ day, July 22, 1925, in Baggett, Dear Tiny Heart, 113. The Theatre Guild had produced the US premiere of Čapek’s R.U.R. in 1922. “Says Aerial Cities Will Rise In Future / Vienna Architect Predicts Houses Built on Platforms far Above Earth, Reached by Tower Lifts,” The New York Times, July 5, 1925; Hélène Du Taillis, “Au Jour le jour / Le singe avait raison,” Le Figaro, August 3, 1925, 1. See for example “Friends of Composer Antheil Fear He is Lost in African Desert,” Chicago Herald Tribune (Paris edition), September 25, 1925, 1. Kiesler commented on the news in a letter to Tzara: “George Antheil, who, for four weeks, according to uproariously alarming news in the New York Herald, was devoured by lions in the Sahara, arrived yesterday in Paris. (based on truth!)]”, Frederick Kiesler, letter to Tristan Tzara, October 12, 1925, Paris, Bibliothèque littéraire Jacques Doucet, Fonds Tristan Tzara, TZR C 2240. (Translated from German.) Stefi Kiesler, letter to Theo and Nelly van Doesburg, April 26, 1926, Archive of Theo and Nelly van Doesburg, RKD Netherlands Institute for Art His­ tory, mf. 25, folder 1926, 5. (“Sagt mal, was ist denn mit George Antheil los? Seht ihr manchmal. Schreibt uns doch ausfuerlich ueber ihm. Hat er viel gearbeitet?”)

205 25 Kiesler would design cover and layout of Imbs’ book of memoirs, Confessions of another young man (New York: Henkle-Yewdale House, 1936), mostly dedicated to George Antheil. 26 George Antheil, postcard to Stefi and Frederick Kiesler, [August 1933], “Lieber Friederick und Steffi / I am sailing this week for America and want to see you. My address is 135 N. Broad St. / Trenton, N.J., U.S.A. / Love from George (Antheil)” (sold recently at a Swann Galleries Auction, October 22, 2015, Lot 227). 27 John Erskine, The memory of Certain Persons (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1947), 377. 28 Ibid. 29 One of the friends who defended Kiesler was Alex King, who wrote a letter to Olin Downes, music editor of the New York Times, who had criticized Kiesler’s work (letter, dated March 6, 1934, pub­ lished as “Decors of ‘Helen Retires,’” The New York Times, March 11, 1934). 30 During the same February two other operas debuted, with much more success: Virgil Thomson’s Four Saints in Three Acts (to a text by Gertrude Stein, February 7), and Howard Hanson’s Merry Mount at the Metropolitan Opera (February 10). 31 Ten Years of American Opera Design at the Juilliard School of Music, exhibition held at the New York Public Library from November 13 to December 10, 1941. 32 George Antheil, letter to Frederick Kiesler, October 8, 1941, ÖFLKS, LET 2811/0. 33 George Antheil, letter to Böske Antheil, September 25, 1957, Library of Congress, Music Division, George and Böske Antheil Papers, box 18, folder 9. 34 Frederick Kiesler, letter (carbon copy) to Böske Antheil, April 16, 1959, Washington, Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Art, Lillian and Frederick Kiesler Papers, Correspondence Chronological, 1959, April–May.

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Frederick Kiesler and the American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen

Elevating Design Standards Marilyn F. Friedman

Frederick Kiesler arrived in the United States at an opportune moment. The 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts) in Paris, for which Kiesler had designed Raumstadt (City in Space), was creating interest in modern design among American critics, manu­ facturers, and merchandisers. During the next several years, the American public was exposed to various strains of modern design through museum and depart­ment store exhibitions.1 This increasing focus on modernism led to the formation of the American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen (AUDAC ) to “direct the so-called modern art movement in this country along more intelligent lines.” 2 AUDAC began with a group of designers who met for Wednesday evening sessions at Frankl Galleries on East 48th Street in Manhattan and for monthly luncheons at the Central Park Casino.3 The organization held its first public meeting on May 31, 1928. The Austrian émigré Paul T. Frankl served as the first Chairman of the AUDAC Executive Committee; Kiesler was a founding member. AUDAC offered Kiesler an opportunity to interact with designers who represented the spectrum of modernism. Like Kiesler and Frankl, many of these designers were émigrés who had brought European training and experience to America. Others were born in America, but had been

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influenced by one or more of the various European strains of modernism. A calendar kept by Kiesler’s wife Stefi from 1930 to 1952 reveals extensive social and business interactions between the Kieslers and other AUDAC members. Kiesler attended many AUDAC functions from 1930 to 1932, and throughout the 1930s one or both Kieslers spent time with many designers associated with AUDAC , including Lucien Bernard, Jules Bouy, Donald Deskey, Paul Frankl, Pola and Wolfgang Hoffmann, Ilonka Karasz, William Lescaze, Marguerita Mergentime, Winold Reiss, Lee Simonson, Walter von Nessen, Kem Weber, Vally Wieselthier, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Russel Wright.4 Also included in the Kiesler social circle were the influential art critics C. Adolph Glassgold and Alfred Auerbach, who were likewise asso­ ciated with AUDAC .5 In Paul Frankl’s autobiography, he recounts not only the serious efforts of AUDAC members to combat design piracy and “make a go of” modern design, but also the enjoyable luncheons and dinners.6 AUDAC provided the Kieslers with a means of social integration into American life, as well as important business contacts.7 In April 1930, AUDAC presented five modern model rooms at the Twelfth Annual Home Show, a commercial venture sponsored by groups active in New York’s real estate industry. Held at the Grand Central Palace, an exposition center in midtown Manhattan, the Home Show included more than one hundred exhibits that presented ideas for city planning and new concepts in home building and furnishing. Kiesler designed the AUDAC installation, which featured the letters of the organization both above the model rooms and across the entrance to each room. He also designed a reception room, which the magazine Good Furniture and Deco­ ration considered to be “an excellent example of metal in interior deco­ ration.” 1  Kiesler might have bristled at the use of the term “decoration,” but the magazine did note his advocacy of “the essential need for utility in all design.” 8 An example of Kiesler’s focus on utility was a “flying” desk that was attached to the wall at one end and suspended from the alu­ minum ceiling by chromium plated tubular steel at the other. The desktop was veneered in the practical material Formica, and Kiesler eliminated legs so that more people could sit around the desk.9 In this model room, Kiesler combined new materials such as tubular steel and Formica with more traditional elements, including Macassar ebony and cushioned seating. One chair, supported by chromium plated steel runners, was dubbed a “sled chair” by Women’s Wear Daily.10

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1   Frederick Kiesler, Reception room for AUDAC, Twelfth Annual Home Show, Grand Central Palace, New York 1930 [Photograph by Ruth Bernhard; reproduced with permission of the Ruth Bernhard Archive, Princeton University Art Museum; © Trustees of Princeton University]

The comfortable chair, upholstered in pigskin and encased in fine woods, had hidden assets: trays to hold cigarettes and other items slid out from the arms when needed, obviating the need for a side table. An executive desk had a more traditional form than the flying desk, but it incorporated a swivel seat for a stenographer as well as file drawers, a lamp and a telephone stand. In this room, Kiesler combined the func­ tional and industrial aspects of central European modernism with the luxuriousness of art deco. As the Great Depression deepened, AUDAC continued to promote American modern design. With more than one hundred active members and thirty-five associate members, the organization had the capacity to offer the American public the full spectrum of modernism. In 1931 AUDAC undertook two major initiatives: a publication and an exhibition.11

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AUDAC ’s publication, titled Annual of American Design 1931, was

a compendium of the work of many of its members. In several hundred black and white images, readers could view the work of the major modernist designers of the period, a number of whom also contributed essays. AUDAC ’s exhibition, which was held at the Brooklyn Museum, featured contemporary room settings, objects, models, and photographs. The catalog for the exhibition expressed the desire of AUDAC members to work “for the elevation of standards in contemporary design and for the development of a STYLE rather than styles.”12 While Kiesler did not participate in the exhibition, his Home Show reception room was featured in the Annual, and he was an active member of AUDAC through­ out 1930 and 1931, serving on the Committee on Education.13 Early in 1932 he participated in a series of lectures given by AUDAC members at the Brooklyn Museum. Kiesler’s lecture was titled “Ornament and Crime,” referencing a work by the Austrian architect Adolf Loos written two decades earlier.14 It was probably through Kiesler’s AUDAC involvement that he met Martin Fineman and Marguerita Mergentime, both of whom would provide him with major commissions during the next several years. Kiesler knew Fineman as early as 1931; Stefi Kiesler’s calendar includes an opening on January 23 of that year at the Modernage Furniture Company, of which Fineman was the director, and an afternoon appoint­ment the following June 18 that included the “Finemans, Russel Wright etc.” Throughout 1933, Stefi recorded evenings, breakfasts and meetings with Fineman, including a trip in June to Grand Rapids, Michigan and Chicago—both furniture manufacturing centers.15 At some point in 1933, Fineman engaged Frederick Kiesler to design a new show­ room for Modernage at 162 East Thirty-third Street, which would include Space House, a dwelling intended to serve the needs of a family of five.2  Space House was not a full-sized structure, but as a proportionate substi­ tute it enabled Kiesler to demonstrate two principles that he espoused: the Time-Space concept of architecture, which he had employed in his City in Space in 1925, and Shell-Construction. The showroom opened to the public on October 17, 1933. In “The Space House,” a memorandum preserved by the Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation in Vienna, Kiesler explained that a single-family house “must act as a generator of energy for the individual.” The house should be built on the following two-way

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principle: “charging and discharging [of energy] is achieved through a flexibility that is contracting and expanding the cubic content of each segment within the whole area it occupies.” Kiesler favored the term “segment” over the word “room,” as a room denoted something “static, a final unit in itself,” while segments were “part of an entity,” and could be expanded and contracted to meet the social needs of the occupants. Within the house these needs might require the separation of segments for purposes of privacy, or the combination of segments for socialization. To Kiesler, “the use of a certain area for the exact amount of time required by that function” would convert time into space. He designed Space House so that, except for certain utility areas, “all segments of the whole sphere are convertible into as many different functions as might be required living in a house.”16 The flexibility was made possible by shell construction, with outer walls held in place by stress and tension, elimi­ nating the need for inner walls or supporting columns. With this kind of construction, only a horizontal division of a house into two stories need be permanent; all vertical divisions can be as flexible as is desired by the occupants. On the second floor of Space House, Kiesler designed discrete rooms; on the first floor he created an environment that could function as one open space or as a separate living room, dining room, library, and games room. He sought to create an “organic space” that would “facilitate daily activities,” and thereby reflect and enhance the lives of its owners.17 To accomplish the flexibility he sought, Kiesler employed sound-absorbing sponge rubber draperies that hung from the ceiling between segments, as well as sliding partitions and tambour doors that disappeared into adja­ cent walls.18 Using varying ceiling heights and modest level changes, Kiesler was able to create an appropriate atmosphere in each segment. As an example, the library—a few steps below the living area with a low ceiling—was a cozy nook for reading. The expansive living area, with a high ceiling, was a space suitable for entertaining.3  The raised dining area denoted a distinction in use, without detracting from the spaciousness of the interior. If the diners desired privacy, the curtains separating the dining area from the living area could be drawn. Kiesler believed that modern homes “should have maximum space, light, air, comfort and seclusion for the minimum of money.”19 Light came through large windows, which had several layers of curtains to afford

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varying levels of privacy.20 Comfort was provided by the upholstered furniture, an air conditioning system and the fireplace, which was unnec­ essary in the climate-controlled environment but which had an air of familiarity that might be appealing to those not quite ready to embrace modernism. The American magazine Arts & Decoration viewed Space House as “an experiment in optical illusion,” in which Kiesler’s use of strong horizon­ tal lines, curved surfaces, and disappearing walls and doors tricked the occupants into believing that they had more space than was really there. The magazine quoted Kiesler as referring to this result as “a streamlined effect.” 21 The critic Alfred Auerbach also used the term; he viewed the monolithic façade, which he compared to an eggshell, as “thoroughly streamlined, so much so that as one stands in its shadow and studies its contour it would almost seem as though propellers would logically com­ plete its design.” 22 In its advertisements for the exhibition of modern home furnishings at its new quarters, Modernage highlighted “the First Streamline Space-House” and touted “Kiesler’s prophetic House (probably the most advanced yet shown in this country)” as the “ideal type of modern one-family house: its interior designed for least resistance to comfort; its exterior designed for least resistance to outer stress.” 23

2   Frederick Kiesler, Space House, exterior view, Modernage Furniture Company, New York 1933 [Photograph by Fay S. Lincoln]

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3   Frederick Kiesler, Space House, living room, Modernage Furniture Company, New York 1933 [Photograph by Fay S. Lincoln]

Kiesler’s focus in Space House was the interior and exterior archi­­ tecture; he reported that “all the furniture in the place [was] by leading designers,” including the American designer Donald Deskey, the German émigré Kem Weber, and Mies van der Rohe.24 In 1935 Kiesler was afforded the opportunity to design furniture as well as interior architecture for the Manhattan apartment of Charles and Marguerita Mergentime and their two children. Marguerita was a successful designer, known for her boldly colored and patterned table linens. She and Kiesler were both active members of AUDAC ; the two couples socialized together as well.25 The main living floor of the duplex apartment, located at 211 Central Park West, consisted of several small rooms. From a foyer, two small rooms, and a hallway, Kiesler created one large L-shaped space with functional living and dining areas, or—to use Kiesler’s terminology—“segments.” He bisected the long leg of the L with a simple Bauhaus-style desk in metal and glass. At the far end was a conversation and study area. At the near end, a piano and Kiesler’s “Party Lounge” created an entertainment area,

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4 , 5 , 6   Frederick Kiesler, Mergentime Apartment, New York 1936 [Photographs by Robert Damora © Damora Archive]

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adjacent to which was a dining area. Draperies were hung between the dining area and the remainder of the space, thus permitting the two “segments” to be combined for expansion or separated for contraction, as dictated by social needs.4  Kiesler designed multifunctional furniture for the apartment. A sofa, termed a “Bed Couch” by Kiesler, rested on wheels for easy move­ ment, and became a bed when the sofa back was laid flat.5  With the curtains drawn between the living area and dining area, the living area could double as a bedroom for guests. Kiesler’s Party Lounge was also a multifunctional piece. In his essay “Designing Tomorrow. Frederick Kiesler’s Mergentime Apartment,” archivist and historian Gerd Zillner notes that Kiesler named the seating piece Party Lounge because it could

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“seat a whole party at the same time.” 26 Like the Bed Couch, the Party Lounge was a complex design, intended to anticipate different uses. The middle section could lie flat, providing yet another bed for guests, or it could be raised as a backrest for those who might be enjoying a concert or sipping cocktails before dinner. Hidden runners could be extended to provide footrests, while wheels made the heavy piece mobile. The Kiesler Foundation holds dozens of drawings by Kiesler in which he worked out the details for the Party Lounge, for which he received a United States Patent in 1939. To achieve the expansion/contraction concept in the bedrooms, Kiesler designed a bed that incorporated a reading stand to expand its usefulness. With storage space to hide nighttime necessities, the room functioned as a sitting room as well as a bedroom. A drawing in the Kiesler Archives demonstrates the way in which he worked out the design for the bed. 6  Most of the furniture Kiesler designed for the Mergentime apart­ ment could be categorized as functionalist design; the round glass coffee table, uplit with a built-in lighting fixture, also rested on wheels to permit easy movement, and the upholstered dining chairs were set on a tubular steel pedestal with three branches. Some designs, however, reflected other iterations of modernism. A sleek buffet for the dining room and a dresser for the bedroom, both made of Macassar ebony, owed more to French art deco than to middle European design. Kiesler also designed a set of aluminum nesting tables, for which he embraced a bio­morphic ethic found in Finnish designs of the period by Alvar Aalto. Painted silver, the tables provided an interesting counterpoint to the other furniture in the room. They presaged the furniture Kiesler would later design for Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of the Century gallery. The Mergentime apartment, completed in late 1935 or early 1936, provided Kiesler with the opportunity to distill the designs he had created for the theoretical family of Space House.27 Apparently, he was pleased with the result. Between January and June 1936 he brought a number of colleagues to the apartment, including Nelson A. Rockefeller, trustee and treasurer of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City; Alfred Barr, the first director of the museum; and Philip Johnson, who had been the first director of the Department of Architecture at the museum from 1932 to 1934. MoMA favored the functionalist approach of the Bauhaus

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over other iterations of modern design, and Barr and Johnson incor­ porated the Bauhaus aesthetic into their own living arrangements.28 There were, centers of functionalist modernism other than MoMA: In 1937 Walter Gropius would bring Bauhaus theory to Harvard University, and László Moholy-Nagy would establish the New Bauhaus in Chicago. By 1936, however, it was becoming clear that while some Americans might adopt elements of purely functionalist modern design, most of those who chose modern design rejected the industrial appearance of function­ alist furniture in favor of pieces that incorporated the warmth of wood and the comfort of upholstery.29 Kiesler’s legacy lies not in the materials he used in Space House and the Mergentime apartment, but in the concepts he developed for and in both projects. The Bed Couch and the Party Lounge presaged a need for multifunctional furniture, as living accommodations for most Americans diminished in size over the course of the twentieth century. Similarly, the precepts of Time-Space theory underlie the growth in popularity of open-plan interiors, with twentieth and twenty-first century technology providing mechanisms for expansion and contraction that go far beyond rubber draperies. Each project discussed in this chapter provided an imperfect laboratory for Kiesler’s experiments in designing an “organic result in buildings.” 30 The AUDAC effort was just one room, Space House was a showcase for furniture designed by others, and the Mergentime project did not permit the shell construction Kiesler deemed essential. Nevertheless, all three enabled him to explore and refine his theories, which he would further develop years later in his designs for Endless House.

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For an in-depth study of the New York City department store exhibitions, see Marilyn F. Friedman, Selling Good Design: Promoting the Early Modern Interior (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2003). “Union of Artists Meets,” New York Times, June 1, 1928. Christopher Long, Paul T. Frankl and Modern American Design (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007), 90. Stefi Kiesler’s calendar 1930 and 1931, Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation (ÖFLKS), MED 844/0 and MED 845/0. AUDAC Exhibition May–June 1931 (Brooklyn, NY:

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Brooklyn Museum, 1931), exhibition catalog. Christopher Long and Aurora McCain, eds., Paul T. Frankl Autobiography: The Autobiography of a Modern American Designer (Los Angeles: DoppelHouse Press, 2013), 90–99. For more on Kiesler’s involvement in AUDAC and his relationship with Paul Frankl, see Laura McGuire, “Frederick Kiesler and Machined Modernism for New York City,” in Paul T. Frankl: A Viennese Designer in New York and Los Angeles (Vienna: ÖFLKS, 2013), exhibition catalog; see also Lisa Phillips, “Architect of Endless Innovation,” in Frederick Kiesler (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1989), exhibition catalog.

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Frederick Kiesler and the American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen

“Here and There in New York,” Good Furniture Magazine (May 1930), 277, 280. 9 “Five Modern Rooms in New York ‘Home Show,’” Retailing, Home Furnishings Edition, Women’s Wear Daily (“Retailing”), April 5, 1930. 10 Ibid. 11 While the Annual was published and copyrighted in 1930, its title indicates that it was intended to be disseminated in 1931. 12 AUDAC Exhibition May–June 1931. 13 Stefi Kiesler’s calendar 1930, ÖFLKS, MED 844/0 and MED 845/0. 14 Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, January 31, 1932, ÖFLKS, MED 103/0. Brooklyn Museum Archives, Records of the Office of the Director (W. H. Fox, 1913–1933. Exhibitions: AUDAC (file # 1210). 1931–1932. 15 Stefi Kiesler’s calendar 1931 and 1933, ÖFLKS, MED 845/0 and MED 847/0. 16 “The Space House,” undated typescript with written corrections, ÖFLKS, TXT 6446/1. See also Frederick Kiesler, “Notes on Architecture. The Space House,” Hound and Horn, no. 6 (1934), 292–297; “Architectural Solution” and “Merchan­ dising Problems in Architectural Layouts for the Modernage Furniture Company,” ÖFLKS, TXT 6456/0 and TXT 6465/0. 17 Laura McGuire, “Space House,” in Space House (Vienna: ÖFLKS, 2012), exhibition catalog, 22, citing Frederick Kiesler, “Modernage Furniture Co. 10-3-33F,” undated manuscript, ÖFLKS, box sfp 03. 18 “One Living Space Convertible Into Many Rooms,” House Beautiful (January 1934), 32. 19 Auerbach, “Architecture and Decoration are Wed in ‘The Space House,’” Retailing, October 23, 1933. 20 “Architect designs a Space House,” House & Garden (December 1933), 8 f. 21 “Straight Lines and Stream-lines,” Arts & Decoration (January 1934), 38, 39. 22 Auerbach, “Architecture and Decoration are Wed in ‘The Space House,’” 3. 23 Advertisement, New York Times, October 17, 1933; Advertisement, New York Times, November 5, 1933. 24 “Merchandising Problems in Architectural Layouts for the Modernage Furniture Company.” 25 See, e.g. Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, December 5 and 29, 1931, ÖFLKS, MED 845/0. 26 Gerd Zillner, Designing Tomorrow: Frederick Kiesler’s Mergentime Apartment (Vienna: ÖFLKS, 2017), exhibition catalog. Kiesler included these words in his application submitted to the United States copyright office: ÖFLKS, TXT 6444/0, page one. I am indebted to Gerd Zillner and Jill MeißnerWolfbeisser at the Kiesler Foundation for informa­ tion and images respecting Space House and the Mergentime commission. 27 On December 20, 1935 Stefi Kiesler records a visit to the Mergentime apartment to look it over: ÖFLKS, MED 849/0. The American designer Gilbert Rohde also participated in the design of the Mergentime apartment. Rohde’s modular storage cabinets were used to furnish Marguerita’s studio. 8

Virginia Bayer, “Marguerita Mergentime: Inventing Tablecloths,” in Marguerita Mergentime: American Textiles, Modern Ideas, ed. Donna Ghelerter (New York: West Madison Press LLC, 2017), 13, 16. 28 Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, January through June 1936, ÖFLKS, MED 850/0. See generally, David A. Hanks, ed., Partners in Design: Alfred H. Barr Jr. and Philip Johnson (New York: Monacelli Press, 2015), exhibition catalog. Hanks notes that Barr, in an effort to save money, bought American-made furniture that mimicked the Bauhaus designs of Marcel Breuer. David A. Hanks, “Laboratories for Modernism: The Barr and Johnson Apartments.” Partners in Design: Alfred H. Barr Jr. and Philip Johnson, 71. 29 See Marilyn F. Friedman, Making America Modern: Interior Design in the 1930s (New York: Bauer and Dean Publishers, 2018) for an extensive analysis of 1930s modern interior design in the United States. 30 “The Space House.”

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The Friendship Between Hans Arp and Frederick Kiesler

“My   Ears are Filled with Memories” Stephanie Buhmann

Although Frederick Kiesler and Hans Arp could easily have met before, their paths did not cross until 1930. By then, Kiesler was fast approaching forty while Arp, four years his senior, had already passed this mark. It was surprisingly late, considering that their avant-garde circles had overlapped as early as 1923 when Kiesler had become acquainted with several of Arp’s closest friends in Berlin, including Hans Richter, Theo van Doesburg, László Moholy-Nagy and El Lissitzky. However, by the time they were eventually introduced, Arp and Kiesler quickly struck up a friendship that would span two continents and last for 25 years. Today, their vivid rapport can still be traced through many archived letters and postcards, both casually written by hand and formally typed (sometimes by others). Communicating in German, Kiesler and Arp usually wrote with purpose: to either discuss collaborative projects or to inform each other of their latest career developments. Their witty word­plays, a nod to Arp’s roots in the Dada movement, reveal that they shared a sense of humor, as well as a strong passion for poetry. Overall, their correspondence can be divided into three distinct phases: their developing friendship of the 1930s; the inspired, mutually supportive connection during the 1940s and early 1950s, and a less frequent exchange from 1958 onward, due to demanding projects and health concerns on both sides. It has to be stressed that both Kiesler and Arp benefitted from their connection. To Kiesler, Arp embodied an important link to his former roots in the European avant-garde who

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translated some of his writings into French and played a crucial role in getting his work published in Europe. On the other hand, Kiesler served as an early ally for Arp in the United States, which would become his biggest market after World War II. In fact, while Arp had been a household name in Europe by the time he and Kiesler met, he had not enjoyed similar success overseas at that time. He did not enter an American collection until 1933 when Albert Eugene Gallatin acquired some of his works for the Gallery of Living Art, for example, and he would not have proper gallery representation in New York until the late 1940s.1 In fact, Arp was over sixty years old when he visited New York for the first time in 1949, at which point he preferred to stay with Frederick and Stefi Kiesler at 56 Seventh Avenue rather than in an anonymous hotel. Both Kiesler and Arp reached New York at the same time— one physically, the other by extension through his work. In 1926, when the Kieslers immigrated to the United States, Arp’s work was exhibited in New York for the first time. From November 19, 1926 to January 1, 1927, two of his pieces were included in the International Exhibition of Modern Art at the Brooklyn Museum, which had been organized by Société Anonyme, an artist’s society founded by Katherine S. Dreier, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray. The exhibition included artists from 22 countries and marked the largest such endeavor since the Armory Show in 1913.2 Though it is not documen­­ted whether Kiesler was able to view Arp’s work at the Brooklyn Museum, his friendship with Dreier and his ceaseless thirst for the avant-garde should certainly have led him straight to an exhibition that had attracted “unusual interest” and more than “forty-eight thousand” visitors.3 Eventually, Kiesler and Arp met in Paris in the summer of 1930 during the Kieslers’ first return to Europe since 1926.4 A photograph from that trip suggests that it was their mutual friends Theo and Nelly van Doesburg who introduced them and this seems likely, considering that Stefi had already voiced regret to Nelly in April 1926 that she and Kiesler had not met Arp in person before departing for America.5 In the picture, the van Doesburgs, the Kieslers, and Arp can be seen laughing and embracing on a balcony. They already resemble a close-knit group rather than acquaintances and the only obvious person missing is Sophie Taeuber-Arp, who might have been the one behind the camera. Though there is little surviving correspondence between Kiesler and Arp from

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the early 1930s, the mention of a Holiday card from 1936 proves that they had remained in touch.6 Yet, it was during this period that Kiesler seemed most overtly inspired by Arp’s oeuvre, citing it in his theater work. In 1934, Kiesler had become Director of Scenic Design at the Juilliard School of Music, designing both stage and costumes for George Antheil’s Helen Retires that year. Telling the story of Helen of Troy, the opera premiered at Juilliard on February 28, 1934. A photograph of that produc­ tion shows eight performers, seven of which appear as abstracted, biomorphic shapes. Crisply delineated, they evoke many of Arp’s signature forms, which he used in drawings, collages, as well as wooden reliefs from the mid-1920s onward, including Three Figures (circa 1926)7, HeadStabile (1926)8 and a string relief entitled Dancer (1926)9. Another picture documents the climax of the opera in which Helen, who had stretched out to die, is encouraged by a young fisherman to give love one more chance. Kiesler let this dramatic moment unfold before the backdrop of a large, oval form, whose center is a void. It manifests as a cosmic portal while also alluding to the human body. Arp would use similar visuals throughout his career and had already done so as early as 1927. For example, one of his now-destroyed mural paintings for Café l’Aubette, a muchpublicized interior design project created by Theo van Doesburg, TaeuberArp, and Arp in Strasbourg (1925–1928), had featured a similar shape entitled Navel Sun (1927/1928).10 During World War II, the realities of the Kieslers, who were safely situated in New York, and the Arps, who had to remain in war-torn Europe, could not have been more dramatically different. In 1940, after the National Socialists had labeled both Arp’s and Taeuber-Arp’s work as “degenerate,” the couple fled to Grasse, a still-unoccupied region of France at the time. While they attempted in vain to come to the United States with a ticket sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art, other émigré Euro­ pean artists helped to transform New York into a burgeoning art scene.11 In 1942, when Arp and Taeuber-Arp had to flee to Switzerland, two major exhi­bitions involving Arp and Kiesler took place on the other side of the Atlantic. First, André Breton and Marcel Duchamp organized a group exhibition entitled First Papers of Surrealism for the Coordinating Council of French Relief Societies, which was sponsored by the fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli and held at the Whitelaw Reid Mansion at 451 Madison Avenue (October 14 – November 7, 1942). On October 20, less than a week

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1   Hans Arp, Overturned Blue Shoe with Two Heels Under a Black Vault, painted wood, c. 1925 [Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venezia (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York); Hans Arp © Bildrecht, Wien, 2018]

2   Painting Library, Daylight Gallery, Art of This Century, New York 1942

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after the reception, Peggy Guggenheim opened Art of This Century, a gallery completely designed by Kiesler. Located at 30 West 57th Street, the space was characterized by curved walls and furniture that provided a dramatic stage for many artworks, including Arp’s. A New York Times Magazine photograph of the inaugural exhibition, which featured Peggy Guggenheim’s private collection, shows Arp’s striking wood relief Over­ turned Blue Shoe with Two Heels Under a Black Vault (circa 1925) 1 . Towering high up on the wall in the Painting Library, it is surrounded by viewing easels and stools designed by Kiesler, appearing as an integral part of a larger constellation.2  In that, this unusual assemblage foreshadowed Kiesler’s Galaxy concept of the late 1940s through 1960s, in which installations made of dimensional, multi-paneled paintings could span wall, floor, and ceiling. In fact, Kiesler’s Galaxies would have much in common with Arp’s oeuvre. While the sculptural quality of works, such as Galaxy D (1952)3  or Galaxy H (1960) evoke Arp’s wooden reliefs, which Kiesler once admiringly described as “earthly crystallizations of heavenly dreams,”12 their overall fragmentation relates closely to collages like Composition (1937)4 , 5 , which Arp had made in the mid-1930s using torn colored paper, black ink and graphite.13 In February 1944, less than two years after opening its doors, Art of This Century hosted a solo exhibition of Arp’s work. Following TaeuberArp’s accidental death by carbon monoxide poisoning in Switzerland in 1943, it was meant as a gesture of support from afar. Simply entitled ARP, the exhibition was accompanied by a small pamphlet. Listing all the lenders, it proves that Arp’s New York based friends had submitted almost all of Arp’s works in the show, including an untitled gouache from 1930, which was owned by Kiesler.14 Though their works had been contextualized several times during the War, it was during the years immediately follow­ ing that Kiesler and Arp became more closely involved. In 1947, when Breton and Duchamp curated the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme for Galerie Maeght in Paris, both Arp and Kiesler were among the featured artists. In charge of the design of the elaborate exhibition concept, Kiesler traveled to Paris on May 27, where he developed the Salle de Superstition in collaboration with some of the other artists.15 The installa­ tion manifested as a fantastic, surrealist environment, in which artworks lit in yellow and blue light, wall hangings, and a black painted lake by Max Ernst, generated a daunting atmosphere. For the first time, two

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of Kiesler’s sculptures, Totem of All Religions (1947)16 and Figue Anti-Tabou (Anti-Taboo Fig) (1947) 17, were on exhibit.18 Taken by Kiesler’s Salle de Superstition, Arp formulated his praise in an essay that was first published in Cahiers d’Art.19 That summer, Kiesler and Arp saw each other on multiple occasions, documented by a photograph taken in Arp’s studio.6  Though Kiesler’s sculptures would never evoke Arp’s work stylistically, it is hard to deny that his forays into this medium date back to the year when he was deeply engaged with Arp, who at that point had devoted himself largely to sculpture. Inspired by their friendship, Kiesler drew the portrait Jean Arp (1947)7 , which today belongs to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. It remains one of only a few figurative portraits by Kiesler, in which he depicted individuals he admired, further including Duchamp, Breton, and Merce Cunningham. Arp is shown in profile and though large parts of his body are left invisible, his head and facial features are carefully rendered. Kiesler paid special attention to his hands, which are holding a sculpture, as well as to his feet. Casually dressed in sandals, they are an indication that Arp in fact posed for Kiesler that summer. After Kiesler had returned to New York on September 21, he focused on promoting Arp and Taeuber-Arp to various friends and professional contacts. His independent efforts were supported by the 1948 release of Arp’s book On My Way: Poetry and Essays. 1912–1947, which was part of the Museum of Modern Art’s “The Documents of Modern Art” series conceived by Robert Motherwell.20 As his work started to gather attention abroad, prompting the art dealer Curt Valentin to ponder a New York solo exhibition at the Buchholz Gallery, Arp thought of traveling west. It was during this period leading up to his first visit to the United States that Arp and Kiesler corresponded most fervently. On January 29, 1948, after thanking Kiesler for drawing attention to Taeuber-Arp’s work, Arp shared some meaningful news with him: he had decided to include Kiesler in an upcoming publication on some of the most influential artists of their time entitled Onze Peintres vus par Arp: Täuber, Kandinsky, Leuppi, Vordemberge, Arp, Delaunay, Schwitters, Kiesler, Morris, Magnelli, Ernst.21 Only a few days later, Kiesler informed him that he had spoken with Aimé Maeght and Valentin about possible Arp exhibitions. He suggested starting in Paris in October 1948 before sending “the entire Arpichelago” to New York thereafter, seeing as December marked the “best month for

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  3  Frederick Kiesler, Galaxy D, 4 parts, tempera and oil on wood, 1952 [© The Estate of Frederick Kiesler, represented by Jason McCoy Gallery, New York]

sales.” Meanwhile, he assured Arp that he was also still trying to arrange an exhibition for Taeuber-Arp.22 In addition to giving practical business advice, Kiesler had also sent Arp a Christmas package with hidden cigarettes, which were still difficult to obtain in Europe at the time. Kiesler even offered: Should you need anything from the United States, Steffie and I would be happy to take care of it. We are doing this for many of our friends.23 Moved, Arp replied: I love you even without this gift and I always hear your beautiful Wagner voice resonating in my chest.24 In July 1948, after Valentin had scheduled Arp’s solo show for January/ February 1949 and promised to cover his travel expenses, Arp began to make concrete plans.25 Excited but nervous, he wrote Kiesler:

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The Friendship Between Hans Arp and Frederick Kiesler

I have to stay somewhere peaceful to not crumble … It is impossible for me to live on the 600th floor of a Waldorf Astoria-Hotel, I would even prefer an uncooked egg by Kiesler.26 On October 4, 1948, he announced that he had booked two tickets on the America both for him and “Fräulein Hagenbach” 27 Reflecting on his travel anxiety, he followed up soon after: I need 6 comforters, because I suffer from 6 illnesses, especially frost and blizzards are dangerous for me. It is awful that I’m asking so much of you, but I would probably not come to New York if I couldn’t live with you.28 Appreciative of Kiesler’s role as his safe haven in New York, Arp translated a German-language essay by Kiesler for a French architectural magazine before his departure and promised to present Kiesler’s work to a new publishing house in Stuttgart.29 Arp and Hagenbach departed from Le Havre on December 30, 1948 and arrived in New York about five days later. While Hagenbach moved into a hotel, Arp stayed with Kiesler from January to mid-March 1949.30 In a photograph taken of Arp on Kiesler’s terrace, one finds him smiling. Immersed in the view, he seems in awe of the city surrounding him, as if the iconic spires of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building offered him a new sense of measure. It is a contemplative moment and perhaps one of the few restful ones that Arp encountered during a visit filled with social engagements, including his opening on January 18 and a party that the Kieslers hosted in his honor. In contrast to Kiesler, Arp was not used to staying up until all hours and yet, occasionally, he would join Kiesler on his late food expeditions, during which he tried to track down roast beef for his “nocturnal life.” In retrospect, Arp would describe these unusual missions as some of his strongest memories of his visit.31 On May 23, 1949, a few months after his return to France, Arp thanked the Kieslers for their hospitality. Instead of sending them one of his collages, a gesture Arp feared could offend Kiesler, he kept his promise and included him in Onze Peintres.32 While conceived as a “book with essays about the fathers of fine art,” the publication also served as an homage to Taeuber-Arp, of whom Arp wrote in the introduction: Only fairy tales of infinite beauty could reflect the light of her being.33 Consequently, Onze Peintres featured artists whom Arp deemed significant, but who also had a special connection to his late wife. To Kiesler, having

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his name singled out next to Kandinsky, Delaunay, Schwitters and Ernst, among others, provided international recognition. It also reminded Arp’s European readers that Kiesler had not vanished, but that he “had been hiding in New York” to “roost” his ideas.34 Arp placed Kiesler’s chapter in the center of the book, where an image of the Salle de Super­ stition ac­com­panied his essay Das Ei Kieslers und seine Salle des Superstitions (Kiesler’s Egg and the Hall of Superstitions). Besides address­ ing the Surrealist environment of 1947, it described Kiesler’s vision of the Endless House with poetic abstraction: … in these spheroid, egg-shaped structures, a human being can now take shelter and live in his mother’s womb. … Kiesler wants to cure man of his anxieties and cramps, and have him re-enter nature easy and free. He wants to rescue man’s soul from petrification.35 That same year, Kiesler was commissioned by the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York to design the catalog for their upcoming exhibition of works on paper by Arp and Taeuber-Arp (January 30 – February 25, 1950). However, the task proved more difficult than planned. Though Janis had written

4   Hans Arp, Composition, collage of torn and adhered colored paper, with brush and black ink and graphite, on paper, 1937 [Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, A. E. Gallatin Collection, 1947-88-5; digital image © Philadelphia Museum of Art; Hans Arp © Bildrecht, Wien, 2018]

5   Frederick Kiesler, Study for Endless House [Paris Endless], gouache on paper mounted on board, 1947

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6   Frederick Kiesler and Hans Arp in Arp’s Studio, Paris 1947

Kiesler in June 1949 from Europe that Arp was enthusiastic about the show and would soon send photos for the catalog’s layout, Kiesler did not receive the promised materials until October.36 If one compares the eight-page exhibition pamphlet with the many documents submitted by Arp, it is evident that the final publication was much less extensive than originally anticipated. Nevertheless, it still honored two of Arp’s specific wishes: that it would illustrate Taeuber-Arp’s influence on his own work and that the format of the publication would mirror that of Plastique, a magazine dedicated to avant-garde artists that had been published by Taeuber-Arp before World War II.37 In response, Kiesler orga­nized the centerpiece of the pamphlet as a family tree; both Arp and Taeuber-Arp are represented by a portrait photograph from which arrows lead to images of their respective works, as well as to a communal painting entitled Peinture en commun (1939). Though satisfied with the result, con­sidering the circumstances, Arp still held hope for a more extensive publi­cation in the future and he entrusted Kiesler to keep his personal docu­ments safe until further notice:

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I thank you for all the trouble you had with the catalog. Please keep the drafts for the original plan of the catalog safe and do not part with these photographs for publication. I’m convinced that we will be able to see this ‘Mirror of the Two-Fold Way’ [‘Spiegel des zwiefachen Weges’] through …38 In March 1950, Arp returned to the U.S., visiting New York, as well as Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Walter Gropius had commissioned him to design a large, multi-part relief for the new Harvard Graduate Center. As Arp’s international opportunities grew, Kiesler struggled with the task of drawing attention to his paintings and sculptures; he was eager to show them in public, especially in Europe.39 In fact, he was hoping to enlist Arp as an intermediary with Maeght. Even though they had not had the time to speak about Kiesler’s new works in depth, Arp did follow up on his behalf as soon as he was back in Paris.40 However, his report was hardly encouraging: [Maeght] pretends to only know one drawing by you and he told me that … the transport costs would be too high for him at the moment.41 Arp admitted that he had had diffi­cul­­ties descri­bing Kiesler’s work, and advised him to focus on an exhibition in New York first so that a catalog could be made.42 Responding two months later, Kiesler acknowledged the complicated nature of his work and that he had a “true struggle” on his hands: “Please do not describe to anyone the type of my work. I have been warned by all my friends to not do so.” 43 Not one to give up easily, Kiesler reminded Arp that he had also had to bring Maeght to Arp’s studio twice before the art dealer had taken an interest and that it had taken an “eternity before you now seem to finally work together.”44 From March 2–27, 1954, Arp had his final solo exhibition with Valentin, who would succumb to a heart attack only five months later. This time, Arp was unable to travel to New York and Kiesler wrote him after attending the opening: … three days ago at your exhibition opening—greatly enjoyed your delightful sculptures, especially the big one and the wounded Arpholes [Arpschlöchern] and the white marble girl in the glow of being expecting! 45 He mentioned those he had seen and those he had missed, including Hans Richter and Richard Huelsenbeck. Remembe­ring Arp’s visits of 1949 and perhaps 1950, he now regretted that Arp had not been able to travel

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“like back when.” 46 Arp also yearned for New York in those days as described by Hagenbach to Richter: High buildings have recently been built in Basel (modest, 12 stories high) but Hans is happy about each one, because they remind him of New York.47 A few weeks later, Arp wrote Kiesler about the unwelcome demands on his time, which had increased after having been awarded the Grand Prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennial in 1954: Not so long, but it weighs heavily on me that I neglected to thank you for your warm letters of friendship. It is the fault of my ceaselessly restless gypsy life, which I am forced to lead … .48 Arp suffered from not having had any time to write poetry and ended his letter nostalgically: I often think of you and the room in the penthouse, which you offered me so kindly … I love New York and will try to come back soon. I love you and Steffie … .49 Besides brief greetings on post­cards, this is the last preserved direct letter from Arp to Kiesler. After that, Marguerite Hagenbach maintained all correspondence. In May 1956, Kiesler wrote Arp for the first time in English, a language Arp did not speak: Dear Arp, … Never hear from you. But we are still in communication. That underground movement which is the opposite of ‘resistance:’ persistence.50 Kiesler was hoping to visit Europe soon and wrote that this time he would like to bring Stefi Kiesler, who had not been back in over twenty years. Alluding to the fact that she might be going through a difficult time, he appealed to Arp: I think it would help a great deal if you could encourage her to come to Europe … Stefi, who admires you greatly, needs, after so many years of having given her devotion to so many, attention, esteem and warmth. It’s a cold world, sometimes to the freezing point, in spite of the hissing heat of atom bomb explosions.51 A year later, Kiesler’s tone had become more cheerful again. He had recently finished the World House Galleries, a commission by the art dealer Herbert Mayer, which encompassed two entire stories of the Carlyle Hotel in New York. Kiesler sent Arp the catalog for the inaugural exhibi­ tion, which featured the latter’s large relief Tournament (1949)52 in

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a space characterized by curvilinear white walls that evoked the surfaces of Arp’s sculptures. In this letter, Kiesler admitted that Arp had had a significant impact on this project.53 A month later, Kiesler followed up with an enthusiastic proposal. He had recently met Thomas Bouchard, whose films included portraits of Joan Miró and Fernand Léger. Kiesler had encouraged Bouchard to make a film about Arp as well, for which he would serve as a liaison: We would come to Europe in August and would stay through the fall … The most important thing of course is to see whether it’s possible to talk with you so that the human aspect colors the film.54 Knowing how much his poetry meant to Arp, Kiesler proposed: I also thought a lot about poetry, your poems in verse and prose and your world of abstraction, where you live with Jacob Boehme and Thomas de Aquino. It would be a walk through the world of Arp …55 However, Arp had just suffered from a heart attack in April and needed rest, as Hagenbach explained: It would have made me happy to see a beautiful film being made about Arp and his work, but he is currently still an unpeeled egg (not an egg of Kiesler!) and hence I’m afraid for him of interviews, photos and such things.56 Despite these concerns, she invited Kiesler to visit them soon.57 Kiesler made no further mention of the proposed film. Instead, he invited Arp to accompany him to Jerusalem in November 1957 to tour the site for his Shrine of the Book, which was to be part of the Israel Museum and house the Dead Sea Scrolls. As the only large building that Kiesler ever got to build, the Shrine of the Book marked a most crucial achievement for him. He asked Arp whether he would consider writing an introductory text and promised: I would bury it in a bomb-proof shelter in my new building, and the Chinese legions sweeping over Africa in the year 2250 would dig them out and make of them the flying standards of eternal peace. Arp did not reply and although they would never travel to Israel together, Kiesler did receive a postcard from there in April 1960, mailed by Arp, Hagenbach and Nelly van Doesburg, on which Arp merrily noted: “We scream for your Shrine.”58 In the spring of 1958, Kiesler visited Europe and was able to meet with Arp, recalling in July:

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7   Frederick Kiesler, Jean Arp, pencil on paper, 1947 [Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of the D. S. and R. H. Gottesman Foundation, 107.1963; digital image © 2018, The Museum of Modern Art / Scala, Florence]

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What a lovely time I had with you and how charm­ing of you to have visited me during my illness … . It was simply too much work and hustle and bustle. Work is easy com­­pared to life. It seems to me I’m about to discover it.59 Their time together had inspired Kiesler to frame his 1947 portrait of Arp upon his return to New York.60 Meanwhile, Kiesler informed Arp: I am missing the books you promised to send to me and also the sculpture, because they repre­sent to me a friendship symbolized in reality with gripping truth. … I will be eternally grateful for it.61 At the time Kiesler mailed this letter, the Museum of Modern Art was planning a retrospective of Arp’s work, in­cluding “more than 100 marble and stone sculptures, wood reliefs, paper collages,” as well as an exten­sive catalog.62 Hoping that Arp would travel for the occasion, Kiesler warned: “… behave well now, be a good boy, so that your doctor may allow you to meander the waves of the wide, wide ocean.”63 Within two weeks, Hagenbach responded to Kiesler, asking about the aforementioned sculp­ture: … what puzzles me is to know if you had chosen a special sculpture at Meudon or if Arp only had promised to send or bring you one. Please let me know!  64 Kiesler wrote back immediately, admitting that nothing had been selected.65 In fact, it seems that Kiesler never received a sculp­ture by Arp as nothing further was mentioned or documented. Meanwhile, when Hagenbach con­firmed that Arp would indeed travel to New York in time for the museum opening on October 6, 1958, Kiesler quickly informed mutual friends, exclaiming excitedly: “We shall have a ticker-tape parade for him à la Lindbergh, riding Broadway up and down.”66 Kiesler attend­ed a dinner in honor of Arp on October 5, and he went to the gala opening at the Museum of Modern Art the following night. As Arp s tayed for almost two months, it is likely that he and Kiesler would have seen each other on several other occasions as well. In the end, Kiesler might not have received a sculpture from Arp, but the latter did bring him a volume of his newly published poems and dedicated them with a drawing.67 After this visit, Arp’s and Kiesler’s demanding careers made it difficult for them to connect. As soon as 1960, Kiesler wondered whether they would meet again and sent Arp a nostalgic poem of his own:

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The H-ARP is singing in the spring But I can’t hear My ears are filled with memories Which crowd out the tender sounds Or is it an ear-vision that you are Speaking to me And it’s my ear-blindness That I can’t understand? 68 In the following years, Kiesler reached out to Arp multiple times, never without an idea for possible projects or meetings. In July 1962, he informed Arp about his work on Inside the Endless House, for example, an upcoming publication of journal entries and recollections for Simon and Schuster (published posthumously). While immersed in his own writings, he offered Arp to find an English translator for his poems, as well as an American publisher.69 This idea quickly prompted a response by Hagenbach, who explained how very busy they had been with museum exhibitions in Basel, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and London. She admitted that it was difficult to translate Arp’s poems, because he “played so much with words.”70 With regard to his health, she reported that he was doing surprisingly well, but stressed that she had to watch out for him: Fame is not easy to endure and Hans is much too soft and friendly to say no to the many young fans who are trying to visit us. So I sometimes have to bark like Cerberus! 71 Due to his ongoing work on the Shrine of the Book, Kiesler frequently travelled to Jerusalem, usually stopping in Paris. Several times, he proposed to visit Arp, but to no avail. As many of his notes remained unanswered, he wondered on March 6, 1963: I hope that you received my last letter. I’m not sure that I have your correct address.72 In 1963, Arp had a solo exhibition with the Sidney Janis Gallery, but was unable to travel due to his failing health. It also was a difficult year for Kiesler; Stefi Kiesler had passed away in September 1963 and he had suffered from a heart attack soon after. When he finally wrote Arp in

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October 1964, he did not mention that he had married his friend Lillian Olinsey in the hospital in March. Keenly aware of his mortality, Kiesler preferred to focus on his work. He wrote that the Guggenheim Museum had held a successful exhibition of his environmental sculptures, which he had not been able to attend. The Louvre had expressed interest as well, provided he could secure two other venues in Europe, and hence Kiesler asked Arp for help.73 Hagenbach’s response did not arrive until four months later, and only after Kiesler had followed up with a second note. It was hardly en­cour­aging and not very empathetic. She made no mention of Stefi Kiesler’s passing or Kiesler’s precarious health. Instead, she simply explained that they could not help with any museum con­nections in Europe, because one needs an official request from the countries to which the artist belongs … Our intervention doesn’t help at all, because it is about ‘dough.’ Why don’t you try to have the Museum of Modern Art support this ex­hibition, then it should be easy.74 For the last time she expressed her and Arp’s hope to see Kiesler in the near future. On December 27, 1965, Kiesler died in New York, only six months before Hans Arp would pass away in Basel on June 7, 1966.

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Maike Steinkamp and Loretta Würtenberger, eds., Hans Arp and the United States, Stiftung Arp e.V. Papers Volume 1 (Berlin: Stiftung Arp e.V., 2016), 174. Ibid., 186. Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Depart­ ment of Public Information. Press releases, 1916– 1930. 1926, 101. https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/ opencollection/exhibitions/1082. According to a calendar entry by Stefi Kiesler, Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation (ÖFLKS), MED 844/0. Cf. Stefi Kiesler, letter to Nelly van Doesburg (in German), April 26, 1926, ÖFLKS, LET 6192. Cf. Nelly van Doesburg, letter to Stefi Kiesler (in German), January 3, 1937, ÖFLKS, LET 1007/0. Drei Figuren, c. 1926, pencil on paper, 10 ½ × 8 inches (26.3 × 20 cm), Estate Arp, Switzerland. Reproduced in Jane Hancock and Stefanie Poley, Arp: 1886–1966 (Stuttgart: Hatje, 1986), illustrated p. 96, no. 77. Kopf-Stabile, 1926, painted wood, 24 × 17 ¾ inches (61 × 45 cm), Private Collection. Reproduced in Hancock and Poley, Arp: 1886–1966, illustrated p. 102, no. 88.

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Dancer, 1928, string relief, 19 5/8 × 15 ¾ inches (50 × 40 cm), Private Collection. Reproduced in Carola Giedion-Welcker, Jean Arp (New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1957), illustrated p. 15, listed p. 103. Reproduced in Giedion-Welcker, Jean Arp, illustrated p. 99. Cf. Hans Arp, letter to Dr. Paul Sacher and Maja Sacher (in German), November 5, 1941, in Erika Billeter, Leben mit Zeitgenossen. Die Sammlung der Emanuel Hoffmann Stiftung (Basel: Emanuel Hoffmann Stiftung, 1980), 37 f. Cf. Frederick Kiesler, letter to Hans Arp (in English), May 21, 1956, Stiftung Arp e.V., Berlin/Rolandswerth. Composition, 1937, 11 1/2 × 12 3/4 inches (29.2 × 32.4 cm), Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Accession no. 1947-88-5. The work was given to the museum by A. E. Gallatin in 1947. ARP (New York: Art of This Century Gallery, 1942), exhibition brochure. Frederick Kiesler 1890–1965. Inside the Endless House (Valencia: IVAM Centre Julio González, Rotterdam: Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, and Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1997), exhibition catalog, 194.

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16 Le Totem des religions, wood and rope, 9' 4 1/4" × 34 1/8" × 30 7/8" (285.1 × 86.6 × 78.4 cm), Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, Object no. 45.1971.a-b, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Armand P. Bartos 1971. 17 Figue Anti-Tabou, no longer exists. 18 Cf. Frederick Kiesler 1890–1965, 194. 19 Jean Arp, “L’Oeuf de Kiesler et la Salle des Superstitions,” Cahiers d’art 22, no. 9 (1947), 281. 20 Hans Arp and Robert Motherwell, Arp: On my Way Poetry and Essays 1912–1947, Documents of Modern Art (New York: Wittenborn, Schultz, Inc., 1948). 21 Cf. Hans Arp, letter to Frederick Kiesler (in German), January 29, 1948, ÖFLKS, LET 563/0. 22 Cf. Frederick Kiesler, letter to Hans Arp (in German), February 28, 1948, ÖFLKS, LET 582/0. 23 Ibid. 24 Cf. Hans Arp, letter to Frederick Kiesler (in German), January 29, 1948, ÖFLKS, LET 563/0. 25 Cf. Curt Valentin, letter to Hans Arp (in German), July 20, 1948, Stiftung Arp e.V. 26 Cf. Hans Arp, letter to Frederick Kiesler (in German), August 10, 1948, ÖFLKS, LET 564/0. 27 Cf. Hans Arp, letter to Frederick Kiesler (in German), October 4, 1948, ÖFLKS, LET 566/0. 28 Cf. Hans Arp, letter to Frederick Kiesler (in German), October 29, 1948, ÖFLKS, LET 567/0. 29 Cf. Hans Arp, letter to Frederick Kiesler (in German), September 10, 1948, ÖFLKS, LET 565/0. 30 Frederick Kiesler 1890–1965, 195. 31 Cf. Hans Arp, letter to Frederick Kiesler (in German), October 30, 1949, ÖFLKS, LET 570/0. 32 Cf. Hans Arp, letter to Frederick Kiesler (in German), May 23, 1949, ÖFLKS, LET 569/0 33 Hans Arp, ed., Onze Peintres vus par Arp: Täuber, Kandinsky, Leuppi, Vordemberge, Arp, Delaunay, Schwitters, Kiesler, Morris, Magnelli, Ernst (Zurich: Editions Girsberger, 1949), 7 f. 34 Ibid., 28 ff.; English translation printed in Jean (Hans) Arp; Collected French Writings, Poems, Essays, Memories, ed. Marcel Jean, trans. Joachim Neugroschel (London: Calder & Boyars, 1963), 217. 35 Ibid. 36 Cf. Frederick Kiesler, letter to Sidney Janis (in English), July 6, 1949, ÖFLKS, LET 1360/0. 37 Cf. Hans Arp, letter to Frederick Kiesler (in German), October 30, 1949, ÖFLKS, LET 570/0. 38 Cf. Hans Arp, letter to Frederick Kiesler (in German), January 26, 1950, ÖFLKS, LET 571/0. 39 Cf. Hans Arp, letter to Maja Sacher (in German), February 20, 1950, Stiftung Arp e.V. 40 Cf. Frederick Kiesler, letter to Hans Arp (in German), July 17, 1950, Stiftung Arp e.V. 41 Cf. Hans Arp, letter to Frederick Kiesler (in German), May 13, 1950, ÖFLKS, LET 572/0. 42 Ibid. 43 Cf. Frederick Kiesler, letter to Hans Arp (in German), July 17, 1950, Stiftung Arp e.V. 44 Ibid. 45 Cf. Frederick Kiesler, letter to Hans Arp (in German), March 31, 1954, Stiftung Arp e.V.

46 Ibid. 47 Cf. Marguerite Hagenbach, letter to Hans Richter (in German), November 5, 1955, Stiftung Arp e.V. 48 Hans Arp, letter to Frederick Kiesler (in German), July 21, 1954, ÖFLKS, LET 573/0. 49 Ibid. 50 Cf. Frederick Kiesler, letter to Hans Arp (in English), May 21, 1956, Stiftung Arp e.V. 51 Ibid. 52 Turnier, 1949, painted wood relief, 55 × 43 ½ inches (140 × 110 cm). Reproduced in Arp (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1958), 91. 53 Frederick Kiesler, letter to Hans Arp (in English), June 6, 1957, Stiftung Arp e.V. 54 Frederick Kiesler, letter to Hans Arp (in German), July 9, 1957, Stiftung Arp e.V. 55 Ibid. 56 Cf. Marguerite Hagenbach, letter to Frederick Kiesler (in German), July 15, 1957, ÖFLKS, LET 560/0. 57 Ibid. 58 The Dead Sea Scrolls refer to the ancient Hebrew scrolls that were discovered in eleven caves along the northwest shore of the Dead Sea between the years 1947 and 1956. 59 Cf. Frederick Kiesler, letter to Hans Arp (in English), July 14, 1958, Stiftung Arp e.V. 60 Ibid. 61 Cf. Frederick Kiesler, letter to Hans Arp (in English), July 14, 1958, Stiftung Arp e.V. 62 Museum of Modern Art Announces Six Exhibitions, press release, Museum of Modern Art, New York, June 25, 1958, Archives of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. 63 Cf. Frederick Kiesler, letter to Hans Arp (in English), July 14, 1958, Stiftung Arp e.V., 64 Cf. Marguerite Hagenbach, letter to Frederick Kiesler (in English), July 29, 1958, Stiftung Arp e.V. 65 Cf. Frederick Kiesler, letter to Marguerite Hagenbach (in English), August 4, 1958, Stiftung Arp e.V. 66 Ibid. 67 Cf. Marguerite Hagenbach, letter to Harold Diamond, May 24, 1975, Stiftung Arp e.V. 68 Cf. Frederick Kiesler, letter to Hans Arp (in English), April 26, 1960, Stiftung Arp e.V. 69 Cf. Frederick Kiesler, letter to Hans Arp (in English), July 16, 1962, Stiftung Arp e.V. 70 Cf. Marguerite Hagenbach, letter to Frederick Kiesler (in German), July 24, 1962, Stiftung Arp e.V. 71 Ibid. 72 Cf. Frederick Kiesler, letter to Marguerite Hagenbach (in English), March 6, 1963, ÖFLKS, LET 555/0. 73 Cf. Frederick Kiesler, letter to Hans Arp (in English), October 2, 1964, Stiftung Arp e.V. 74 Marguerite Hagenbach, letter to Frederick Kiesler (in German), February 26, 1965, Stiftung Arp e.V.

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Frederick Kiesler and Sigfried Giedion1

People, Art and Architecture Versus Space, Time and Architecture* Almut Grunewald

Frederick Kiesler’s ideas of a cross-genre, open artistic practice began to develop at the end of the 1940s parallel to Sigfried Giedion’s initiative of a “Synthesis of the Arts” put forward at CIAM/Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne. Although their strategies seem to follow the same basic principle, the two men never had close personal dealings with each other, nor was Kiesler involved with CIAM. Following their first meeting in the mid-1920s2, of which no further details are recorded, Giedion’s sojourns in the United States and the beginning of his teaching activities at Harvard University in 1938 and Kiesler’s job as director of the Laboratory for Design-Correlation established at Columbia University in 1937 entailed certain points of con­ tact that led to regular personal meetings. For example, Kiesler held a lecture at MIT in 1938 on the subject of “Biotechnique versus Architecture” in his new function in which he presented the as yet unpublished essay “On Correalism and Biotechnique.” 3 Following the opening ceremony of the new MoMA building, an event organized by James Johnson Sweeney and apparently proposed by Sigfried

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  1  Press release concerning a Symposium on Contemporary Architecture at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts, 1939 [gta Archiv / ETH Zürich, Nachlass Sigfried Giedion]

Giedion entitled Symposium on Contemporary Architecture was held at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts one year later on May 12, 1939.4, 1  Giedion appeared alongside the other participants, George Howe, Richard Buckminster Fuller, John E. Burchard, Alvar Aalto, Sven Markelius and Frederick Kiesler, with a Euro-centric contribution “American Archi­tecture Viewed From Europe.”5 At an informal meeting the following day, Giedion set about the task of founding an American chapter of CIAM.6 In 1940, together with Walter

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2   Members of the constituting meeting of the CIAM Chapter for Relief and Postwar Planning, School of Social Research, New York 1944 [gta Archiv / ETH Zürich, CIAM Archiv]

Gropius, Frank Lloyd Wright und Eero Saarinen, Kiesler took part in the Ann Arbor Conference on Design at the University of Michigan, School of Architecture, discussing new approaches in architectural training.7 Kiesler is also known to have attended two CIAM meetings in New York: on May 20, 1944 Kiesler’s signature is found on the list of participants of the founding team of the CIAM Chapter for Relief and Postwar Planning at the New School for Social Research in New York.8, 2 , 3  The official minutes of the meeting, however, make no mention of either Kiesler or Ladislav

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3   Meeting at CIAM6 in Bridgwater, September 1947 [gta Archiv / ETH Zürich, CIAM Archiv]

Sutnar.9 Stefi Kiesler’s calender of April 25, 1949 indicates a CIAM meeting at Josep Lluís Sert’s office.10 Kiesler’s unpublished papers also include a six-page typescript containing Knud Lönberg-Holm’s proposed topic “Community Development” for the CIAM conference in Bridgwater.11 This short list evidences Kiesler’s fundamental interest in the themes and goals of CIAM, that he seemed to pursue consistently at least since the late 1930s. However, these details tell us little about Frederick Kiesler and Sigfried Giedion’s personal relationship. On the other hand, a lot can be read between the lines in the correspondence between Hans Arp and Frederick Kiesler and between Hans Arp and Sigfried Giedion. In 1947, Kiesler was in Paris as of May 27 to prepare the exhibition Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme (International Exhibition of Surrealism) at the Galerie Maeght. The conception phase had begun at the start of the year, with initial sketches dating from April12 and the exhibition opening on July 7. Kiesler stayed on in Europe until September 20, arriving back in New York on the 21st.13 The 6th CIAM conference in Bridgwater took place in the same period from September 7

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4   Sigfried Giedion at CIAM6 in Bridgwater, September 1947 [gta Archiv / ETH Zürich, CIAM Archiv]

to 14.4  Together with Hans Arp, Sigfried Giedion had formulated an “aesthetic questionnaire” on one of the topics, the “Relation between Architect, Painter and Sculptor.”14 Although Arp and Giedion had already been working on it for roughly one year,15 Arp did not take part in the conference. Giedion sent a reminder one month before the event: Because I had assumed you would be coming to England anyway, I registered you for the conference in Bridgwater (Sept. 7–14). Henry Moore will probably come too, Léger perhaps. Gropius, Sert + several others will come for the Americans. I would like you to say a little something, whatever you like, about what you think about architec­ ture and about a possible collaboration. So I am counting on you! 16 Arp replied five days later declining the invitation: When you asked me some time ago to respond to your questionnaire, I didn’t really have any answers. The room that Kiesler designed

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for the surrealist exhibition made me completely aware of how archi­ tects, painters and sculptors collaborate. I replied to the question in an essay about Kiesler, in the only vivid way possible to me. It will be published in French in Paris. I am enclosing the original version with this letter and would be pleased if you could read it out in German or in an English translation at the conference or if it could serve you, my dear Giedion, for publication. I would be very grateful if you could give this letter and the essay to Carola to read.17 Traveling en route to Cornwall in August 1947, Carola Giedion-Welcker viewed the season’s exhibitions in Paris and, on Hans Arp’s advice18, also visited the surrealist exhibition at the Galerie Maeght. Showing an interest, in a letter to her husband she even advised him to recruit Kiesler for CIAM:19 … with Kiesler in his prime, feeling neglected by you and getting me into the closed surrealist exhibition by the back door. The architec­ tural idea of ‘psychological architecture’ realised by K. is very inter­ esting and executed in an intentionally organic sense. You can feel Kiesler the constructivist in the suspended parts spanned with string. La salle de superstition with large white plaster fetishes is good. The little niches reminiscent of snail-shells from the curio cabinet and magical objects are interesting as a material fantasy, but do not get any further, unlike Mirco + Arp. Kiesler explained to me that what he does is a rebellion against hygienic architecture. That he is not a surrealist. Might he not be useful for Ciam. Staying Hotel Lutetia Boulev. Raspail, seems vain + bitter, but not uninteresting and in a sense on the same line as us! 20 Giedion’s reply was not exactly prompt. Not until September 10, when the conference was already under way, did he send a telegram with an invita­ tion to Kiesler in Paris.21 Kiesler did not take advantage of the opportunity to jump on the CIAM bandwagon.22 Whether for reasons of schedule or out of wounded pride is, unfortunately, not known. 1947 was one of Frederick Kiesler’s most prolific years. Unparalleled in his work, he combines the formulation of theoretical ideas with their adequate practical realisation. This interplay of theory and practice is made particularly clear in Kiesler’s design of the Salle de Superstition 5 , 6  in the surrealist exhibition at Galerie Maeght in Paris and in his piece “L’Architecture magique de la salle de superstition” printed in

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the exhi­bition catalog.23 The design and the text bear a strong similarity to Kiesler’s “Manifeste du Corréalisme,” also formulated in 1947 24 and printed in L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui magazine in 194925, whose subtitle “Les états unis de l’art plastique” make reference to one of Kiesler’s central themes. At roughly the same time as the Manifesto, Kiesler wrote another text, that exists in two versions: “Kunst und Architektur vereint. Ein Manifest des Korrealismus” (Art and architecture united. A manifesto of correalism)26 and “Menschen, Kunst und Architektur. Ein Manifest des Korrealismus” (People, art and architecture. A manifesto of correalism). Here Kiesler discussed the key points of the “Manifeste du Corréalisme” in greater depth, adding new aspects.27 It is significant that Kiesler devotes more attention to the relationship between the arts, attempting to integrate art and artistic design into his systems of “Correalism” and “Biotechnique,” that were previously confined to architecture. Apparently, Kiesler was working on both texts and gave them to Hans Arp to read. Indeed, it is likely that the translation of the “Manifeste du Corréalisme” was done by Hans Arp and Gabrielle Picabia. In September 1948, Arp wrote to Kiesler: Before setting off on my trip, I spent one Sunday working on the translation of your German essay for a French architecture journal together with Gabrielle Picabia. I think the translation has turned out very well.28 The “Manifeste du Corréalisme” is the only article published in a French architecture journal at this time.29 Kiesler had also sent the finished text “Menschen, Kunst und Architektur” to Arp in February 1948, asking him to try and get it published in Switzerland.30 Of particular interest is Kiesler’s note at the end of the letter requesting that Arp not show the text to the Giedions before it was published. This is Kiesler’s only recorded statement concerning Giedion directly. Exactly what Kiesler feared remains speculative. What is certain, on the other hand, is that it must have involved a conflict of interest, particularly as the title “Menschen, Kunst und Architektur” can really only be interpreted as a critical allusion to Giedion’s Space, Time and Architecture from 1941. Six months later, Arp touched on the typescript again in a letter to Kiesler, but did not hold out much hope of getting it published.31 Kiesler then appears to have used other contacts, for example the Zurich-

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  5  Frederick Kiesler with his sculpture Figue Anti-Tabou (AntiTaboo Fig), Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme (International Surrealism Exhibiton), Paris 1947 [Photograph by Denise Bellon, Denise Bellon avec le © Fonds Denise BellonLes Films de l’Equinoxe]

  6  Frederick Kiesler, Architektur + Malerei + Skulptur (Architecture + Painting + Sculpture), study for Salle de Superstition, Paris 1947

based art historian and theater director Hans Curjel, to urge publication in a German-language journal. In a letter from 1950, Curjel, an old university friend of the Giedions from Munich, offered to give the type­ script to Hans Girsberger—another very good friend of the Giedions and publisher of Carola Giedion-Welcker’s book of sculpture.32, 33 Today, the unpublished text is held in the partial estate of Hans Girsberger.34 The 7th CIAM conference took place in Bergamo in July 1949. Again, neither Kiesler nor Arp attended this event although the aesthetic ques­ tionnaire drawn up by Giedion and Arp was still on the agenda and Kiesler had just recently published the “Manifeste du Corréalisme” in June. Kiesler did, however, appear at a symposium at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on the same topic two years later, on March 19, 1951. Themed “How to Combine Architecture, Painting and Sculpture” and headed by

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Philip Johnson, the participants included Kiesler, James Johnson Sweeney, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, the painter Ben Shahn and Josep Lluís Sert.35 Considering his training in art history and his theoretical work developed until well into the 1940s, it comes as some surprise that Sigfried Giedion only formulated the idea of a synthesis of the arts—in the form of the first “aesthetic questionnaires”—at such a late stage. After all, he had already forged a link between architecture and art in Bauen in Frankreich – Bauen in Eisen – Bauen in Eisenbeton (Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferroconcrete), in 1928, describing a new archi­tectural perception that he attributed to innovations in paintings.36 Positing that art had honed the architects’ eyes, enabling them to make modern architecture, Giedion placed architecture in a relationship of dependence on art, even going as far as to formulate the dominance of art within the presumed development process.37 Precisely because Giedion viewed a changed perception and a changed handling of space as key to modern art and modern architecture, it is all the more surprising that he failed to recognize the attendant widening of artistic space that must inevitably lead to a marriage of architecture and art or at least to a more diffuse spatial relationship of the genres hitherto divided by frame and plinth. This had been the very theme of Kiesler’s spectacular design for Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery in 1942. In his notion of “interior design” the distinction between different genres of art is unnecessary: In the correalist world they can transform themselves without losing their integrity: painting becoming architecture, sculpture becoming painting, and architecture becoming color.38 Giedion never went this far, however. He suggested a change which he described in the first questionnaire of 1946 as a “changed relationship to the arts,” advocating an intimate collaboration between the architect and the artist.39 He did not, however, question the old-established bound­ aries and roles of architecture and art, architect and artist. Only in 1965, when the German edition of Space, Time and Architecture was published, with the added chapter “Der gegenwärtige Stand der Architektur” (The present state of architecture), did Giedion address a more liberal, spatial understanding of art in sections dealing with “volumes in space,” “sculptural trends” and “architecture and sculpture.” 40

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The points of contact mentioned above illustrate that the synthesis of the arts was a key issue not only for Giedion, but also for Arp and Kiesler in the mid-1940s. Kiesler’s unconventional creative thinking beyond all boundaries of genre and profession was, however, more radical than any positions ever held by Giedion and CIAM and, had Kiesler been involved in CIAM, would have challenged fundamental values. Today, one must ask whether Kiesler’s ambiguous stance between architecture and art, theater and design led to his position as exotic outsider that continues to hamper an appreciation of his work even today.7 

7   Sigfried Giedion and Hans Arp at Lago Maggiore, 1950s [gta Archiv / ETH Zürich, Familienarchiv Sigfried Giedion und Carola Giedion-Welcker]

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People, Art and Architecture Versus Space, Time and Architecture

* The essay's heading is an allusion to the titles of an unpublished manuscript by Frederick Kiesler resp. Sigfried Giedion’s book–Menschen, Kunst und Architektur Versus Space, Time and Architecture 1

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This essay is based on the fourth chapter of Almut Grunewald’s PhD thesis “Friedrich Kiesler. Seine Skulpturen und sein offenes künstlerisches Konzept” (PhD diss., Munich University of Technology, 2014, published in 2016, https://mediatum.ub.tum.de/ doc/1197567/1197567.pdf). Kiesler must, however, have known Giedion since 1926. It is not clear whether they met in person at this time. Until 1997, the gta Archives of ETH Zürich included a calling card of Kiesler’s from 1926. However, Kiesler travelled to New York as early as January 19, 1926. Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, June 2 and 3, 1938; June 5 and 6, 1938, Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation (ÖFLKS), MED 852/0. The idea of a symposium seemed to come from Giedion and Gropius, see the correspondence between Giedion and Walter W. S. Cook, the Chairman of New York University and between Giedion and James Johnson Sweeney, gta Archives of ETH Zürich. Reto Geiser, “Giedion In Between” (unpublished thesis, ETH Zürich no. 19160, 2010), 253. Harry Francis Mallgrave, Modern Architectural Theory. A Historical Survey (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 355; Geiser, “Giedion In Between,” 254. Steven John Phillips, Elastic Architecture: Frederick Kiesler and Design Research in the First Age of Robotic Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2017), 123. Members of the constituting meeting of the CIAM Chapter for Relief and Postwar Planning, School of Social Research (May 20, 1914), gta Archives of ETH Zürich, 42-JLS-33-97, hand-written list, Kiesler’s name appears after Marcel Breuer’s. Minutes of the Meeting of the Constituting Committee held at the New School of Social Research (May 20, 1944), gta Archives of ETH Zürich, 42-SG-2-207. Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, April 25, 1949: “6h K. Ciam meeting Sert office,” ÖFLKS, MED 867/0. Lewis Mumford, The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism 1928–1960 (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2000), 315. Probably dating from 1945 like the copies held in the gta Archives of ETH Zürich, for example 42-HMS-1-340/345 or 42-SG-13-11/16. Dieter Bogner, ed., Friedrich Kiesler: Architekt Maler Bildhauer, 1890–1965 (Vienna: Löcker Verlag, 1988), 123. Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, ÖFLKS, MED 862/0. Report of Commission III b. on Architectural Expression: Questionnaire. The Impact of Contemporary Conditions upon Architectural Expression (1947), 24: “(Questionnaire compiled by S. Giedion, Hans Arp, Clive Entwistle and

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George Kadleigh),” gta Archives of ETH Zürich, 42-SG-8-66/68. Sigfried Giedion’s earliest surviving letter to Hans Arp in this context dates back to November 10, 1946. See also chapter 4.3. of the author’s PhD thesis “‘The Impact on the Sister Arts:’ Geschichte eines CIAM-Fragebogens.” Sigfried Giedion, letter to Hans Arp, August 15, 1947, gta Archives of ETH Zürich, 42-SG-23-329. Hans Arp, letter to Sigfried Giedion, August 20, 1947 with the German text “Das Ei Kieslers und seine Salle des Superstitions,” gta Archives of ETH Zürich, 43B-K-1947-08-20:1/2. Arp had announced to Kiesler in January 1948 that he intended to print the text “L’Œuf de Kiesler” that he had sent Giedion in a book of collected essays on various artists, see Hans Arp, letter to Frederick Kiesler, January 29, 1948, ÖFLKS, LET 558/0. The book, entitled Onze peintres vus par Arp, was ultimately published by Girsberger in Zürich in 1949. “The surrealist exhibition opens tomorrow, and the ‘Exposition de la Réalité Nouvelle’ on July 21st. You should see them both. If you didn’t see the surrealist exhibition at Wildenstein’s before the war, you mustn’t miss this exhibition at the Galerie Maeght.” Hans Arp, letter to Carola GiedionWelcker, July 8, 1947, gta Archives of ETH Zürich, 43B-K-1947-07-08. However, unlike those of other American contemporaries, Kiesler’s sculptures were not included in the revised and expanded version of Carola Giedion-Welcker’s book Contemporary Sculpture: An Evolution in Volume and Space (New York: Wittenborn, 1955) a few years later. Carola Giedion-Welcker, letter to Sigfried Giedion, August 19, 1947, gta Archives of ETH Zürich, 43B-K-1947-08-19:2. See also Iris Bruderer-Oswald, Das Neue Sehen: Carola Giedion-Welcker und die Sprache der Moderne (Bern: Benteli Verlag, 2007), 246. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Lillian and Frederick Kiesler papers. Kiesler does not appear in the group photo, nor in the list of conference participants held in the gta Archives of ETH Zürich. Frederick Kiesler, “L’Architecture magique de la salle de superstition,” in Le Surréalisme en 1947, ed. André Breton and Marcel Duchamp (Paris: Galerie Maeght, 1947), exhibition catalog, 131–134. The manifesto bears a hand-written date: “Paris, Sept. 20, 1947.” Facsimile of the “Manifeste du Corréalisme” as a supplement in Frederick J. Kiesler: Endless Space, ed. Dieter Bogner and Peter Noever (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2001). According to Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, it was sent to André Bloc on July 29, 1948. Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, July 29, 1948, ÖFLKS, MED 866/0. Frederick Kiesler, Kunst und Architektur vereint. Ein Manifest des Korrealismus (c. 1947), typescript, ÖFLKS, TXT 6192/0. A second copy of the

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typescript entitled Menschen Kunst und Architektur. Ein Manifest des Korrealismus (1947/1948) is held in the partial estate of Zürich publisher Hans Girsberger in the gta Archives of ETH Zürich, Hq 374. 27 See chapters 4.2.2. and 4.2.3 of the author’s dissertation. 28 Hans Arp, letter to Frederick Kiesler, September 10, 1948, ÖFLKS, LET 565/0. Arp sent the German text back to Kiesler on July 21, 1954: “From Ascona, Marguerite Hagenbach is sending you a registered parcel with a manuscript that I have had for years and, if I recall correctly, that was translated back then by Gabrielle Picabia.” ÖFLKS, LET 573/0. 29 Three versions of the manifesto exist: in German, English and the final French version. As Kiesler reports in his letter to Arp of February 28, 1948 (ÖFLKS, LET 582/0), he had translated the manu­ script that he wrote in Paris into German and sent it to L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui. 30 Ibid. 31 “The manuscript that you sent me needs thorough revision.” See Hans Arp, letter to Frederick Kiesler, August 10, 1948, ÖFLKS, LET 564/0. 32 Carola Giedion-Welcker, Moderne Plastik: Elemente der Wirklichkeit, Masse und Auflockerung (Zurich: Verlag Girsberger, 1937). 33 Hans Curjel, letter to Frederick Kiesler, September 21, 1950, ÖFLKS, LET 919/0. 34 Dating of “Menschen, Kunst und Architektur” can be limited to no later than September 22, 1947 (the date crossed out on the typescript) and February 28, 1948 (the date he sent it to Arp), and Kiesler may have begun writing it even earlier. The preface is known to date from 1948, see Frederick Kiesler, “Menschen, Kunst und Architektur” (1947/1948), typescript, gta Archives of ETH Zürich, Hq 374, 2. 35 “The Relationship of Painting and Sculpture to Architecture”, March 19, 1951, in the auditorium of MoMA at 11 West 53rd street, 20.30 PM (March 19, 1951), transcription in “A Symposium on How to Combine Architecture, Painting and Sculpture,” Interiors 110, no. 10 (May 1951), 100–105. 36 Sigfried Giedion, Bauen in Frankreich, Eisen, Eisenbeton (Leipzig: Verlag Klinkhardt und Biermann, 1928), 92. 37 Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1941), 353. 38 Frederick Kiesler, “Manifeste du Corréalisme,” Arts Plastiques, l’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui (June 1949), 80–105, here 99. 39 Summing up the results of the Bridgwater conference, he also printed the letter from sculptor Barbara Hepworth containing this very demand in A Decade of New Architecture (Zurich: Editions Girsberger, 1951), 35. 40 Sigfried Giedion, Raum, Zeit, Architektur (Ravensburg: Otto Maier, 1965), 30.

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“ The Marcel-Imprint” Alexander Kauffman

In early 1937, Frederick Kiesler immersed himself in the art of Marcel Duchamp.1 The New York-based magazine Architectural Record had just granted him a lengthy monthly column, which Kiesler titled “DesignCorrelation” and which he dedicated to the coverage of recent exhibitions, theater, and cinema. He quickly determined to devote an entire entry to Duchamp’s nine-foot-tall painting on glass, The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) (1915–1923) 1  and started his research into its creation and creator. Why? The Large Glass was not featured in any exhibition at the time. In fact, it had not been shown for over ten years. As Kiesler informed his readers, it could only be seen “in the living room of a colonial house in the U.S.A.,” where it was “treasured” by its owner Katherine Dreier.2 Nevertheless, The Large Glass belonged in the column because it was, for Kiesler, the perfect object lesson in “Design-Correlation,” the theme of the column and of the student laboratory he ran at the Columbia University School of Architecture from 1937 to 1943. Design correlation, Kiesler explained in his debut column, entailed the “coordinat[ion of] such strange parts as painting, sculpture, industrial furnishings, and building structure into a heterogenous unity.” 3 It was, he felt, the most urgent problem facing contemporary architecture. A rising generation trained according to modernist orthodoxy ignored décor, creat­ ing spaces out of sync with the needs of their inhabitants. Unlike others who penned early appreciations of The Large Glass, Kiesler valued the Glass for its architectural character, promoting it as an ingenious synthesis of painting, sculpture and the built environment. He had first encountered it in 1926, during the Glass’s public debut at the International Exhibition of

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1   Frederick Kiesler, “Design-Correlation,” article on Marcel Duchamp’s Large Glass, Architectural Record, May 1937

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Modern Art organized by the Société Anonyme and hosted by the Brooklyn Museum. The experience, coming shortly after his own arrival in the United States, left a deep and lasting impression. Writing to an acquaintance in 1935, Kiesler appears to recall the feeling, asserting that “[among] the leaders of contemporary painting … [Duchamp is] the most far-reaching of them all (including Picasso).” 4 He had also met Duchamp, who traveled in some of the same transatlantic avant-garde circles in the later 1920s and 1930s.5 Their mutual friends included Dreier—a painter and patron of the arts who had co-founded the Société Anonyme with Duchamp, and Jane Heap, the co-editor of The Little Review. Finally, though most of Duchamp’s work was in private collections and rarely shown at the time, Kiesler had seen a large sample of it in 1936 through two exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art: Cubism and Abstract Art—to which he also contributed—and Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism. In 1937, he would even manage to purchase a painting for himself, the important but then little-known Network of Stoppages (1914), in which Duchamp outlined the layout of the Glass. The large canvas hung prominently in the living room of the Kieslers’ penthouse apartment at 56 Seventh Avenue through­ out the early 1940s. The Large Glass itself did not appear at MoMA or in any exhibitions following its Brooklyn Museum debut because of catastrophic damage that had left it shattered and in pieces. Initially reluctant, Duchamp sailed from France in order to repair it in the summer of 1936; a result, in part, of Kiesler’s own prodding. “Kiessler [sic] was in to see me yesterday,” Katherine Dreier wrote to Duchamp in 1935, “He feels as I do that you really ought to supervise the mending of the Glass[.] I do wish that you could manage to come.” 6 Once Duchamp had glued the fragments to a new mount and installed the Glass in Dreier’s “colonial”-style Connecticut home, Kiesler began work on his article, driving up from New York with his wife Stefi and the photographer Berenice Abbott and reading everything he could find. The Kiesler papers at the Philadelphia Museum of Art include a handwritten reading list identifying the most important texts at the time: Gabrielle Buffet’s career survey, “Coeurs Volants,” from Cahiers d’Art; André Breton’s review of the notes for the Glass, which Duchamp had released in a boxed edition in 1934, from Minotaure; an earlier article by Breton from Littérature; and Duchamp’s boxed notes themselves.7 Kiesler then drafted a list of probing questions about the material construction

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of the Glass, revealing his interest in the work: “Did [Duchamp] use plategold and silver or powder?”; “How did he attach the lead to the glass?”; “What paint technic [sic] did he use for the colored sections?” 8 The column Kiesler wrote, spanning eight full pages in the May 1937 issue of Architectural Record, attests to the importance of The Large Glass to his personal approach to architecture and design. A floating caption at the top of the first page boldly states, “Architecture is control of space. An Easel-painting is illusion of Space-Reality. Duchamp’s Glass is the first x-ray-painting of space.” 9 A caption below identifies the Glass as a “structural painting on plate glass of the Superior-Sane Iconoclast Marcel Duchamp,” emphasizing its industrial character and then cleverly playing on the artist’s birthplace, listed as Blainville in the “Seine Inférieure” (Lower Seine) region of France. The body of the article begins on the following page, where Kiesler informs his readers, “[The Large Glass] is nothing short of being the masterpiece of the first quarter of twentiethcentury painting. It is architecture, sculpture and painting in ONE.”10 As he makes clear, this claim to preeminence went far beyond art history. “I bring to the technicians of design-realization the teaching of its techniques.”11 Among the specific lessons of the Glass were, Kiesler explained, effective ways of integrating glass and other translucent materials into modern buildings: “Normally one looks through a translucent plate glass from one area into another, but in painting an opaque picture (like this) one also accentuates the space division optically. The painting then seems suspended in midair negating the actual transparency of the glass. It floats. … A spatial balance is created between stability and mobility.”12 Most important to Kiesler, however, was the Glass’s direction on the articulation of form: The … wires that are used, instead of paint strokes, for contourings make wider and narrower outer and inner contours to create precise form articulation. Those heavier and lighter lines thus divide all shapes and at the same time link them! Technically they are held fast to the glass-back-surface by mastics or cooled-off white lead. That is unimportant, … the Marcel-imprint should not be imitated; but important is its spirit, guiding lost guides and collective herds back to juicy roots embedded in nature’s creative subconscious instead of encouraging them to take refuge in research

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and statistitching [sic]. The structural way of painting is Duchamp’s invention.” 13 The “Marcel-imprint” clearly made its mark on Kiesler. His own fascina­ tion with the Glass made a significant impact on Duchamp as well. Not only did his enthusiasm help Dreier convince Duchamp of the need to repair the Glass, but the publication of the article in May 1937 would draw the two together as dedicated friends and frequent collabora­ tors over the following decade. Duchamp immediately wrote to express his congratulations and appreciation: Dear Kiesler, What a surprise you gave me! I very much enjoyed reading [it]—firstly the spirit of the article, then your interpretation and the way your ideas were set out. Thank you for having looked at the glass so closely and for having put on paper points that so few people know about.14 Duchamp had devoted years to material and structural experimentation for the Glass, desiring to distance himself from tra­ditional oil painting, which Kiesler had been the first to recognize. He insisted on sending one of the boxed editions of his notes from Paris as a gift, writing that he “hop[ed] that when you go through it, you’ll see how right you are.”15 Duchamp had recently become involved in a new venture, the opening of a modern art gallery in London with the American heiress Peggy Guggenheim. He was introducing Guggenheim to artists in Paris and advising her on purchases, and, following the opening of the gallery in January 1938, would help her program and install exhibitions. When Guggenheim relocated to New York in 1941 and decided to open a hybrid museum-commercial gallery there, she commissioned Kiesler to design the interior, no doubt with Duchamp’s endorsement. Kiesler remodeled the two conjoined tailor shops Guggenheim rented on West 57th Street in accordance with the principles of design correlation he had articulated in the Architectural Record column. As he announced in a press release prior to the opening of Guggenheim’s space, known as Art of This Century, A new system of co-ordinating architecture with painting and sculpture and their co-ordination to the spectator has been attempted. This new … spatial-exhibition method consists in not using walls for hanging pictures or for placing pedestals for

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sculptures, but of a free arrangement of these objects throughout the space available, using, from a technical point of view, various methods of cantilever and suspension construction.16 As he had admired of The Large Glass, the paintings in Kiesler’s “spatialexhibition method” appeared to float in mid-air, projecting from the walls or rigged onto floor-to-ceiling mounts, structuring the space rather than merely decorating it. Kiesler also experimented with other ways of inte­grating artworks directly into the architecture. Given the opportuni­ ty to exhibit photographs of Duchamp’s works (extracted from another of the artist’s boxed editions, the so-called Boîte-en-Valise, 1935–1941), he designed a kinetic mechanism by which one could view the images through a peephole, manipulating a large wooden wheel to cycle through them.2  Duchamp eventually followed Guggenheim, relocating from France to New York during the construction of Art of This Century and, in October 1942, he moved into a spare bedroom in the Kieslers’ apartment. This proximity initiated a period of regular collaboration that continued even after Duchamp moved out in October of the following year. He remained nearby in his new studio at 210 West Fourteenth Street— which he leased until 1965—a little over one hundred meters from the Kieslers’ building. While living under the same roof, Duchamp and Kiesler created their first joint project, a provocative reader competition in the short-lived surrealist magazine VVV. Printed on the last page of the magazine’s 1943 almanac, their “Twin-Touch-Test” 3  invited readers to run their hands down either side of a chicken-wire screen and then to describe and explain the “unusual feeling of touch” in one hundred words or fewer.17 The winner would receive a year’s free subscription to the magazine. The almanac’s back cover included a small piece of chicken wire for the reader’s use. Duchamp and Kiesler attached the wire to a cutout in the shape of a woman’s torso, encouraging erotic asso­ciations with the “unusual feeling of touch.” Through the cut-out, one could see the back page where Guggenheim’s daughter, Pegeen, appeared in a photo demonstrating how to rub the wire screen. In spring 1943, Duchamp and Kiesler began the first of several co-productions involving motion picture film and other collaborators. In May of that year they attended a live test for a feature-length com­pilation of 1920s avant-garde short films organized by a mutual friend in the Guggenheim circle; the artist and filmmaker Hans Richter. Hosted

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by the Museum of Modern Art, Richter’s test included Duchamp’s film of spinning disks from 1926, Anemic Cinema, and it evidently motivated him and Kiesler to attempt new experiments with the medium. Recounting the screening in a letter to a friend, Richter reported that “as a result 3 people are making A.G. [avant-garde] films today: Duchamps [sic], Dwinell Grant, the painter, and of course the all-important Kiesler, who wants to make an arrière-garde film.”18 Never released, Duchamp’s was apparently envisioned as a redux of Anemic Cinema featuring a new edition of spinning disks, his Rotoreliefs of 1935.19 According to Stefi Kiesler’s records, he projected some of the new footage in the Kieslers’ apartment on the evening of July 11.20 Kiesler did not finish his “arrière garde” film either. Production likely never began. His papers do, however, include an extensive storyboard and typescript outlining plans for a film titled Aphrodite’s Left Turn. Wildly ambitious, the plot features sequences inspired by works of art; some of which, including Duchamp’s Network of Stoppages, were to appear on   screen.21, 4 , 5  The Kieslers and Duchamp also worked on another neverfinished film later that summer, Witch’s Cradle, directed by the young Ukrainian-American director Maya Deren.22 Deren had recently moved to

2   Frederick Kiesler, Kinetic mechanism for Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte-enValise, Art of This Century, New York 1942 [Photograph by K. W. Hermann]

3   Frederick Kiesler and Marcel Duchamp, “Twin-Touch-Test,” in VVV, 1943

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  4  Stefi Kiesler and John Latouche in front of Marcel Duchamp’s painting Network of Stoppages at the Kieslers’ apartment, New York, probably early 1940s

5   Frederick Kiesler, Aphrodite’s Left Turn, film storyboard, scene with Duchamp’s Network of Stoppages, 1940s

New York from Los Angeles, where she had made her first experi­mental short film, Meshes of the Afternoon, with her husband Alexander Hammid. Her new film included a performance by Duchamp and took place largely inside of Guggenheim’s Art of This Century.23 The footage that survives in the collection of the Anthology Film Archives in New York shows Duchamp sitting at a sidewalk terrace playing the children’s string game known as Cat’s Cradle; and in Guggenheim’s gallery, an ani­ mated length of string moving up his pant leg and around his neck in an apparent allusion to his Sixteen Miles of String installation design for the 1942 First Papers of Surrealism exhibition. In other scenes, strings loop around the interior of the Guggenheim gallery surrounding a young woman, played by the artist Anne Clark. After Witch’s Cradle, Duchamp and Kiesler remained involved in filmmaking through Hans Richter. Richter eventually abandoned his compilation film project and began making a new narrative feature film possibly inspired by Aphrodite’s Left Turn. Released in 1948, Richter’s Dreams That Money Can Buy features seven art-based dream sequences, including one designed and co-directed by Duchamp.24 Duchamp included allusions to his painting Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) (1912), to his

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6   Frederick Kiesler, Space-Poem Dedicated to H(ieronymous) Duchamp, three-page foldout photomontage in View, 1945

“coal sacks” installation design for the 1938 International Surrealist Exhi­ bition, and to Anemic Cinema. Richter’s plot involved a soldier returning home from the war and discovering an ability to access his and others’ dreams. Kiesler’s role in the production is unclear; his name is crossed out in the credits on an early script and does not appear in the finished film.25 The pamphlet advertising the film was his design. Kiesler conceived an inventive format to visually affirm the collaborative nature of the film, using pages of different trim sizes to juxtapose portraits of the dreams’ artists with one of Richter’s own face. Duchamp designed a cover that appears to reference an earlier ver­ sion of Dreams That Money Can Buy for a special issue of the New Yorkbased surrealist magazine View devoted to his work. In treatments for the film written by Richter and the German-born theorist and critic Siegfried Kracauer in late 1944 and early 1945, Duchamp and the other artists perform speaking parts within a complex nested narrative about a wealthy industrialist, his girlfriend, and a mad scientist.26 The mad scientist mixes smoking potions in bottles that represent the artists’ sequences. For the magazine cover, created around the time of the writing, Duchamp photographed a wine bottle turned on its side emitting puffs of smoke.

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Many of Duchamp’s friends in New York contributed articles to the special issue, including André Breton, Sidney and Harriet Janis, James Thrall Soby, and Robert Allerton Parker; but none were given the promi­nence of Kiesler, who created an elaborate six-page photomontage centerfold 6 , assisted Duchamp with photography for the issue and wrote a lengthy article describing Duchamp’s involvement in the produc­ tion of the issue. The centerfold sought to create the impression of standing in Duchamp’s Fourteenth Street studio. In a multi-part photo­ montage, it assembled images Duchamp and Kiesler had staged for photogra­pher Percy Rainford and emphasized the relationship between the architectural space of the studio and the artist’s work by creating clever juxtapositions and visual jokes. They substituted, for example, a miniature toilet bowl for the bowl in the artist’s tobacco pipe, an allusion to the artist’s 1917 readymade Fountain.27 Kiesler explained their thinking, again related to the principles of “design correlation,” in a long caption that read in part, “There seems to be a definite although unin­tentional correlation between the daily utilities of the artist’s environment and the inner structure common to all his work.” 28 The article Kiesler wrote recounting the creation of the photomon­ tage, cover, and photographs did not ultimately appear in View, and remained unpublished until 2013, but provides a unique perspective on this remarkable period of mutual exchange and cooperation.29 Duchamp and Kiesler sought to continue their work together by mounting a major exhibition about design correlation at the Museum of Modern Art. In April 1946, Kiesler sent a proposal to the museum’s exhibition com­ mittee outlining the show, which would “demonstrate, to the public at large, the meaning of painting and sculpture in relation to Architecture, particularly in the home.” He listed the design problems it sought to address, such as whether “the plastic arts, in particular painting and sculp­ ture, [are] fill-ins to cover the emptiness of walls, or [whether they are] an integral part of the visual need” and whether or not the designer of today could develop “possibilities of plastic expression” beyond the “framed picture,” “mural,” or “painted wall.” 30 The proposal stipulates that artists would be invited to execute “special parts of the demonstration,” and though none are explicitly named, Duchamp identified himself as Kiesler’s primary collaborator in a visa extension application completed that March.31

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7   Frederick Kiesler’s sculpture Figue Anti-Tabou (Anti-Taboo Fig) with Marcel Duchamp’s Le Rayon Vert (The Green Ray) on the left side, Salle de Superstition (Hall of Superstitions), Exposition Inter­ nationale du Surréalisme (International Surrealist Exhibition), Galerie Maeght, Paris 1947 [Photograph by Rémy Duval]

Like several of the projects they pursued together in the 1940s, the MoMA exhibition was never realized. Duchamp’s visa request was denied, requiring a last-minute return to France. Kiesler wrote to Sweeney to withdraw the proposal in June but he and Duchamp soon became heavily involved in the organization of another exhibition where they sought to express many of the same ideas. Before returning to New York in January 1947, Duchamp began work with André Breton on the installation concept and design of the major surrealist exhibition planned for later that year in Paris. When Duchamp sailed home, Kiesler took his place, heading to Paris to finalize the designs, which featured his first works of sculpture, Totem of All Religions and Figue Anti-Tabou 7 . The exhibition design and the specific works Kiesler and Duchamp contributed appear to address the design problems outlined in the MoMA exhibition proposal. One tempo­ rary work that Kiesler constructed and installed according to Duchamp’s

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8   Frederick Kiesler, Study for Le Rayon Vert (The Green Ray), ink and watercolor on paper, New York 1947 [Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Purchased with the Katharine Levin Farrell Fund, 1992-64-1; digital image © Philadelphia Museum of Art]

instructions, known as The Green Ray 8 , evoked the rare natural optical phenomenon of the same name, whereby a momentary green light appears at the horizon line as a result of the atmospheric refraction of sunlight. As documented in photographs of the exhibition and Kiesler’s preparatory drawing, a single ocular “porthole” appeared in the fabric-covered wall of the gallery. Viewers looked through the hole onto an ocean view pro­ vided by a photograph mounted within a shadowbox. The light of a hidden bulb intermittently appeared through a thin aperture at the horizon line, where blue and yellow glass met to generate a green ray effect for the spec­tator. With the mechanism interred within the wall and the aperture staging the view within, The Green Ray correlated artwork and exhibition design in an effort to disrupt passive modes of viewing. After Kiesler returned to New York that fall, Duchamp posed for him in a series of portraits 9 —a testament to their enduring friendship— but within a year, the two were no longer on speaking terms. As discussed in Michael Taylor’s contribution to this volume, Arshile Gorky’s violent suicide in July 1948, Kiesler’s condemnation of the artist Roberto Matta for having an affair with Gorky’s wife, and Matta’s subsequent expulsion from

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9   Frederick Kiesler, Portrait of Marcel Duchamp, graphite on two sheets of paper, New York c. 1948 [Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Ronnie L. and John E. Shore, 2010-221-25; digital image © Philadelphia Museum of Art]

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the Surrealist group in October 1948 ended the period of near constant collaboration. Duchamp, close to all parties involved and himself then in a romantic relationship with a married woman, Maria Martins, supported Matta against the moralizing Kiesler. An undated letter Stefi Kiesler sent Duchamp captures the aftermath: It is utterly fantastic that you take the role of judge in the dispute between Breton, Matta and Kiesler. No matter how deep and strongly you might feel in your accusations, you had under all circumstances the duty to interrogate Kiesler personally about it. One does not base one’s accusations on talk, double-talk and gossip. … I found it imperative to let you know that your attitude is utter conceit.32 Despite their sudden antipathy, the years of collaboration had lasting effects on both Duchamp and Kiesler’s work. Duchamp had begun planning a new room-sized assemblage in 1946, Étant donnés: 1° la chute d’eau, 2° le gaz d’éclairage (Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas), which would consume much of his time and energy until his death in 1968. As many commentators have noted, Étant donnés’ box and peephole struc­ tures, like those in The Green Ray, recall Kiesler’s designs for Art of This Century, themselves a response to Kiesler’s encounter with The Large Glass. Kiesler, from the end of his friendship with Duchamp to his death in 1965, would increasingly seek his own recognition as a visual artist, re-conceiving his synthetic ideal of art and architecture as a form of “environmental sculpture” that could be exhibited in art galleries and museums.

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Kiesler and Duchamp’s friendship has been the subject of substantial scholarly interest in the three decades since the publication of Jennifer GoughCooper and Jacque Caumont’s “Kiesler und Die Braut von ihren Junggesellen nackt entblößt, sogar,” in Friedrich Kiesler: Architekt Maler Bildhauer, 1890– 1965, ed. Dieter Bogner (Vienna: Löcker, 1988), exhibition catalog, 287–96. For a recent example focused on the 1937 Architectural Record article, see Penelope Haralambidou, Marcel Duchamp and the Architecture of Desire (Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2013), 1–22. Frederick Kiesler, “Design-Correlation,” Architectural Record 81, no. 5 (May 1937), 53. Frederick Kiesler, “The Architect in Search of …

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6

Design Correlation: A Column on Exhibits, the Theater and the Cinema,” Architectural Record 82, no. 1 (February 1937), 11. Frederick Kiesler, letter to Alma S. Reed, August, 29, 1935, Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation (ÖFLKS), LET 1757/0. Frederick Kiesler likely first met Duchamp while participating in the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris in 1925 or in the Société Anonyme’s International Exhibition of Modern Art in 1926. Additional meetings occurred on November 25, 1933 and June 25, 1936. See Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, ÖFLKS, MED 847/0 and MED 850/0. Katherine S. Dreier, letter to Marcel Duchamp,

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March 29, 1935, Katherine S. Dreier Papers/Société Anonyme Archive, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, Series I, Sub­ series I, Box 12, Folder 320. Quoted in Paul Franklin, “Travels of the Large Glass,” Étant donné Marcel Duchamp 9 (2009), 221. 7 Frederick Kiesler, “(For me:) See … ,” Marcel Duchamp Research Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Library and Archives, Box 14, Folder 8. 8 Frederick Kiesler, “Questions,” Marcel Duchamp Research Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Library and Archives, Box 14, Folder 2. 9 Frederick Kiesler, “Design-Correlation,” 53. 10 Ibid., 54. 11 Ibid., 55. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., 56–57. 14 Marcel Duchamp, letter to Frederick Kiesler, June 25, 1937, in Marcel Duchamp, Affectionately, Marcel: The Selected Correspondence of Marcel Duchamp, ed. Francis M. Naumann and Hector Obalk, trans. Jill Taylor (Ghent: Ludion Press, 1999), 214. 15 Ibid. 215. 16 Frederick Kiesler, “Press Release pertaining to the Architectural Aspects of the Gallery,” ca. October 20, 1942, ÖFLKS, TXT 190/0. 17 Frederick Kiesler [and Marcel Duchamp], “Twin-Touch-Test,” VVV, nos. 2–3 (1943). 18 Hans Richter, letter to Jay Leyda, July 5, 1943, Jay Leyda and Si-Lan Chen Papers, Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University, TAM 083, Box 7, Folder 27. 19 Duchamp announced the project to Man Ray in a letter, dated July 20, 1943: “I’m making a short film, 16mm, in color, about my Rotorelief disks. I’ve borrowed a Bell and Howell. I plan to make 3 copies and then, if I can market the idea, have a Technicolor version made in 35mm.” Duchamp, Affectionately, Marcel, 236–237. 20 Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, ÖFLKS, MED 858/0. 21 Frederick Kiesler, “Aphrodite’s Left Turn,” shots 42d-e in handwritten storyboard, ÖFLKS, TXT 3590/0_N19. All plans for the film are undated but apparently originated in this period. 22 The Kieslers were present during filming for Witch’s Cradle but the extent of their involvement is unknown. Stefi Kiesler’s records indicate a visit from a “film woman” to their apartment on August 14, 1943, and, the next day, going “with Marcel to [Café] Brevoort to make film scene / afterwards on terrace / filming.” See Stefi Kiesler’s calendar, ÖFLKS, MED 858/0. 23 Though the film remained unfinished, frame enlargements appeared in the View special issue on Duchamp. See View: The Modern Magazine, Series V, no. 1 (March 1945), 34. 24 On Duchamp’s contributions to Dreams That Money Can Buy, see my “The Anemic Cinemas of Marcel Duchamp,” The Art Bulletin 99, no. 1 (March 2017), 128–59.

263 25 “Titles 4,” Hans Richter Archive, Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York, C.IX.33. 26 For the Kracauer-Richter treatments, see untitled 11-page manuscript and “Dreams That Money Can Buy Treatment,” 8-page manuscript, Hans Richter Archive, Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York, C.IX.33; “Dreams That Money Can Buy,” 11-page manuscript, Kracauer estate, Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, 72.3687. 27 On this and other elements of the staged photos, see Elena Filipovic, The Apparently Marginal Activities of Marcel Duchamp (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2016), 270. 28 Frederick Kiesler, “Les Larves d’imagie d’Henri Robert Marcel Duchamp,” View: The Modern Magazine, Series V, no. 1 (March 1945), 24. 29 The full article, discovered in the archives of the Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, is translated in Herbert Molderings, Marcel Duchamp at the Age of 85: An Icon of Conceptual Photography, trans. John Brogden (Cologne: Walther König, 2014). 30 Frederick J. Kiesler, “Art and Architecture: An Exhibition,” April 16, 1946, Lillian and Frederick Kiesler Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Box 23, Folder 22, 3; ÖFLKS, TXT 5275/0 and TXT 5275/1. 31 Marcel Duchamp, “Application to Extend Time of Temporary Stay,” March 20, 1946, Alexina and Marcel Duchamp Papers, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Archives, Box 1, Folder 16, 2. 32 Stefi Kiesler, letter to Marcel Duchamp, undated, ÖFLKS, LET 2296/0.

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“ Elective Affinities” Michael Taylor

When the Mellon Galleries in Philadelphia hosted Arshile Gorky’s first solo exhibition in February 1934, the Armenian-born artist reached out to friends and colleagues to provide brief statements of support that were printed in the accompanying brochure along with the checklist of the 37 paintings and works on paper that were on display. The museum curator and arts administrator Holger Cahill, the modernist painter Stuart Davis and the writer Harriet Janowitz (who, along with her art dealer husband Sidney, later changed her name to Janis) all presented different aspects of Gorky’s work and personality in short, succinct paragraphs. The fourth and final statement was written by the Austrian-born architecttheorist Frederick Kiesler and translated from German into English by the author and publisher Heinz Norden. Kiesler’s contribution took the form of a stream-of-consciousness prose poem that paid heartfelt homage to his close friend, while also highlighting their shared interest in Sur­ realism and status as European émigré artists in Depression-era America: Gorky, spirit of Europe in body of the Caucasus, getting the feel of American soil. Unswerving, critical reason seeks the quintessence of Picasso-Miro, drunkenly to absorb them, only to exude them again in deep slumber, after such feast. This Caucasian stranger, hav­ing just quenched his hunger and thirst, is ready to shoulder down the doors into land of his own—for those who wait without the threshold. The genius of Asia cele­brates his marriage to the spirit

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of Europe. Such an event is rare. We are fortunate to be witnesses. Tourists of the American, Asiatic, and European Continents are invited. Tickets free and tickets at popular prices. All depends on you. The earlier you come, the longer your pleasure will last.1 Kiesler’s insightful text announces a heretofore undiscovered talent— a displaced stranger from Eastern Europe who, having drunkenly absorbed the pictorial lessons of Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró, was ready to demolish the doors in front of him and create a world of his own imagination. The reference to Gorky’s mysterious origins (the exhibition brochure stated that he was born in 1904 in the South Caucasus, but he was actually born around 1902 in the village of Khorkom, within the Armenian province of Van, on the eastern border of Ottoman Turkey), his synthesis of modern art and his Samson-like strength all speak to Kiesler’s perceptive understanding of his friend’s background, muscular physique, and artistic ambitions. Like a circus barker, Kiesler ends his statement by exhorting the reader to visit the exhibition and be a wit­ ness to this spec­tacular event (“the earlier you come, the longer your pleasure will last”), no doubt drawing upon the feverish sales pitches and promotional language of the advertising signs and billboards that he and Gorky had admired since their arrival in New York in the previous decade. By the time Kiesler wrote this statement he had known Gorky for six years. They met in 1926, shortly after Kiesler and his wife Stefi arrived in New York. Gorky had moved to New York at the end of 1924, so was himself a relative newcomer to Manhattan’s bustling metropolis. The two émigrés appear to have hit it off immediately since Gorky invited Kiesler to give some lectures at the Grand Central School of Art, where he was a faculty member in the Painting and Drawing department, that same year.2 In addition to teaching, they enjoyed exploring the city together. According to Lillian Olinsey, who would later become Kiesler’s second wife, the two walking companions would “read everything, from top to bottom, every store sign, every advertisement, every building,” 3 with Gorky point­ ing out to his architect friend that these signs and their accompanying shadows could be understood as modern paintings. “Look at the shadow,” Gorky would exclaim. “Look at the form.” 4 Lillian Olinsey worked as an assistant to the German-born painter and teacher Hans Hofmann after he settled in New York in 1932 and met both Gorky and her future husband around 1935. As she later recalled,

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1   Arshile Gorky at work on Activities on the Field, his mural for the Newark Airport Administration Building, 1936, photo-collage by Frederick Kiesler

Gorky and Kiesler were elective affinities. Kiesler had a passionate relationship to Gorky. He was almost protective of him, and Gorky was so tall and Kiesler was so short. He used to take Gorky to Pappas, a Greek steak house on Fourteenth Street and Eighth Avenue. He was the host. He would pay the bill, and they’d have loud, animated discussions. Both of them were passionate about modern art.5 This odd couple—the diminutive Austrian and the lanky Armenian— also regularly fre­quented Romany Marie’s, a favorite artists’ hang-out in Greenwich Village due the fact that the owner served Eastern European

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cuisine such as stuffed cabbage leaves and rice, and allowed painters like Gorky, Stuart Davis and John Graham to run a tab and then pay their bills later, often with works of art instead of cash. In 1936 Kiesler publicly defended the modernist mural paintings that Gorky had created and installed under the aegis of the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project for the Newark Airport Administration building in Newark, New Jersey 1 . This structure was completed in 1935 to serve what would become by the end of the decade the world’s busiest commercial and passenger airport. The new federally funded building was an ideal site for public murals, and by September 1936 preliminary approval was granted for Gorky to paint a ten-panel cycle entitled Aviation: Evolution of Forms under Aerodynamic Limitations. Inspired by the mech­ anized forms of Fernand Léger, especially his monumental 1919 painting The City, Gorky worked from photographs of airplanes that had been taken by Stuart Davis’s brother Wyatt in the previous year, which provided him with source imagery for his colorful mural panels. In November 1936 one of Gorky’s completed panels, along with a scale model showing how the mural cycle would be installed, was displayed at the Newark Museum in an exhibition entitled Old and New Paths in American Design. There was an immediate backlash against Gorky’s mural panel in the local press. The Newark Ledger, for example, claimed that Gorky’s painting “has us stumped,” since the aviation forms promised in the work’s title could not be recognized within the abstract composition, which was reproduced with the provocative caption: “Goodness Gracious! Is Aviation Really Coming to This?” 6 Kiesler’s swift rebuttal on Gorky’s behalf was issued in the December 1936 issue of Art Front magazine. In a brilliant move, Kiesler reproduced Wyatt Davis’s black and white photograph of a biplane that had informed the mural panel shown at the Newark Museum, along with the panel itself, thus destroying the argument that the painting was illegible and should be replaced with realistic depictions of airplanes and airport activities. “Well, no abstraction, boys!” Kiesler gleefully retorted. “Gorky’s mural design is very realistic since he transplanted directly photographic details of airplanes or even one whole airplane and in the same naturalistic distortion of the camera shot.”7 Although Gorky never wrote about Kiesler’s architectural projects, he did make two portrait drawings that reflect his deep admiration for his

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friend and champion: an early sketch made in 1932, and a second, more polished pencil drawing that was probably made in the late 1930s 2 . The latter portrait was based on Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s 1852 drawing of the French architect Pierre-François-Henri Labrouste in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which provided a suitable prototype for Gorky’s own delicately shaded rendering of his architect friend. Kiesler’s relaxed countenance speaks to the friendly atmosphere of the sitting, despite the stiff formality of the pose that Gorky borrowed from the Ingres drawing. Since this exquisite portrait was almost certainly made in the aftermath of the Newark murals controversy, it may have been Gorky’s way of thanking Kiesler for coming to his defense. In 1947 Gorky’s paintings were shown in two prominent Surrealist exhibitions that were designed by Kiesler: Bloodflames 1947, which was held at Alexander Iolas’s Hugo Gallery at 26 East Fifty-Fifth Street, New York, in February of that year, and the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, which opened at the Galerie Maeght at 13 rue de Téhéran in Paris on July 7, 1947. Organized by the Greek-born poet and art critic Nicolaos Calamaris, who wrote under the abbreviated name of Nicolas Calas, Bloodflames 1947 included “only those Surrealists who shunned the realistic image.” 8 The exhibition presented the work of eight artists— Gorky, David Hare, Gerome Kamrowski, Wifredo Lam, Matta (Roberto Matta Echaurren), Isamu Noguchi, Helen Phillips, and Jeanne Reynal— in a dynamic environment designed by Kiesler, in which the walls, ceiling and floor of the Hugo Gallery were covered in a bold design consisting of meandering bands of colored paint that emphasized what Calas described as “the magic character of unexpected associations.” 9 The con­ tinuous ribbon of solid color that wound its way around the gallery both framed and encapsulated the works on display, while also providing Calas with a blackboard-like surface on which to write his statement from the exhibi­tion catalog about the objectivism and individualism of the partici­pating artists, whose names were listed beside the entrance to the exhibi­tion. Reproduced on the other side of the entrance doorway was Kiesler’s statement: “We, the inheritors of chaos, must be the architects of a new unity.”10 As the title Bloodflames 1947 suggests, Calas employed Kiesler to create a disorienting environment that would exacerbate the inwardlooking or otherworldly qualities of the works of art he had selected for

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2   Arshile Gorky, Portrait of Frederick Kiesler, graphite on paper, c. 1938 [Collection of Natasha Gorky; Arshile Gorky © Bildrecht, Wien, 2018]

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the exhibition, which included Gorky’s 1946 painting Nude. Kiesler’s challenge, as suggested in his statement for the catalog and exhibition entrance, was to integrate the paintings and sculpture in a unified design, which he achieved by hanging or placing the works of art at vary­ ing angles on the walls and floor, with Matta’s painting Grave Situation being shown at an especially acute angle. Some paintings simply leaned against walls, resulting in a “unique imaginative experiment” that offered new ways of seeing and understanding Surrealist art.11 The highlight of the exhibition was a transparent net curtain that surrounded Wifredo Lam’s ambitious and highly erotic painting The Eternal Presence, which was mounted on the ceiling. Visitors had to pass behind the diaphanous curtain to enter the intimate, cocoon-like space, where they sat in one of Kiesler’s Correalist chairs to view the Cuban artist’s monumental 1944 painting, whose placement on the ceiling challenged traditional, wallbound methods of displaying art by forcing viewers to contemplate it while sitting down and gazing upward. Kiesler’s original plan to include running water within this space (the translucent drapes hanging from the ceiling would have functioned as a shower curtain) was not carried out, perhaps due to fears of damaging the art works on display. However, the idea would be resuscitated later that year in Kiesler’s Salle de la Pluie (Rain Room) installation in the 1947 Surrealist exhibition in Paris. Gorky’s Nude, displayed at the Hugo Gallery alongside a bronze sculp­ture by Phillips 3  and opposite Reynal’s gemlike mosaics in their boomerang frames that had been specially designed by Kiesler for the exhi­ bition, had its origins in the suite of ink drawings that Gorky had made to illustrate André Breton’s book of poems Young Cherry Trees Secured Against Hares, which frequently featured a sinuous female figure whose anatomy is made up of a sequence of interlocking, bonelike forms redolent of the petroglyphic fantasies of Yves Tanguy. In selecting the large and austere Nude for the exhibition, Calas correctly intuited the important role that automatism had played in its creation, for Gorky had used the rapidly executed line drawings as the basis for a series of working studies for the painting, which he completed shortly after the devastating fire that ravaged his studio in Sherman, Connecticut in January 1946, destroy­ ing a large number of paintings, drawings, and books. It is not known whether an earlier version of the painting was among the works lost in this blaze, but in its final form Nude closely relates to an important series of

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grisaille paintings entitled Charred Beloved that Gorky completed after the fire, which share its brooding atmosphere, whiplash lines, and smoky depths of smudged black and gray paint, replete with flame-like flashes of orange or red paint that surely allude to the traumatic incident of the studio fire. The painting’s overt sexuality, as well as its tragic undercurrent of loss and destruction through fire, would not have been lost on Calas when he selected the work for the Bloodflames 1947 exhibition. It should also be pointed out that Kiesler’s striking installation design was undoubt­ edly informed by the painting’s strong linear elements and stark black and white palette. Co-organized by Marcel Duchamp and André Breton, the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme and its accompanying catalog, Le Sur­réalisme en 1947, were dedicated to the theme of modern myths. This was a familiar subject for the Surrealists both during and after World War II, particularly as they sought to reinvent and reinvigorate the group in the changing cultural landscape of the 1940s, when they found themselves to be in­ creasingly isolated and considered irrelevant in the minds of both critics and public alike who associated the Surrealist movement with the avantgarde activities of the 1920s and 1930s. The 1947 Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme was therefore an attempt to present the collective efforts of the Surrealist artists and writers led by Duchamp and Breton as both progressive and culturally relevant, but also to discover new myths rather than perpetuate what were perceived as outmoded ideo­logies.12 Gorky was one of only a handful of American artists, including Enrico Donati, David Hare, Gerome Kamrowski, and Kay Sage, who were invited to participate in the 1947 Surrealist exhibition in Paris.13 The artist was represented in the exhibition through two of his greatest paintings, The Liver is the Cock’s Comb and another large 1944 painting entitled How My Mother’s Embroidered Apron Unfolds in My Life 4 , which was also illus­ trated in the catalog with a French translation of the title, “Comment le tablier brodé de ma mere se deplié dans ma vie.”14 Gorky’s paintings in the exhibition appear to have been carefully chosen, since their imagery and title fitted perfectly with Breton’s notion of new myths to replace older ones, including the legends of Prometheus, Pygmalion, and the Minotaur and the Labyrinth, whose visual evocation often included related figures—such as Pasiphaë, Theseus, and Ariadne—that had obsessed Surrealist artists like Max Ernst and André Masson (as well as fellow

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travellers like Pablo Picasso) throughout the 1930s.15 It is not known whether Breton personally chose these paintings or if the artist himself had any hand in their selection. How My Mother’s Embroidered Apron Unfolds in My Life was first exhibited in March 1945 in Gorky’s first solo exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery, for which Breton had written his essay “The Eye-Spring,” and it was subsequently selected for inclusion in the Painting in the United States exhibition at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, which opened in October 1945, thus suggesting that the artist considered the painting to be among his greatest works.16 Gorky could, of course, have entered Nude, which had been shown to great acclaim in the Bloodflames 1947 exhibition earlier that year, or any number of works from the recent Plow and the Song series, rather than two

3   Helen Phillips with her bronze sculpture Dualism at the Bloodflames 1947 exhibition, with Arshile Gorky’s painting Nude hanging behind her, Hugo Gallery, New York 1947 [Photograph by Morris Engel]

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paintings that he completed three years earlier and that bore little relation to his current artistic production. Breton could just as easily have included the two untitled landscape paintings that Gorky gave him as presents in the spring of 1945, which would have saved packing and transportation costs. When seen in conjunction with Breton’s arguments for new myths, the choice of The Liver is the Cock’s Comb and How My Mother’s Embroidered Apron Unfolds in My Life, with its reference to the artist’s boyhood in Armenia, no longer appears random, but rather Gorky’s deliberate expression of his own personal mythology centered around his memories of his beloved mother as he snuggled within the folds of her brightly colored embroidered apron. Such dream-like reminiscences surely replaced other more painful, horrific, and hence likely repressed memories of his mother, who died of starvation in March 1919 while living with Gorky and his sister as refugees in an abandoned and only par­ tially roofed hovel in Yerevan, following a harrowing forced march across eastern Turkey.

4   Arshile Gorky, How My Mother’s Embroidered Apron Unfolds in My Life, oil on canvas, 1944 [Seattle Art Museum, Gift of the Virginia and Bagley Wright Collection, 74.40; digital image © Susan Cole; Arshile Gorky © Bildrecht, Wien, 2018]

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As its title suggests, How My Mother’s Embroidered Apron Unfolds in My Life depicts the embroidered apron worn by his mother in the 1912 photograph that she sent to his father, Setrag Adoian—then living in Providence, Rhode Island—in a desperate and ultimately failed attempt to persuade him to send money to his family in Armenia, including his handsome young son. Gorky no doubt embellished his childhood memories of this embroidered apron, which appears in the painting through a sequence of interlocking shapes and trails of evanescent color that coalesce into blurred, indistinct shapes reminiscent of the apron’s distinctive floral motifs. The diluted washes of thinned-out pigment function like hazy, yet palpable childhood memories of a happier time, when Gorky would place his head in his mother’s lap and feel the warmth of her body, which offered both protection and unconditional love. Gorky thus presented a new myth at the 1947 Surrealist exhibition in Paris; one that was forged in the artist’s childhood in the Lake Van region of Eastern Armenia, and was tinged with the tragic events of the Armenian Genocide that would follow shortly thereafter. The 1947 Surrealist exhibition was designed by Kiesler based upon preliminary ideas supplied by Marcel Duchamp.17 One of the key concepts of Kiesler and Duchamp’s installation design was that progress through the successive spaces would correspond with what Breton described in the catalog as “initiatory” settings.18 As seekers of knowl­edge, the visitors to the exhibition were presented with a series of tasks or ordeals to overcome, inducing them to dwell on the disturbing and ex­traor­dinary aspects throughout the ages of certain individual and collective types of behavior.19 Duchamp left behind some initial ideas for the installation before returning to the United States, including the Salle de Superstition (Hall of Superstitions) and the Salle de la Pluie (Rain Room), in accordance with the notion of an exhibition environment that would unfold as a cycle of tasks and initiations into the mysteries of Surrealism. As the Surrealist artist and historian Marcel Jean recollected, Duchamp “imagined the hall of Superstitions as a white grotto and proposed that the effect should be produced by stretching an immaculate fabric on some suitable framework; he also drew up plans for the Labyrinth, and for the Rain hall, in which he recommended that a billiard table should be installed—one of the rare notes of deliberate humor in the exhibition.”20

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Kiesler, a polymath artist-architect whose exhibition designs con­ tinually sought to redefine the relationship between art and viewer through creative installation techniques, was well qualified to expand on Duchamp’s ideas for a fluid, unnerving, and disorienting architectural environment in which to display the entries by the eighty-seven participat­ ing artists, who represented twenty-four countries.21 In Kiesler’s fully realized design, visitors entered the exhibition by ascending a red staircase of twenty-one steps, signifying all but one of the Major Arcana of Tarot cards, which are numbered from zero to twenty-one. The steps were designed after the spines of occult and mystical books, such as Emanuel Swedenborg’s Memorabilia and Sir James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough, which together indicated the “degrees of ideal knowledge.” 22 Upon reaching the top of the stairs, the viewers donned white hoods designed by Joan Miró and entered the Salle de Superstition, a dramatic, multipart environment in the shape of an egg, which Kiesler believed would “cure man of his anguish” by unleashing and satisfying his psychic need for ritual and superstition.23 Miró’s long, scroll-like painting Waterfall of Superstitions, described by Kiesler in the exhibition catalog as “the frozen cascade of superstition,” 24 was mounted vertically on a curved wall in the Salle de Superstition, where it flowed like a waterfall of hieroglyphic signs from the ceiling to the floor, at which it met Max Ernst’s Black Lake, which Kiesler viewed as “a feeding source of fear,” according to an inscription on one of his preparatory installation drawings.25 The snake­ like form of Miró’s frieze-like painting formed the centerpiece of this unconventional spatial configuration, in which the different displays were unified through the giant green canvas (rather than a white one, as Duchamp had proposed) that stretched around the circular room of Kiesler’s discombobulating installation that was designed to help visitors, and by extension the artists themselves, overcome their deep-seated fears and superstitions. The Liver is the Cock’s Comb, which was prominently displayed by Kiesler in the Rain Room5 , alongside works by Victor Brauner, Isamu Noguchi, and Maria Martins among others, had been the central focus of Breton’s 1945 essay “The Eye-Spring,” which probably explains why this monumental work made the trip across the Atlantic Ocean. At some point the painting was removed from the Rain Room, perhaps because of fears that Duchamp and Kiesler’s curtain of falling water might damage the work. Photographs taken after the opening show that The Liver is the

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5   Arshile Gorky’s painting The Liver is the Cock’s Comb in the Salle de Pluie (Rain Room) of the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme (International Surrealist Exhibition), Galerie Maeght, Paris 1947 [Photograph by Rémy Duval]

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6   Arshile Gorky’s painting The Liver is the Cock’s Comb in the entrance gallery of the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme (International Surrealist Exhibition), Galerie Maeght, Paris 1947 [Photograph by Willy Maywald, © Association Willy Maywald /  Bildrecht, Wien, 2018]

Cock’s Comb had been relocated to the entrance of the exhibition, where it was hung alongside works by Isamu Noguchi and Alexander Calder 6 . On July 21, 1948, Gorky committed suicide by hanging himself from the rafters of a shed in rural Connecticut. Kiesler was completely devastated over the loss of his friend and in a moment of weakness wrote a letter to Breton unfairly suggesting that Matta was responsible for Gorky’s death—without taking into account the artist’s traumatic child­ hood during the Armenian Genocide, his long and unquestionable history of depression and suicidal thoughts, as well as his recent studio fire and losing battle with cancer. Kiesler considered Matta’s ill-fated affair with Gorky’s wife, Agnes, shortly before the artist’s suicide to be the sole reason for his fateful decision to hang himself and in his letter to Breton he asked, “Qu’est ce qu’on doit faire avec ce garçon?” (What should be done about this boy?).26 Breton took the strongly worded letter, dated October 17, 1948, as a call to action and promptly expelled Matta from the Surrealist group on October 25, 1948 on the grounds of “intellectual dis­ qualification and moral turpitude,” a charge that the Chilean-born painter always jokingly referred to as “moral turpentine.” 27 On November 8, 1948,

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7   Kay Sage, Marcel Duchamp, Maria Martins, Arshile Gorky, and Frederick Kiesler at Yves Tanguy’s house in Woodbury, Connecticut, on May 23, 1948 [Philadelphia Museum of Art, Archives, Alexina and Marcel Duchamp Papers; Gift of Jacqueline, Paul, and Peter Matisse in memory of their mother, Alexina Duchamp, 1998; digital image © Philadelphia Museum of Art]

the Romanian-born Surrealist painter Victor Brauner was also excommuni­ cated from the Surrealist group for refusing to sign the group’s statement excluding Matta, believing that the accusations against him “were the product of bourgeois morality.” 28 Marcel Duchamp, who had been a close friend of Kiesler and a frequent collaborator with him on publica­ tions and exhibition projects in the 1940s, never spoke to him again.29 Breton would undoubtedly have expelled Duchamp too for his decision to support Matta and Brauner in this dispute, but since he had never officially joined the Surrealist group, preferring to maintain his long-held position of individual freedom and detachment, he could not be expelled from a movement to which he did not belong. However, Breton’s expulsions of Matta and Brauner ensured that Duchamp had little contact with the Surrealist camp for more than a decade, which meant that five of the movement’s brightest stars—Gorky, Kiesler, Matta, Brauner, and Duchamp—were removed from the Surrealist firmament within a matter of weeks.

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In his defense, Kiesler had known Gorky since the 1920s and greatly admired his work, as seen in his statement for the artist’s 1934 exhibition in Philadelphia and his 1936 defense of Gorky’s Newark Airport murals. Their close friendship between 1926 and 1948 7  helps to explain Kiesler’s raw emotions at the time that he wrote his account of the artist’s death in his letter to Breton, which also effectively ended his own relationship with the Surrealists, as the architect’s second wife, Lillian, later recalled: “Kiesler was terribly upset at Gorky’s suicide in 1948—and decided not to belong to the group of Surrealists because they seemed hard and inhuman compared with Gorky’s sweetness.” 30

1

F. J. Kiesler, “Gorky,” trans. Heinz Norden, in Exhibition Arshile Gorky (Philadelphia: Mellon Galleries, February 2–15, 1934), exhibition catalog, n.p., reprinted in Arshile Gorky: Goats on the Roof, A Life in Letters and Documents, ed. Matthew Spender (London: Ridinghouse, 2009), 71. 2 Matthew Spender, From a High Place: A Life of Arshile Gorky (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), 86. 3 Nouritza Matossian, interview with Lillian Kiesler, 1992, quoted in Nouritza Matossian, Black Angel: The Life of Arshile Gorky (London: Chatto and Windus, 1998), 197. 4 Ibid. 5 Hayden Herrera, interview with Lillian Kiesler, April 9, 1999, quoted in Hayden Herrera, Arshile Gorky: His Life and Work (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), 213. 6 “American Art: WPA Show Opens at the Museum,” The Newark Ledger, November 8, 1936, quoted in Jody Patterson, “Flight from Reality? A Recon­ sideration of Gorky’s Politics and Approach to Public Murals in the 1930s,” in Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective, ed. Michael R. Taylor (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art; New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009), 82. 7 Frederick T. [sic] Kiesler, “Murals Without Walls: Relating to Gorky’s Newark Project,” Art Front 2, no. 18 (December 1936), 11. 8 Nicolas Calas, letter to the editor, Arts Magazine 50, no. 10 (June 1976), 110. 9 Nicolas Calas, introduction to Calas Presenting Bloodflames 1947: Hare, Gorky, Kamrowski, Lam, Matta, Noguchi, Phillips, Raynal [sic] (New York: Hugo Gallery, 1947), exhibition catalog, 6. 10 Frederick Kiesler, Statement in Calas Presenting Bloodflames 1947, n.p. 11 Ad Reinhardt, “Neo Surrealists Take Over a Gallery,” PM (New York), March 11, 1947, 11.

12 The Surrealist movement’s increasing preoccupation with the esoteric and the occult rather than left-wing politics came under fire at this time from, among many others, the poet and artist Christian Dotremont, who recently had founded the dissident Surréalisme Révolutionnaire group in Belgium. See Mary Ann Caws, Surrealism (London: Phaidon, 2004), 41. In his article on the “Situation of the Writer in 1947,” the existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre also publicly abraded the Surrealists, and André Breton in particular, for spending World War II in exile in the United States, rather than remaining in France and taking part in the Resistance. See Jean-Paul Sartre, “Situation of the Writer in 1947,” in “What is Literature?” and Other Essays, trans. Steven Ungar (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), 164. 13 These artists were officially invited to participate in the 1947 Surrealist exhibition in a signed letter from André Breton, dated January 12, 1947, outlining the themes and aspirations of the exhibition and meti­ culously detailing the installation plans. The letter that Enrico Donati received, which would have been identical to that sent to Gorky, is preserved in the Enrico Donati Papers, André Breton Letters, folder 2, The Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, Los Angeles, California. 14 André Breton and Marcel Duchamp, eds., Le Surréalisme en 1947 (Paris: Galerie Maeght, 1947), exhibition catalog, Plate 10. 15 For an excellent overview of the Surrealist artists’ engagement with these myths see Didier Ottinger, Surréalisme et mythologie moderne: Les voies du labyrinthe d’Ariane à Fantômas (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002). 16 Painting in the United States, 1945 (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Institute, October 11 to December 9, 1945), exhibition catalog, Cat. 117.

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Arshile Gorky and Frederick Kiesler

17 The installation design of the 1947 Surrealist exhibition has been discussed at length in Marcel Jean, The History of Surrealist Painting, trans. Simon Watson Taylor (New York: Grove Press, 1959), 341–344; José Pierre, “Le Surréalisme en 1947,” in La Planète affolée: Surréalisme, dispersion et influences, 1938–1947 (Marseilles: Centre de la Vielle Charité; Paris: Éditions Flammarion, 1986), exhibition catalog, 282–319; and Alyce Mahon, Surrealism and the Politics of Eros, 1938–1968 (London: Thames and Hudson, 2005), 107–140. 18 André Breton, “Devant le rideau,” in Breton and Duchamp, eds., Le Surréalisme en 1947, 18. (Translated from French; this and all following French quotes were translated by the author.) 19 Ibid. 20 Jean, The History of Surrealist Painting, 342. 21 Duchamp later admitted to the French art critic Pierre Cabanne that, “as an architect, [Kiesler] was far more qualified than I to organize a Surrealist exhibition,” see Pierre Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp, trans. Ron Padgett (New York: Viking Press, 1971), 86. 22 Jean, The History of Surrealist Painting, 341. 23 Frederick Kiesler in Hans Arp, “L’Oeuf de Kiesler et la Salle des superstitions,” Cahiers d’Art 22, no. 9 (1947), 281. (Translated from French.) 24 Frederick Kiesler, “L’Architecture magique de la Salle de superstition,” in Breton and Duchamp, eds., Le Surréalisme en 1947, 134. (Translated from French.) 25 This drawing is reproduced in Cynthia Goodman, “The Art of Revolutionary Display Techniques,” in Frederick Kiesler, ed. Lisa Phillips (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art in association with W.W. Norton, 1989), 72. 26 Frederick Kiesler, letter to André Breton, October 17, 1948, quoted in Michael R. Taylor, “Gorky and Surrealism,” in Taylor, Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective, 129. (Translated from French.) 27 Calvin Tomkins, Duchamp: A Biography (New York: Henry Holt, 1996), 364. 28 Mark Polizzoti, Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton (New York: Farrar, Straus and Ginoux, 1995), 557. 29 Nouritza Matossian, interview with Agnes Gorky, December 1997, quoted in Matossian, Black Angel: The Life of Arshile Gorky, 541, footnote 20. 30 Lillian Kiesler in Maria Bottero, “Kiesler Observed by Lillian Kiesler,” in Frederick Kiesler: Arte, Architettura, Ambiente, ed. Maria Bottero (Milan: Electa, 1995), exhibition catalog, 209.

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Frederick Kiesler and Sidney Janis

“ A Most Renaissance Man” Carroll Janis

Harriet and Sidney Janis met Frederick Kiesler in New York in the late 1920s, and they became close friends. Kiesler was most enthusiastic about my parents’ devotion to twentieth century art and their growing modern collection. My parents were fascinated with Kiesler’s ideas on many subjects: art, architecture, dance, theater, music, literature and philosophy. In his later years, Sidney described Kiesler as “the most renaissance man I ever met.” He admired Kiesler’s intuitive eye: He once pointed out a small cubist Picasso as a significant work, which none of us saw at the time. Years later I realized he had been right all along about that seemingly modest painting. He was equally incisive about music. When he was designing sets at Juilliard in the 1930s, he would often come over to talk music for hours—especially Mozart operas, which he went into in great detail. My father acknowledged, “Kiesler had a real impact on my development.” As he put it on another occasion, “What I didn’t get from Gorky [another close friend from those days], I got from Kiesler.” Arshile Gorky and Kiesler were themselves the best of friends, and would often visit our family apartment together. They made an unusual pair: Gorky, well over six feet tall, with a sonorous bass voice and a serious mien; Kiesler, under five feet, with a twinkle in his voice and a critically penetrating wit. The high esteem in which Gorky held Kiesler is evident in

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1–3   Frederick Kiesler, Correalist Rocker used as a sculpture stand / table / seat [Courtesy of Carroll Janis]

the neo-classical, Ingresque portrait drawing Gorky made of his friend, c. 1938. Kiesler designed the Art of This Century gallery for Peggy Guggenheim in 1942, and I went to the opening with my parents. I recall curving walls with works projecting into space, in recessed niches, or hang­ ing on ropes free of the wall. Smaller sculptures were placed on Kieslerdesigned bases. This base, turned another way, became a kidney-shaped low table; set a third way, it became a rocking chair (he called it his “Correalist rocker”).1 –3  There were a dozen of these organic forms placed through­out the gallery serving in their three capacities. Kiesler managed to turn the gallery itself into sculpture. It was a triumphal moment for him in the New York art world. Kiesler also designed other pieces of furniture, some of which (the aluminum tables) my father helped to place with collectors of modern art. For our home we acquired a superb couch with a reclining back that transformed it into a day bed. Kiesler had covered this unique couch using just the white of zebra fur; its texture and luminosity a marvel to touch and see. I once told him what a pleasure it was growing up with this couch in our living room. All my school friends were enthralled and as teenagers we found it great for necking. “Naturally,” Kiesler replied with a slight smile. Then I continued, shaking my head, “But when the white zebra skin

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wore down, dad replaced it with brown Naugahyde.” “Naturally,” Kiesler repeated. Kiesler was most excited by the idea of my father opening his own art gallery. At the inaugural exhibition of Sidney Janis Gallery in 1948, a Fernand Léger retrospective4 , Kiesler was one of the first visitors through the door. I accompanied him around the show, which consisted of fortyfive paintings, 1909–1948, lent by the artist. After studying the works intensely, he declared it the best installation of a Léger show he had seen. He also commented, “1913 was Léger’s greatest year.” A moment later he corrected himself: “1913 and 1914.” Sidney shared this general estimation, not only for Léger but for other early modern masters as well. In 1951 he organized Climax in 20th Century Art: 19135  with major works by an all-star roster from Picasso onward. It was for this show that Marcel Duchamp agreed to make a replica of Bicycle Wheel (1913), a readymade shown here in public for the first time. Before the start of the gallery’s second season, Kiesler stopped by for a visit. He was quite absorbed with the idea that art is a “tonic,” lifting our spirits and making us feel better. He mentioned how Marcel Duchamp’s work did so, adding playfully, “after all, even Duchamp’s initials are that of a doctor.” Kiesler then asked my father what exhibitions he was planning. Without saying a word, Sidney brought out a beautiful Hans Arp white-onwhite wood relief from the 1930s. Kiesler responded immediately, “That’s a real tonic.” Then Sidney brought out a fine painting by Sophie TaeuberArp and set it next to the Arp. Kiesler nodded, “That is also a tonic.” Sidney said, “We’re putting them together in a two-artist show and I also have some works they did jointly.” With that he showed one of their collabora­ tive efforts, but truth be told it was quite static and lacked the freshness and spontaneity of either artist individually. Kiesler took one look and said, “Oh, that’s too-tonic,” treating us to a surprising three-way pun. In the early years of the gallery, Sidney occasionally put together a symposium in conjunction with an exhibition. These freewheeling discussions featured critics and friends of the artist and were open to the public. The first panel was for Kurt Schwitters in 1952, which Kiesler attend­ed. Among the speakers was the poet and critic Nicolas Calas, who spoke highly of Schwitters and stressed his imaginative use of the found object and discarded paper. We were planning to end the evening with a record­ing of Schwitters reciting his poetry. When the panel concluded,

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I placed the 78 LP on an old record player that had been lent to the gallery just for this purpose. The audience fell silent as Schwitters began his “Anna Blume.” After only a few lines, the turntable stopped. It just gave out and no one could restart it. We didn’t get to hear “Tuit, tuit, tuit, tuit, tuit,” nor any other of the poem’s delightful lines. After an awkward pause one of the artists, Xanti Schawinsky, leapt to his feet exclaiming, “I know it all by heart and can recite the whole thing for you!” But Kiesler imme­di­ ately stepped forward and with his hand raised, said, “No. Let’s end the evening with the sound of Schwitters’ voice in our ear.” As the audience dispersed, I heard Kiesler murmur with a smile, “Schwitters would have been delighted that the machine broke.” The Sidney Janis Gallery held the Galaxies by Kiesler exhibition in 1954. Each Galaxy was composed of several shaped canvases loosely grouped together. The Galaxies themselves covered walls, corners and ceilings. The shaped canvases were three or four-sided and their dynamic effect was enhanced by the artist’s elimination of all rectilinear framing forms. The individual canvases were painted with abstract markings in a limited palette. The intervals between the canvases—the white walls— became part of Kiesler’s galactic space. This was a memorable show both for its early use of the shaped canvas and as an environmental installation. Whenever I ran into Kiesler on the street, he had something notable to say. Once he started a discussion on the nature of classicism. Another time he was very animated as we passed on 57th Street. He stopped for a moment to tell me, “Mozart is gold … pure gold,” before hurrying on his way. A group of us went one time with Kiesler to see an exhibition at the recently opened Guggenheim Museum. After ascending the ramp all the way to the top and coming down again, Kiesler suggested, “It would be better if the viewer was able to recline on a couch while all the art passes by on a conveyer.” I was teaching Art History at Columbia University in 1960 when Kiesler was invited to address the school’s Architectural students. He stressed that architects would have to fight for their ideas, especially when clients tried to modify their plans. He told the story of Mies van der Rohe, when he was designing the Seagram Building which had recently been completed in New York. According to Kiesler, during the planning stage some of the lawyers and “budget people” for the build­ ing realized the considerable expense that would be incurred by Mies’s

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4   Exhibition detail Fernand Léger 1909–1948, opening exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, September 1948 [Courtesy of Carroll Janis]

5   Exhibition detail Climax in XXth Century Art: 1913, Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, January 1951 [Courtesy of Carroll Janis]

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Frederick Kiesler and Sidney Janis

inclusion of the many bronze vertical lines running up the exterior of the multi-story building. They decided they would take Mies out to a special dinner perhaps where they could suggest he alter his plan and use a much less costly material. They chose one of the finest restaurants in New York, ordering filet mignon and a French wine for all. Mies took his place at the dinner table but just sat there smoking his ever-present cigar, eating and saying nothing. When the main course was finished and the waiters were removing the plates, Mies took what was left of his cigar and crushed it out directly in the middle of his untouched filet. No one thereafter brought up the subject of any changes. “And so,” Kiesler concluded, “this is how the architect preserved one of the glories of the Seagram Building.” Kiesler also delighted in the reports of Frank Lloyd Wright’s jousting with his clients. Stanley Marcus, of Neiman Marcus, had commissioned Wright to design a residence for him in Dallas, Texas. Looking over the plans, Mr. Marcus objected, “But there is only one closet and I own a hundred suits.” Wright’s reply: “No one should own a hundred suits.” My father was a great fan of Kiesler’s wit, which was multi-level and often caustic, but he did feel that Kiesler alienated many with his uncensored views. Sidney recounted, Before going out to see some shows together, we were discussing Klee and the Bauhaus and its many great teacher-artists, and how unlikely it was that any contemporary arts center could ever match up with it. Eventually Kiesler said, ‘Well, where shall we go today: The Barr House, The Bauer House, or the Bore House?’ He was referring to three of New York’s leading museums: the Museum of Modern Art under the direction of Alfred Barr, the Guggenheim when it was known as the Museum of Non-Objective Art and owned many works by Rudolf Bauer, and the old Whitney Museum of American Art on 8th Street. I think my father might have agreed that Kiesler’s play on words is like the play on forms in his architecture/sculpture and his multifunctional furniture. Such word and form-play came from a deep part of his personality and aesthetic. They point to a unity of process and inten­ tion that underlay some of his most stimulating work.

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Frederick Kiesler and Hans Hofmann in New York

Dynamic Correlations Lucinda Barnes

In the winter of 1938, Hans Hofmann delivered a now-famous series of evening lectures in Greenwich Village to audiences of young American artists and advocates of new art, including painter Arshile Gorky and critics Clement Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg, and Irving Sandler. Hofmann, who trained as a young painter in Paris and was a renowned teacher of modern art in Munich, spoke with experiential authenticity about the European vanguard and artistic revolutions that had swept Paris in the first decade of the twentieth century. He was known as a convincing teacher of Cubist principles, particularly the practice of sug­ gesting multiple views of objects in space through overlapping planes of transparent color. It was said that no one could explain and demonstrate Cubist composition and decomposition of planes better than Hofmann. Diagramming how to “push a plane in the surface or to pull it from the surface,” Hofmann asserted the artist must activate pictorial life and make it vital. “We must create pictorial space.” Greenberg would later describe the Hofmann School of Fine Arts in New York as a vortex of influence in the burgeoning art scene of the 1930s and 1940s; “a major fountainhead of style and ideas for the ‘new’ American painting.”1 Hofmann had recently relocated his school to the second floor of 52 West Eighth Street, just above Frederick Kiesler’s Film Guild Cinema, which opened to critical acclaim in 1929. In the inaugural screenings, audiences experienced a number of American premieres in Kiesler’s

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Frederick Kiesler and Hans Hofmann in New York

megaphone-shaped theater, designed to heighten sightlines and the sound environment.2 Kiesler aimed to “create a cinematic space for Americans … an experience that could transport them to a revelatory, spiritual place— a transcendental realm of the fourth dimension.” 3 The theater would con­ tinue to be a hub for foreign, artistic, and experimental cinema through­ out the 1930s, premiering in New York films such as Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929) and Fritz Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922). Charlie Chaplin films were particular favorites—Hofmann was in the audience of a 1936 screening of Chaplin’s just-released Modern Times (1936).4 Kiesler came to New York, from Vienna and Paris, in 1926, having been invited to direct a major exhibition of theater design. A young member of De Stijl, he had garnered recognition in Europe for experi­ mental theater and set design. “The contemporary theatre,” Kiesler stated, “calls for the vitality of life itself.” 5 While architectural commissions were sporadic in his first years in New York, Kiesler’s integrated approach to design was quickly recognized. In 1936, architectural, functional, and theatrical design works by Kiesler were included in the ground-breaking exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art, curated by Alfred Barr, the founding director of the fledgling Museum of Modern Art. Abstraction, according to Barr, had developed from two key traditions: The first, which he identified as more important, stemmed from the French painters Paul Cézanne and Georges Seurat, and radiated out through Cubism, Russian Construc­ tivism, Futurism, and geometric tendencies such as De Stijl. The second was grounded in the expressionist art and theories of Paul Gauguin, Fauvism, and Kandinsky. Barr described the new artist as one who “looks upon abstract painting as independent painting, emancipated painting; as an end in itself with its own peculiar value,” rather than as a painter of facts.6 The following year, in 1937, Kiesler began teaching at Columbia University, where he also established the innovative Laboratory for Design Correlation, a teaching platform created to investigate and connect life processes with a scientific approach to design. His theories and practice evolved from a foundational belief in the integral relationship between objects and their environments. First manifesting in his early stage designs in Europe, Kiesler approached objects and actions as organic and con­ ditional, operating within the elasticities of space and time. His designs framed “man in relation to various forces in the environment.”7

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Hofmann began teaching in Europe, at the Schule für Bildende Kunst in Munich, which he founded in 1915. The school, described as “the most notable academy of modern art in Central Europe,” attracted an international array of students, including young artists such as Louise Nevelson, Alfred Jensen, and Wolfgang Paalen.8 In 1930, two former students invited Hofmann to come to America to teach at the University of California, Berkeley. From Berkeley, he went to New York, initially lecturing at the Art Students League, and then in 1934 Hofmann newly founded his School of Fine Arts in New York. He opened a second school the following year, in Provincetown, Massachusetts, along the Atlantic coast of New England. As was the case in Europe, Hofmann’s schools in America immediately attracted a large community of students and young artists. From the outset of their arrival in New York, Kiesler and Hofmann played critical roles in the burgeoning community of vanguard art and ideas. In teaching and practice, they offered direct links to the concepts and practices of Cézanne, Cubism, Fauvism, Constructivism, and Surrealism, firmly positioning abstraction at the core of new artistic realities. Their lives, careers, and creative trajectories would connect and intersect over the next three decades as if simultaneously independent and correlated. They certainly knew each other by the mid-1930s, indeed through their mutual close friend, Lillian Olinsey (later Kiesler). She was one of Hofmann’s first students at the Art Students League in 1932, and soon became deeply involved in the running of his schools, remaining an advocate and close friend of Hofmann for years to come. In 1934, Kiesler and Olinsey were introduced by the artist Burgoyne Diller,9 who had also attended Hofmann’s first classes at the Art Students League. At the time, Diller was employed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), as was Kiesler, who scouted locations for WPA mural projects.10 Olinsey would become Kiesler’s long-time secretary and confidante. They married in 1964. Kiesler and Hofmann’s orbits closely intersected in the early 1940s, particularly in connection with Peggy Guggenheim. After living in Europe since the early 1920s, Guggenheim opened a gallery of contemporary art in London in 1938. With the guidance of Marcel Duchamp, she became increasingly involved with Surrealist artistic circles. She was planning to establish a museum of modern art featuring her growing collection, but in early 1940 left London for Paris. Within a year, as the political climate

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Frederick Kiesler and Hans Hofmann in New York

  1  Hans Hofmann, Phosphoric Form, oil on panel, 1946 [Courtesy of Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, New York, NY; © Bildrecht, Wien, 2018]

  2  Frederick Kiesler, Study for Endless House [Paris Endless], ink and watercolor on paper, 1947

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deteriorated throughout Europe, Guggenheim and her growing collection arrived in New York to rejoin a community of European vanguard artists. Guggenheim quickly began plans for a new gallery in New York, and in early 1942 contacted Frederick Kiesler, asking for his help in designing the gallery, Art of This Century. Kiesler was the perfect choice. As in the Film Guild Cinema, his innovative design focused on the viewer’s experience in the space and how one encountered and perceived works while moving through the art-activated spaces. Kiesler incorporated ergonomic furniture within galleries with shaped walls. Paintings were displayed without frames, allowing their compositions to meld into the physical environment. Kiesler’s design offered dynamic interac­tions between object, environments, and human experience, manifesting his theories of Correlation. “Sculpture, painting, architecture should not be used as wedges to split our experience of art and life; they are here to link, to correlate, to bind dream and reality.”11 Guggenheim’s inaugural exhibition presented her own collection, featuring artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Hans Arp, Piet Mondrian, Joan Miró, and Max Ernst, to whom she was married at the time. In addition to the galleries designated for her private collection, Art of This Century included a commercial space, the Daylight Gallery, where Guggenheim exhibited emerging American artists and tendencies. In the five-year life of the gallery, Guggenheim debuted a remarkable and prescient group of young artists. She brilliantly linked Gorky, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, and Jackson Pollock among others with the leaders of the European van­ guard. Kiesler, too, had importantly connected Europeans arriving in New York, such as André Breton, with young American artists he admired, particularly Gorky and Motherwell.12 Hans Hofmann exhibited at Art of This Century in the spring of 1944. It was his first solo show in New York. Artists Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock had strongly encouraged Guggenheim to visit Hofmann’s studio the previous spring. Krasner had been a student of Hofmann’s in the late 1930s, and like many former students had continued as a close friend and advocate of Hofmann’s work. The spontaneous and calligraphic methods of Surrealist automatism were particularly evident in Hofmann’s paintings of this period. He used these techniques toward freeing color and form; ultimately with the aim of transforming individual expression. “To me creation is a metamorphosis,” Hofmann wrote in a statement for

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Frederick Kiesler and Hans Hofmann in New York

his exhibition at Guggenheim’s gallery. “The highest in art is the irrational—… incited by reality, imagination bursts into passion the poten­ tial inner life of a chosen medium. The final image resulting from it expresses the all of oneself.”13 Rather than exploring the unconscious, Hofmann was more inclined toward the automatist pictorial methods of Surrealism, such as Wolfgang Paalen’s use of smoke and candle drippings, blurring para­ meters of forms. Paalen, a former student in Munich, reconnected with Hofmann in New York when Julien Levy Gallery displayed Paalen’s new work in 1940. Hofmann also experimented with various drip tech­ niques, as Clement Greenberg noted after a studio visit in 1943. Around the same time, Motherwell also visited the studio and subsequently invited Hofmann to participate in an artists’ group which included Pollock and André Masson, experimenting with automatism. Motherwell wrote of automatism as “actually very little a question of the unconscious. It is much more a plastic weapon with which to invent new forms. And as such it is one of the twentieth century’s greatest formal inventions.”14 In the mid-1940s, Hofmann increasingly painted biomorphic and organic forms operating within free spaces in alternating relations of ten­ sion and harmony. In Phosphoric Form (1946)1 , hazy red, yellow, and blue forms seem to rhythmically expand and contract over an undefined blue ground. Like minerals glowing below the surface of water, the forms push and pull and pulsate with movement, as if embodied with their own magnetic life forces. Negative and positive, interior and exterior fluctu­ate continuously in a system of tensions. Hofmann’s pictorial environ­ments of fluctuating ovoid shapes, like Phosphoric Form, strongly resonate with Kiesler’s drawings for his ongoing project Endless House 2 . Kiesler’s first published concept for Endless House appeared in VVV magazine in 1944. The article featured a photomontage in which Kiesler conjoined theater designs from the 1920s with Space House (1933), a project which focused on the “dynamic equilibrium of body motion within encompassed space.”15 The structural components of Space House inter­ connected within a system of continuous tension, “‘continuous mutations’ of the life-force which seem to be part of the ‘practical’ as well as the magical.”16 Endless House, which would occupy Kiesler for the remainder of his life, proposed a free-form, organic structure integrating continuous connectivity between the space, objects, and human body. “Between

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the corporeal units,” he wrote in Manifeste du Corréalisme (1949), “there lie the various empty fields of tension that hold together like planets in a void.” 17 “Form does not follow function,” Kiesler stated, “function follows vision. Vision follows reality.”18 Hofmann focused on artistic vision and reality in his major treatise, Search for the Real, published in 1948 in conjunction with a retro­ spective exhibition at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts. Search for the Real, which evolved from Hofmann’s earlier work Creation in Form and Color: A Textbook for Instruction in Art (1931), summarized his approach to abstraction. He positioned artistic creation as a transformative process toward achieving the essential nature of reality. “The Real in art,” Hofmann wrote, never dies, because its nature is predominantly spiritual … Creation is dominated by three absolutely different factors: first, nature, which affects us by its laws; second, the artist who creates a spiritual contact with nature and with his materials; and third, the medium of expression through which the artist translates his inner world.19 Kiesler’s artistic theories also foregrounded laws of nature. In Contem­ porary Art Applied to the Store and Its Display (1930), he wrote: Nature too (like art) is nothing but a single great organization of unities … Nature is in flux, art creations are static. And the more art creations give themselves up to the principle of flux, the more they deviate from Art and approach to Nature. As music. As the film. Every art is an art of organization … Nature has the desire to propagate herself through man by means of art.20 Concepts of flux and movement in real time and space took significant form in early-twentieth century artistic experimentation and exploration. Doubtless few artists actually read Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity (1905). Nevertheless, Einstein’s theories as part of new concep­ tions of space, non-Euclidean or curved space in particular, and of a temporal equation of space were widely discussed in the 1910s. Largely through popular literature and popular philosophy, artists, writers, and musicians began to incorporate in their new works notions of the fourth dimension and concepts of space, time, and flux. Cubism shattered traditional pictorial space. Suggesting multiple views of objects in space, the Cubists rendered subjects that lived in motion and thought in time.

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Frederick Kiesler and Hans Hofmann in New York

Neoplasticism and De Stijl evolved from Piet Mondrian’s concepts of the dualism of mind and matter. He promoted a new artistic plasticism toward a coexistent fluctuation and harmony between interiority and exteriority, mind and life.21 In 1920, Constructivist artists Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner declared, “Space and time are re-born to us today. Space and time are the only forms on which life is built and hence art must be constructed.” 22 Hofmann’s notions of flux and continuity, which he had been teach­ ing for years, were embodied in his term “push and pull,” first published in Search for the Real. “Push and pull,” he wrote, are expanding and contracting forces which are activated by carriers in visual motion. Planes are the most important carriers, lines and points less so … the picture plane reacts automatically in the opposite direction to the stimulus received; thus action con­ tinues as long as it receives stimulus in the creative process. Push answers with pull and pull with push … At the end of his life and the height of his capacity Cézanne under­stood color as a force of push and pull. In his pictures he created an enormous sense of volume, breathing, pulsating, expanding, contracting through his use of colors.23 In 1950, Hofmann produced a series of paintings titled Push and Pull, several of which were exhibited later that year at Kootz Gallery in The Muralist and the Modern Architect 3 , 4 , an exhibition that paired artists and architects. Kiesler also participated in the exhibition, showing for the first time a small model of Endless House 5 , which manifested his theories of Correalism and the interconnection of object and environment as “end­ less like the human body—there is no beginning and no end.” 24 Kiesler continued to develop Correalism through a number of sculptural, architec­ tural, and theoretical projects over the next fifteen years, culminating in perhaps his greatest work, Shrine of the Book, in Jerusalem. An organic, white domed building, surrounding reflecting pool, and outdoor plaza comprise this magnificent and quietly poetic pavilion which houses and exhibits the Dead Sea Scrolls. Interior spaces, the majority of which are underground, curve and flow into one another in a constant stream of movement without beginning or end, as if echoing the eternal significance and mystery of the sacred biblical and historical texts.25 Shrine of the Book was consecrated in spring 1965, just months before Kiesler’s death.

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After closing his schools in New York and Provincetown in 1958, Hofmann turned to painting full-time for the first time in over forty years. In the last decade of his life, he produced an astounding and prolific body of vigorously resolved and singular paintings. He pushed his pictorial surfaces into an intra-dimensional zone, somewhere between two and three dimensions, inhabited by a continuous present of vibrant colors and shape.26 “My aim in painting,” Hofmann claimed, “is to create pulsating,

3   Hans Hofmann, Chimbote Mural (Fragment of Part I) [Study for Chimbote Mural], oil on board, 1950 [With permis­ sion of the Renate, Hans & Maria Hofmann Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York / © Bildrecht, Wien, 2018; digital image courtesy of Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, New York, NY] 4   Installation view from The Muralist and the Modern Architect, Kootz Gallery, New York, October 1950 [Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Kootz Gallery records, Kootz Gallery scrapbook #22]

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5   Frederick Kiesler, Endless House, model for Kootz Gallery, 1950 [Photograph by Percy Rainford]

luminous and open surfaces that emanate a mystic light, determined exclusively through painterly development, and in accordance with my deepest insight into the experience of life and nature.” 27 While not intentional collaborators, Hans Hofmann and Frederick Kiesler were dynamically interconnected over more than three decades in New York, as if they were artistic bodies orbiting within a shared environment, distinct and overlapping, and in constant flux. The aggre­ gate of their impact and influence was enormous. They connected American artists and audiences directly with the origins of European Modernism, significantly shaping a burgeoning artistic environment in New York and America. They created and advocated artistic realms in which conditions of negative and positive, interior and exterior, and inner and outer states of mind operated in mutually vital systems of tension. Hofmann nurtured individual creativity, toward expressing “the all of oneself.” Kiesler embraced art, architecture, and performance toward a correlation that positioned the individual artist within a social dimension, in a collective practice with the aim “to bind dream and reality.”

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Clement Greenberg, Hofmann (Paris: Editions Georges Fall, 1961), 9. For an in-depth examination of the Kiesler commission and design, see Laura M. McGuire, “A Movie House in Space and Time: Frederick Kiesler’s Film Arts Guild Cinema, New York, 1929,” Studies in the Decorative Arts 14, no. 2 (Spring– Summer 2007), 45–78. Also see Lisa Phillips, “Architect of Endless Innovation,” in Frederick Kiesler, ed. Lisa Phillips (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art in association with W.W. Norton & Company, 1989), exhibition catalog, 13–35. McGuire, “A Movie House in Space and Time,” 47. Tina Dickey, Color Creates Light: Studies with Hans Hofmann (Vancouver, BC: Trillstar Books, 2011), 149. McGuire, “A Movie House in Space and Time,” 62. Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Cubism and Abstract Art (1936) (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986), exhibition catalog, 23. Stephen Phillips, “Toward a Research Practice: Frederick Kiesler’s Design-Correlation Laboratory,” Grey Room, no. 38 (Winter 2010), 98. Cynthia Goodman, “The Art of Revolutionary Display Tech­ niques,” in Phillips, Frederick Kiesler, 58. Phillips, “Architect of Endless Innovation,” 24. Worth Ryder, in Hans Hofmann (Berkeley: Univer­ sity of California. 1931), exhibition brochure, courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California, n.p. Herbert Mushcamp, “ART/ARCHITECTURE: A Surrealist and the Widow Who Keeps the Flame,” The New York Times, August 19, 2001. Phillips, “Architect of Endless Innovation,” 21. Frederick Kiesler, “Note on Correalism,” in 15 Americans, ed. Dorothy C. Miller (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1952), exhibition catalog, 8. “Frederick Kiesler: Chronology 1890–1965,” in Phillips, Frederick Kiesler, 370. Hans Hofmann, statement in First Exhibition: Hans Hofmann (New York: Art of This Century, March 7–April 8, 1944), exhibition brochure, courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, n.p. Robert Motherwell, “The Modern Painter’s World,” Dyn, no. 6 (November 1944), quoted in Cynthia Goodman, Hans Hofmann (Berkeley, Calif.: University Art Museum, University of California; New York: Abbeville Press, 1986), exhibition catalog, 44. Phillips, “Architect of Endless Innovation,” 24. Frederick Kiesler, “Endless House” (Photomontage), VVV, no. 4 (February 1944), 60–61. Kiesler, “Note on Correalism,” 8. Frederick Kiesler, “Pseudo-Functionalism in Modern Architecture,” Partisan Review 16, no. 7 (July 1949), 738.

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297 19 Hans Hofmann, Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948), ed. Sara T. Weeks and Bartlett H. Hayes, Jr. (Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I.T. Press, 1967), 55. 20 Frederick Kiesler, Contemporary Art Applied to the Store and its Display (New York: Brentano’s, 1930), 14. 21 Herschel B. Chipp, Theories of Modern Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 322. 22 Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner, “The Realistic Manifesto,” in Russian Art of the Avant-Garde Theory and Criticism: 1902–1934, ed. and trans. John E. Bowlt (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1968), 212. 23 Hofmann, Search for the Real, 44. 24 Frederick Kiesler, “The ‘Endless House:’ A Man-Built Cosmos,” in Inside the Endless House (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1966), 566. 25 Mushcamp, “A Surrealist and the Widow Who Keeps the Flame.” 26 Frank Stella suggested this new dimension in “The Artist of the Century,” American Heritage 50, no. 7 (November 1999), 14–17. 27 Hans Hofmann, quoted in Katherine Kuh, The Artist’s Voice (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 128.

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Frederick Kiesler Environmental  Visionary James Wines

No object, of nature or of art, exists without environment. As a matter of fact, the object itself can expand to a degree where it becomes its own environment 1 — Frederick Kiesler, 1951 There are some creative artists that define a moment in time and there are others whose contributions span an era; still, only a rare and visionary few are able to construct enduring and fertile links to the future. Frederick Kiesler was one such bridge builder. The great Austrian-born architect, artist, interior designer, environmentalist, theoretician, essayist, poet, stage designer, and intellectual catalyst has become an increasingly influ­ ential source of prophetic ideas every year since his death in December of 1965. I had the pleasure of knowing Frederick for only a few years— from 1962 to 1965—but in that short period he changed my life.1  At the time of our meeting, I was a rather conservative, Constructivist-influenced sculptor. Most of my efforts were spent wrenching iron, steel, bronze, and concrete into contorted abstract shapes and participating in the ubi­ quitous “art in public places” initiative that pock-marked civic plazas with a plethora of (often unwelcome) intrusions during the mid-sixties. At the time of my first encounter with Kiesler, I had become increasingly

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1   The Waldorf Panels on Sculpture, FLTR: Philip Pavia, Frederick Kiesler, James Wines, George Sugarman, George Segal, and Claes Oldenburg, New York 1965 (detail) [Photograph by John McMahon; Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University]

uncomfortable with the whole tradition of object making—or what I had facetiously begun to call “plop art” … which has now become an institutionalized way of describing randomly installed public sculpture. In this period of restlessness, I looked to Kiesler as a mentor who might help guide me toward more fertile territory. His impact was so great that I basically abandoned my entire sculpture career and ventured into experimental architecture. In retrospect, this proved to be a dubious decision from an economic perspective; but it was also an artistic and intel­lectual epiphany. Kiesler’s encouragement gave me the motivational support to make a quantum leap from which I never retreated. During the period of our friendship, Kiesler’s multi-disciplinary talents and integrative vision tended to both amaze and confuse me. I had just become well-known in art circles for massive mixed media sculp­ tures—sometimes installed in public places and most often exhibited in conventional art galleries. Then, suddenly, I became transfixed by this diminutive and iconoclastic genius. He shattered my career expectations by pointing out how hopelessly old-fashioned abstract art had become.

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The luminous alternative was his revolutionary concept of “Correalism.” From this theoretical position, he saw the explorations of astrophysics as influential sources for a new direction in environmental art and archi­ tecture. He proposed a conceptual perspective that would draw its energy from the absorption of both immediate context and infinite space; as opposed to relying on the insular traditions of form-making processes for their own sake. In Kiesler’s view, the future of art was not about producing more and more objects; but, rather, having an objective. After a few heady evenings of dialog with Kiesler, even the most confident and critically successful artist could be plunged into a state of soul-searching doubt concerning his/her philosophical and stylistic persuasion. Frederick had seemingly telepathic instincts about epochal change and offered aesthetic predictions for the future of art that could disrupt complacency, dislodge sacred shibboleths, and identify uncharted territories that others had been too myopic or faint-hearted to explore. I can’t precisely recall all of the circumstances of my first encounter with Frederick Kiesler. I think it was in May of 1962, during the opening of a group exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery (including Stella, Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, Johns and Bontecou). I vividly recall his charismatic presence and scalpel sharp ability to ferret out the most important ideas on display at any given time—even when pitted against the distracting cacophony of a cocktail party. During our initial discussions, I was mesmerized by his insightful encapsulations of pivotal moments in twentieth century art and design. I was equally impressed by his own artistic contributions to a number of these seminal movements and ability to maintain his role as an oracular force in the arts for over fifty years. From my memories of the 1960s, Kiesler was usually identified (by a typically lazy curatorial oversimplification) as a “Surrealist.” He was also frequently lumped in with the “avant-garde”—a label he disdained and viewed as more degradingly conservative than being called “historical.” In fact, when his wife, Lillian, once referred to him as an “avant-garde artist,” he retorted: “Don’t ever say that; I am not avant-garde, I am not before or after anyone. I am NOW!” In this capacity, he created a complex and varied oeuvre that defies categorization and still towers over art and architecture as a uniquely powerful inventory of multi-disciplinary

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innovation that, as one of its most important contributions, anticipated the environmental art movement of the 1970s and ’80s. All current historical documentation of the Kiesler legacy credits his influence on a half century of artists, architects and theater designers; plus, how he triggered movements, ferreted out the best talent of his time and enthusiastically promoted the “dangerous ideas” of others. According to Lillian Kiesler, he was one of the first to encourage Leo Castelli to show Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg and, during Marcel Duchamp’s early days in New York, the Dada pioneer stayed in Kiesler’s apartment for nearly a year. It is acknowledged that Duchamp began his last great work, Etant Donnés (now permanently on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art) during this period. In addi­ tion to serving as an oracle, mentor and entrepreneur of the art world, Kiesler somehow still found time to produce a prolific body of work and frequently appear as an obligatory high-status guest at seemingly every important New York cultural event. Since I was in a period of artistic flux in my work during the early 1960s, I remember more about the mental tortures of my own conceptual re-thinking than anecdotal moments with Kiesler. I vividly recall his advice—via an astute observation by Duchamp—that “to be truly creative in life, you have to clean off your desk at least three times.” In terms of my relationship to the New York art world at that time, it still remains a blur of fifteen-minute pop personalities, “me-generation” politics, annoyingly hackneyed disco music and a superficial social scene that left me feeling more like a tag-along bystander than an active participant. I had always been inspired (perhaps too idealistically) by the mythical courage that forged the revolutionary contributions of Cubism, Dadaism and Surrealism. I also envisioned the major artists of these movements as compulsively dedicated to seminal ideas, which were always characterized by epoch-defining discourse and hard-won aesthetic victories. By the 1960s, I saw this commitment begin to erode in favor of a philosophically flaccid and commerce-driven art world that gained an increasingly corrosive foothold … and subsequently deteriorated into the ubiquitous art expo arenas of today. Looking back, my discomfort was justified. In contrast to a frivolous backdrop, Frederick Kiesler’s presence in New York represented a stellar embodiment of early twentieth century artistic integrity and intellectual rigor.

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Aside from accompanying Lillian and Frederick to various New York exhibitions and parties in the early 1960s, my relationship with them was mostly quiet and personal. Since Lillian and I were both teaching in the Art Department of New York University and residing at Washington Square Village, Frederick preferred evening meetings at home as the most convenient venue for dialog. At the time, I was married to Gül Seden, an emerging television executive (R.A.I. TV) and master chef of the Turkish kitchen. After enjoying a few of her stellar culinary experiences, Frederick began to plan more and more of his “spontaneous visits” to ten minutes before dinnertime—to a point where Gül and I could set our weekly time clocks in anticipation of his guest appearances. These dinners, magnificently blending haute cuisine, philosophical discourse and a regular diet of the master’s prophetic proclamations, shaped the entire course of the next decade of my artistic development. Strangely, I was only invited to Kiesler’s Broadway studio a few of times, while engaged in our most intense period of dialog. During these abbreviated visits, he showed me models and drawings for the Endless House and several furniture pieces—yet only in a summary and curatorial

2   Shell Sculptures and Galaxies, exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery, New York 1961 [Photograph by Rudy Burckhardt]

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way. His greater enthusiasm was reserved for the Galaxy Sculptures he was exhibiting at Castelli Gallery.2  I found this somewhat confusing, since he had already advised me to distance myself from Constructivist influences and the traditional production of abstract art objects. But, such conflicting views confirmed my impression that Frederick’s critiques of the work of others were often based on what he perceived as conceptual or aesthetic deficiencies that had nothing to do with his personal commitments of the moment. Still, in his assessment of the architectonic features of my steel and concrete sculptures, he clairvoyantly recom­ mended that a quantum leap into architecture was my only hope for career salvation. In addition to Kiesler attracting the friendship of the leading art stars—Jackson Pollock, Bob Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Jim Rosenquist, Andy Warhol, Bob Indiana and many others—his good friends included the painter Gene Vass and his wife, Joan Vass (who later became a success­ ful fashion designer), the sculptor Tom Doyle, and his wife, the extra­ ordinarily gifted Eva Hesse. In each case, whether already famous or an emerging talent, artists seemed to draw highly personalized levels of inspiration from Kiesler’s work. For example, Rosenquist’s random assem­ blages of two-by-fours, neon and barbed wire, as well as the architectonic wood beam sculptures of Doyle, paid homage to the master’s Galaxy series. Kiesler’s structures, when first displayed at Philip Johnson’s Glass House in Connecticut—as well as at MoMA and the Guggenheim— influenced a rash of subsequent fusions of painting and sculpture. In the case of Eva Hesse, she seemed to share a profound melancholy with Kiesler … a sense of remorse that was perhaps linked to their mutual German and Austrian origins and the repellent association of these cul­ tures with Nazism. In Frederick’s later work, this conflict was manifested in a visceral and tormented juxtaposition of ragged shapes; reflect­ ing an aesthetic association with psychological distress, imbalance, entropy and de-materialization. Similarly—but with a cooler and more detached sensibility—Eva Hesse’s fusion of amorphous materiality and metamorphic imagery spoke eloquently of haunted memories, her early feminist struggle for art world identity and, in a sadly prophetic way, her untimely death from brain cancer in 1970. From the period of my friendship with Lillian and Frederick, I recall certain subjects of conversation, visits together in various locations

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and incidents demonstrating the Kiesler influence on both specific artists and the New York art scene in general. With regard to his impact on my own work, the memories that remain most vivid today are related to his integrative sensibility and grasp of the value of art as an absorptive act of inclusion; as opposed to an insular exercise in form and style. Among those recollections, the most important are related to my then-expanding appreciation of Frederick’s social, psychological and conceptual contributions to art in a broader context. As mentioned earlier, during the 1960s my assessment of the NYC cultural scene was diminished by a growing discomfort with various colleagues’ over-zealous invest­ ment in career building and their disproportionate attraction to some media-endorsed movement, hot social scene, influential gallery, or stylistic persuasion. Kiesler, while vigorously career-conscious, never commu­ nicated the notion of art business as one of his priorities. He invariably needed money for special projects, complained about the dearth of public patronage and lamented the lack of understanding of his work in curatorial circles; still, his core values were always based on “ideas first” … and his view that rewards would be nice, if they happened to come along later. The summer of 1965 was the most significant period of my rela­ tionship with Frederick and Lillian Kiesler. They invited my wife, Gül, our three-month old daughter, Suzan, and me to visit their small summer home in Springs, East Hampton for two weeks. In April, Frederick had traveled to Jerusalem to attend the inauguration of his greatest built work and the triumphant conclusion of a seven-year collaboration with architect Armand Bartos—the Shrine of the Book. While we talked about the museum during our vacation period, Frederick seemed resigned to the fact that this work was already complete and that his role, as always, was continuing to foresee the future. I sensed each day that his health was becoming more infirm; so, he especially valued the amusing distractions provided by my youthful family. His summer home contained various fragments of memorabilia; but, unlike his Manhattan apartment’s artfilled encrustations, the Spring’s interior seemed oddly under-furnished and (maybe intentionally) free of nostalgic paraphernalia that might distract from an atmosphere of visionary discourse. The focal topic of our summer discussion revolved around Kiesler’s manifestos of “Correalism.” He felt strongly that in the larger framework

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of art and design, his key contribution to progress could be summarized by this theory, and he knew that I was an exceptionally sympathetic audience for every hypothetical nuance he wanted to impart. His original proclamation of 1947—as reported by L’Architecture d’Aujoud’hui in 1949—proposed, Each element of a construction or a city, whether it is painting or sculpture, interior installation or technical equipment, is conceived not as the exclusive expression of a single function, but as a nucleus of possibilities which will be developed through coordination with other elements. The correlation can be based on physical conditions, on environmental conditions, or even on the very essence of the actual element.2 His centerpiece demonstration of this symbiotic set of relationships was the Endless House. Frederick saw the structure as mutable, flexible and evolutionary. While I understood his point of view and appreciated his advocacy of fluid movement in architecture (in opposition to the con­ straints of rigid geometry), I interpreted the actual models as meticu­lously crafted orchestrations of form … in point, as rather prescriptive scenarios for living space. His liberation from rect­angular traditions produced an organic alternative that seemed to impose an equivalent set of limi­ tations for inhabitants. Dwelling in an environ­ment of curved walls, undulat­ing floor planes and idiosyncratic nooks and crannies—especially from my perspective as a sculptor in the process of rejecting my own commitment to convoluted shape-making—seemed to be asking the home owner for a high level of athletic participation, as opposed to the leisurely diversions of a relaxed lifestyle. Among Kiesler’s justifications for organic form, his sources included the circular patterns of Neolithic planning, troglodyte habitats in Asia, the adobe houses of Mali, rock-cut dwellings in Cappadocia and the infinitely accommodating sanctuaries for the human body found in nature. For each of these examples, the paradigms were molded by climate, expedience, economics and cultural context; while the Endless House—at least physically—was in a head-on collision with the real estate pressures of the twentieth century cityscape and the car-culture patterns of suburbia. For this reason, it has always been my view that the con­ ceptual premises and environmental principles of the Endless House were its most enduring legacy. Unfortunately, as a consequence of Frederick’s

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idealistic rationales and sculptural liberties, the seductive qualities of his shape-making skills had the most influential impact on a great deal of digital-age architecture. From a mainstream perspective, the timing of his curvilinear forms was conveniently enabled by the global invasion of C.A.D. calculations, Sketch-up and photo-illustrative renderings—to a point where, over the past two decades, the style feature of choice for innu­ merable museums and public institutions has included some kind of mega-scale undulation. Additionally, in response to the inspirational im­ pact of buildings by Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid and Santiago Calatrava, the current international design scene includes an increasing proliferation of derivative spin-offs. All of the “high-art” aspirations notwithstanding, I have some reservations concerning this whole tendency. First on my list (and heeding the cautionary lessons of stylistic ubiquity), when original aesthetic ideas degenerate into fashion, it is time for a change. Secondly, too many of the shape-making preferences that characterize current architecture appear to be cribbed from the 1950s formal strategies of such sculptors as Henry Moore, Hans Arp and Max Bill. In this regard, it seems conceptually regressive in 2017 to depend on the (invisibly transmitted) tools of the cyber-revolution to generate densely opaque, heavily grounded and very old-fashioned sculptural volumes. Thirdly, while inflating the scale of Endless House-like curves can visually dramatize an urban/sub­ urban structure, the results are too often realized as giant art works, sitting on pedestals and surrounded by acres of concrete. These are spectator situations that, like conventional galleries, impose territorial points of iso­ lation for viewing. And finally, most material preferences for organic shapes in current architecture are among the least ecologically responsible; in particular, the use of aluminum and titanium for reasons of their toxic waste in the manufacturing process. This deficiency undermines green design principles in the actual choice of artistic media. Some environ­ mental advocates cite the durability of metallic surfaces as evidence of sustainability; but the increase in incidents of leakage, cracking, staining, reduced levels of insulation and the cost of manufacturing curved metal surfaces has raised a lot of warning flags over the past decade. In terms of an absorption of philosophical content from the Endless House, the twenty-first century ecological initiative has offered a more sympathetic model. The Kiesler advocacy of boundary-free and contextu­ ally integrative elements that embrace their surroundings is still, for

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me, the most relevant message of “Correalism” theory. The current expan­ sion of “biomimicry” in the building arts is a logical beneficiary of Frederick’s (as well as Frank Lloyd Wright’s) early prophecies. The activists in this movement study the interactive processes of nature, with the intention of understanding how they function and how the lessons of interdependency can contribute to a sustainable built environment. The biomimicry challenge is to identify those ingredients of ecological symbiosis that can be translated into human habitat. On the more persua­ sive side of this argument, the scientific community has assembled a rich abundance of information on precisely how ecosystems operate; but the impediment in equating these networks to architecture is the con­ tinuing persistence of a “man conquers nature” mentality and the univer­ sal commitment to fossil fuel as the primary source of energy. While nature is composed of vast mega-systems and is dependent on the seamless cooperation of millions of mini-systems, human civilization is over-committed to a handful of power grids. Architecture, even with the best intentions, is limited by a poverty of choices. There have been encouraging green initiatives in the new millennium—for example, research into alternative energy, the protection of existing environments, the reduction of toxic materials and the expansion of urban agriculture to name a few—but, on the negative side, too many of the biomimicry design solutions seem derived from the inimitable functions of beehives, ant hills or bird nests. In this respect, there is a quality of 1960s “new-age” naivety associated with the movement; including a preference for formal choices that end up just as sculpturally exotic as the most institu­ tionalized versions of contemporary organic architecture. Although Frederick never had an opportunity to experience the environmental art movement in the SoHo district of New York during the 1970s, I am confident he would have embraced the major contributors’ work and reveled in the wide-ranging absorption of his ideas into a new fusion of art and architecture. As a background introduction to this period, I experienced the special advantage of having lived in Italy during the 1960s; so, I counted a number of European participants in the “Radical Architecture” revolution as friends and colleagues. The main concen­ tration of environmental artists, from 1969 through 1985, lived and worked in the Greene, Broome, Mercer, Wooster and Spring Street areas of downtown Manhattan. This neighborhood was a unique combination of

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3   Vito Acconci: The City Inside Us, exhibition at the MAK – Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art, Vienna 1993 [Photograph by Gerald Zugmann; MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art, Vienna; © Gerald Zugmann / www.zugmann.com; courtesy of Maria Acconci / Acconci Studio]

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4   Allan Kaprow, The Yard, Martha Jackson Gallery, New York 1961 [Photograph by Ken Heyman; Allan Kaprow Papers, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; © Allan Kaprow Estate]

low-rent facilities, social interaction and aesthetic discourse that coalesced into many aspects of the Postmodern sensibility. The SoHo community included Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert Smithson, Mary Miss, Alice Aycock, Nancy Holt, Vito Acconci 3 , Dennis Oppenheim, Alan Sonfist, Juan Downey, Mierle Ukeles, Agnes Denes, Allan Kaprow 4 , Miralda and Dan Graham. The American and European architectural connections were comprised of Peter Cook, Dennis Crompton and Michael Webb of Archigram, Ugo La Pietra, Gianni Pettena, Ettore Sottsass, Franco Raggi, Michele de Lucchi, Gaetano Pesce, Adolfo Natalini and Cristiano Toraldo of Superstudio, Andrea Branzi, Alessandro Mendini, Jean Nouvel, Robert Venturi, Frank Gehry, Haus-Rucker, Bernard Tschumi, Emilio Ambasz, Peter Noever, Wolf Prix and Helmut Swiczinsky of Coop Himmelb(l)au, Thom Mayne and Michael Rotondi of Morphosis, Lapo Binazzi of UFO, and Chip Lord and Curtis Schreier of Ant Farm.

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While Kiesler’s theories were more frequently discussed among archi­ tects during the 1970s—and, as noted above, his Endless House inspired a variety of buildings expressed in organic form—there was also a sub­ liminal assimilation of his most insightful environmental messages. The incentive to discard “object thinking” in favor of “contextual thinking” changed the art world. Among his last predictions of 1964, Frederick declared: The traditional art object, be it a painting, a sculpture, a piece of architecture, is no longer seen as an isolated entity but must be consid­ered within the context of this expanding environment. The environment becomes equally as important as the object, if not more so, because the object breathes into the surrounding and also inhales the realities of the environment, no matter in what space, close or wide apart, open air or indoor. 3 In the process of sanctioning this objective, the Post-minimalist genera­ tion had begun to reject those institutional venues of art display (with their frames, pedestals, spotlights and rituals of commodity mer­ chandising) in favor of venturing into the public domain. To summarize this critique, Robert Smithson complained that, “Art Galleries and museums are graveyards above ground, congealed memories of the past that act as a pretext for reality.” Kiesler’s pioneer vision became, in the late ’60s, the stimulus for an explosion of cross-disciplinary meditations in theory, an incentive for artists to move their work to the streets and landscape, plus a liberating endorsement of new liaisons between art and architecture. During my 1970s dialogs with artists and architects—in particular, Gianni Pettena, Vito Acconci, Bob Smithson, Gordon Matta-Clark, Franco Raggi, Juan Downey, Chip Lord, Lapo Binazzi and the poet/ critic/Fluxus artist, Dick Higgins—the core of debate frequently centered on the definitions of art and architecture. In this context, some of the deliberations revolving around Kiesler’s ideas had to do with perceived conflicts between his philosophical intentions versus their translation into built form. His late-in-life variations on the Endless House and Galaxy Sculptures appeared to validate territorial isolation, abstract shape-making and a re-confirmation of conventional relationships between viewer and object; in fact, there seemed to be more evidence of separation than integration. But, in my view of Kiesler’s stature, his most resonant

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insight at the time and the most enduring contribution to the future was his holistic view of the art experience. During the period I knew him, there were three Fredericks in the New York cultural panorama—the requisite luminary at prestigious social events, the legendary guru of the avantgarde and the enigmatic prophet who attracted a lot of literary edification. These distinctly separate audiences included the Warhol-driven party circuit that was simply content to gravitate around his charismatic presence, the art star/curator/gallery scene that cherished an opportunity to rub elbows with a twentieth century culture hero and the academic/ scholarly faction who relished in seeing themselves as the only qualified elite that “really understood him.” It was, in the end, the environmental artists and radical architects who gained the most from Kiesler’s multidisciplinary perceptions and amplified his interpretation of borderless dimensions into a new level of visual thinking. Although Kiesler was not physically present for 1970s Post-minimalist dialog, his concept of aesthetic experience as a fusion of ideas from philosophy, psychology, biology, cosmology, sociology and politics became the essence of a literary and visual art rebellion against narrowly framed definitions. As the conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth explained in his semi­ nal essay of 1969 entitled “Art After Philosophy”, Being an artist now means to question the nature of art. If one is questioning the nature of painting, one cannot be questioning the nature of art. Painting is a kind of art. If an artist accepts painting, he is accepting (and limited by) the traditional baggage that goes with it.4 Applying this new sensibility to environmental art in an essay for Artforum of September 1968, Robert Smithson described his vision as “Sedimentation of the Mind.” 7  He wrote, One’s mind and the earth are in a constant state of erosion; mental rivers wear away abstract banks, brain waves undermine cliffs of thought, ideas decompose into stones of unknowing and crystal­ lizations break apart into deposits of gritty reason.5 Extending Kiesler’s open-ended pre­scriptions to the building arts, I observed in my 1987 book, entitled De‑Architecture 6 , that the language of architecture should now be more psycho­logical than formal, more cosmic than rational, more informational than obscure, more provisional than stable, more

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5   Robert Smithson, Partially Buried Shed, Kent 1970 [Estate of Robert Smithson / VAGA, New York / © Bildrecht, Wien, 2018]

6   James Wines, De-Architecture, book cover, 1987

indeterminate than resolved, more narrative than abstract … . Architecture of the future will convey a more meaningful message if, and only if, architects are able to first perceive it differently.6 This 1960s through early ’80s initiative to move conceptually beyond the object and embrace infinity was funda­mentally attributable to Kiesler’s disdain for conventional notions of functionalism as a “mysticism of hygiene,” plus his advocacy of art and architecture as a “nucleus of possibilities.” These expansive prospects had the revolutionary effect of breaking down hermetic constraints that had traditionally limited art interpretation in broader contexts. Applied to sculpture, it meant eliminating phy­ sical boundaries in favor of undefined edges. In painting, it meant aban­ doning the hand-crafted artifact for multi-media ephemerality. In theater, it meant trading in the proscenium stage for streetscape per­formance. In music, it meant exchanging orchestral composition for found sound assemblage. Collectively, the liberating provisions of “Correalism”— indeterminacy, interaction, heterogeneity, fluidity, mutability, intervention and transmutation—enabled substantive progress in re-defining art and

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design. As Vito Acconci, my co-participant in a frequent succession of “art versus architecture” symposia, used to grumble, “James, we seem to spend our whole lives defending artists to architects and architects to artists.” The premises for these combative misunderstandings were invari­ ably based on the disdainful view of mainstream architects that “artists are merely self-indulgent generators of irresponsible entertainment” and the equivalent view of artists that “architects are simply perpetrators of compromised aesthetic in deference to the expedient.” As an alternative to this perennial art-versus-design dispute, Kiesler’s vision offered a new threshold of conceptual fusion. From my perspective, and as I ventured into hybrid territories with my own work at SITE , I interpreted this absorp­ tive middle ground as “arch-art.” By being neither, I saw it as both. Since my main creative focus was on buildings and public spaces, this meant that all sources of content derived from context. Location, function, service, materiality, personal interaction and the psychology of situation became my raw material for art … in other words, the “subject matter.” When work­ ing on architectural projects, this viewpoint relieved me from the con­ ventions of “expressing function” as an inhibiting responsibility. In this sense, I treated “use” itself as a liberating source of ideas, rather than an obligatory determinant in the shaping of form. Frederick witnessed neither the beginning, nor the evolution, of my work in architecture and environmental art. During the last year of his life, I was still involved with abstract sculpture and I didn’t visibly translate his influence into my aesthetic transition until 1968, when I began to produce a series of “Landsite” models for environmentally oriented instal­ lations. These pieces in welded steel were intended as architectonic interventions for landscape, but they were still based on Constructivist traditions. Throughout the late summer and fall of 1965, I conversed more frequently with Lillian, because of Frederick’s increasingly frail health. Even on his deathbed, Lillian reported that he delivered explicit instructions for a celebratory and joyous funeral. Given his heroic sense of optimism and perverse sense of humor, the last thing Frederick wanted was a farewell ceremony full of weepy colleagues, memorial speeches and elegiac rituals. The final service was, in fact, a jubilant occasion. It was animated by Rauschenberg rolling an automobile tire down the center aisle and actively painting it near the altar. Virgil Thomson and E. E. Cummings delivered humor-filled eulogies and the

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Juilliard String Quartet played Schoenberg compositions … then followed by a post-funeral champagne party, with dancing until dawn. The poet, the artist, the architect and the scientist are the four cornerstones of this new-rising edifice.7, 7  — Frederick Kiesler, 1964

7   Notch Building for Best Products, Sacramento, CA 1975 [© James Wines, 2018; Courtesy of SITE]

1

2

3

Frederick Kiesler, “Second Manifesto of Correalism,” Art International 9, no. 2 (March 1965), 16. Frederick Kiesler, “Manifeste du Corréalisme,” L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, no. 2 (June 1949), 88. English translation in Frederick J. Kiesler. Endless Space, ed. Dieter Bogner and Peter Noever (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2001), exhibition catalog, 95. Kiesler, “Second Manifesto of Correalism,” 16.

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6 7

Joseph Kosuth, “Art After Philosophy,” in Art After Philosophy and After. Collected Writings, 1966–1990, ed. Gabriele Guercio (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1991), 18. Robert Smithson, “A Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects,” Artforum 7, no. 1 (September 1968), 82. James Wines, De-Architecture (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1987), 165. Kiesler, “Second Manifesto of Correalism,” 16.

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Endless Federico Valentina Sonzogni

This essay is based on Piero Dorazio’s gift of Frederick Kiesler’s letters from his personal papers to the archive of the Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation in 2001. The donation contains 28 letters from Kiesler between 1957 and 1964. Although Kiesler dictated to his secretary, he used to add some last-minute thoughts and greetings on the letter, before the envelope was sealed; thus Dorazio’s gift reveals personal thoughts that he would not dare dictate to his assistant. I. The meeting

When Piero Dorazio and Frederick Kiesler met in 1954,1 Dorazio was a tall, 27-year-old man with a rich résumé, including founding a group of abstract painters, a few magazines and holding well-received exhibitions in Italy. At that time, Kiesler was over 60 years old, a very diminutive but charismatic architect and artist; considered one of the key figures of the New York cultural scene. Well-known for his utopian and con­tro­ versial projects, he was very fond of art; especially abstract ten­dencies, which he had known since their very beginnings in Europe before he moved to the United States in 1926. By the time he met Dorazio, Kiesler had also become acquainted with a younger generation of artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.

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Dorazio had already painted small landscapes and still lifes in his school years. After the end of World War II, he enrolled in the Faculty of architecture in Rome, without finishing his studies at the faculty, but developing an interest for this subject. As the decade came to an end, Dorazio had already become a pro­ tagonist of Roman cultural life as it unfolded in all of its complexity. In the early 1950s, Rome was the stage of several political and artistic issues: while Renato Guttuso and his generation still referred to Russian political and social ideologies, Dorazio and his fellows of the Forma 1 group2 felt that those ideologies were a constriction to creativity. They were rather longing for Europe, mainly France and Germany in terms of the artistic avant-garde, to lay foundations for their abstract art. In the following years, Dorazio pursued his artistic career as well as his networking activity with other artists in order to connect with the Abstract movement’s interna­ tional actors. Finally, in June 1951 he traveled to the United States to parti­ cipate in a summer seminar at Harvard University in Cambridge. From this moment on, a large part of Dorazio’s private and professional life would be bound to the United States, where he was to teach from 1960 onwards at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. If there is a common trait between Kiesler and Dorazio that can be retraced through the meanders of history, it is their spirited intellectual attitude and their confrontational personality. This hypothesis is con­ firmed by Dorazio’s recollection of the first time he met Kiesler: “I had met Kiesler in New York in 1954 … We had an interesting conversation which was very provocative. I liked him immediately.” 3 As stated in a later inter­ view, it is likely that the two had met even before this at the 8th Street Club, founded by Philip Pavia to offer a permanent home to artistic debates that were spread throughout various different bars and restaurants around New York.4 The Club brought together artists from different fields and it was the place where European abstract tendencies and Surrealist legacy would then blur into Abstract Expressionism. Wherever it happened, this was clearly a meeting of two titans; the coming together of two generations. Just as Kiesler struggled to convey his groundbreaking ideas on architecture and design to the American museum establishment, Dorazio struggled his entire life against narrowminded museum bureaucrats and mercenary art critics, both using their writing skills to promote their theory and artistic positions.

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2   Piero Dorazio, La fantasia dell’arte nella vita moderna (cover), Polveroni e Quinti, Rome 1955 [© Bildrecht, Wien, 2018; digital image courtesy of Archivio Piero Dorazio, Milan] 1   Piero Dorazio, La fantasia dell’arte nella vita moderna (page montage with Kiesler’s and Franz Kline’s works juxtaposed), Polveroni e Quinti, Rome 1955 [© Bildrecht, Wien, 2018; digital image courtesy of Archivio Piero Dorazio, Milan]

II. Sculptural resonances: “transforming infinite space into a unity of experience”

Starting from 1955, the two artists initiated a correspondence and collabo­ ration on various ideas and projects, bridging Rome with New York and building up a friendship that is evident in their correspondence. In La fantasia dell’arte nella vita moderna 1 , 2 , Dorazio places a sculp­ ture done by Kiesler with the help of the French sculptor Étienne Martin for the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme in Paris in 1947, near High Street (1950)—a painting by Franz Kline—subtly stating a continuity between their works.5 During the 1960s, Kiesler planned to write a book of poems with the title Thirsty Paper 6 in which he aimed at bringing together

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his haiku style poems with works by “Kline, Miró, Klee, Kiesler, Grosz, Alcopley, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Chinese and Japanese brush work and lettering, Turkish script.” Thus, Dorazio’s intuition in La fantasia dell’arte nella vita moderna was confirmed in this later project by Kiesler. He did not fail to highlight the importance this sculpture had in Kiesler’s late work as a primary means of spatial investigation, which he used to test shapes that he would apply in other fields of activities such as set design, architecture and fine arts. Kiesler’s series of Galaxial paintings have a rare and fine sculptural quality: canvases, in fact, become actual sculptural elements carefully placed in space, not to mention the calligraphic quality of the brushstroke that recalls Kline’s influence. On the other hand, Dorazio’s debut on the American art scene in 1954 was indeed a sculptural one. His exhibition at Rose Fried Gallery inclu­ded numerous drawings and paintings and 20 reliefs that added another physical dimension to the surface of the canvas. Conceived to be hung like canvasses, these works carried with them a taste of the bassorilievi of classical tradition, but also provided a peek into a future genre of sculpture, blurring the boundaries between disciplines and questioning the bi-dimensional space, as Kiesler was to do with his own Galaxies.7 In the exhibition brochure, Dorazio describes his approach to sculpture as follows: These reliefs are essential compositions of line, color and movement in very simple forms directly applied on a surface. Such elements are varied in their plastic values by the projection of natural or arti­ ficial light. The results are a new imagery and a different experience of space, which is suggested by real elements projected from exterior planes onto that of the picture. Here the relationship of forms and colors is not only perceived in a frontal view, but also as if the spec­ tator were above, under, or facing the image at once. 8 “Transforming infinite space into a unity of experience” and “movement, composition and form relations, which are in no sense physical, but rather fantastic and psychological,” are words written by Dorazio; words that Kiesler could have used to describe his own research. On March 23, 1961 Dorazio and Kiesler finally formalized their ongoing exchange on sculpture in a conversation with Lillian Olinsey (who would later become Kiesler’s second wife). Here Dorazio shows a deep understanding of Kiesler’s artistic intentions, especially the will to involve the observer in

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the life of the artwork after it detaches from the artist, just as in Kiesler’s Vessel of Fire. A work of art must be an object that, once made, belongs to every­body … The object becomes an objective. When someone looks at a painting in a museum, … he looks at the work of art on the wall and that’s all, and all he can learn is right there. The rest is up to him.9 Dorazio was fascinated by the fact that Kiesler’s sculpture Vessel of Fire, installed in Kiesler’s penthouse on 56 Seventh Avenue, had put him into “another state of awareness” when he entered the room and that the world of experience is not limited to what one knows. This was also to become one of the crucial aspects of Dorazio’s artistic research. In a text from 1966 he writes: Color has a natural autonomy. It acts on the observer through an optical-psychic mechanism and can arouse in him—besides measur­ able sensations—even moods, attitudes and awareness. It has a well-known function as a signal or symbol. I do not try to educate the spectator on the function of color, but rather to complete my own education about its possibilities.10 Dorazio cannot but appreciate the fact that Kiesler’s sculpture is to be seen and perceived in a temporal and spatial unfold, in a sequence that he defines “now-past, post-present and pre-future”11, expressing his own and Kiesler’s interest in the perceptive experience parceled in conceptual categories, and yet not discernible in single events. “Art today should … represent the quality of life, not the quality of form,” states Dorazio in conclusion.12 III. The “affaire Zevi”

In 1957 Kiesler visited Dorazio and Virginia Dortch in Rome, and through them he became acquainted with the Italian cultural scene and its protagonists. Thanks to them, Kiesler met Toti Scialoja, Antonio Corpora, and Salvatore Scarpitta, who was to become a close friend later in New York. Kiesler dined with the Roman artistic community and with collectors, among which included Giorgio Franchetti Jr., Cy Twombly and Afro13 and he was guided around in Rome by Dortch and her sister King, enjoying “la dolce vita.”14 In a letter just before Christmas 1957, Dorazio announced to Kiesler that the Italian architect and critic Bruno Zevi had written “a silly article about you.”15 This letter should indeed be seen in the context

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of the 1960s artistic debate in which both Kiesler and Dorazio were educated. In fact, they both intended artistic polemic and debate to be a founding element of their artistic and professional life, and here Dorazio was giving Kiesler a chance to respond adequately and to make his work known in Italy. The casus belli was an article published by Bruno Zevi in L’Espresso, a weekly magazine in which Zevi had a column on architecture. In this article titled “La Bauhaus rinnegata. Scandalo a New York”16 (The dis­ avowed Bauhaus. Scandal in New York), Zevi accused Kiesler of having repudiated the Bauhaus in the first lines of a text that he wrote to present his recently inaugurated World House Galleries to the public. In one of his provocative statements, Kiesler in fact affirmed that the Bauhaus and De Stijl were dead. Zevi stated in response that the idea of a con­ tinuous space was already present in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, thus dimin­ishing the originality of Kiesler’s design and architectural theory in the American modern tradition. Zevi confined Kiesler’s experiments to the field of “taste”: “More than overcoming De Stijl issue, we should be dealing with a return to expressionism … . Kiesler’s research … must therefore be perceived as a variation of a decadent neo-decorativism, a manierist interpretation of the organic movement.”17 On January 23, 1958 Kiesler wrote to Dorazio to inform him that he had responded to Zevi’s criticism, enclosing a carbon copy of the letter. Kiesler was willing to remain “very factual”18 with regard to Zevi’s criticism, attributing his attack to a lack of information on Zevi’s end, due to the fact that he had left Europe nearly 30 years before. Kiesler restated his esteem of the Bauhaus group and his criticism of their imitators. He then wrote about his concepts of “Design in Continuity” and of the “Endless” as an ongoing reflection of the last 30 years. Finally, he defended his term “continuous tension” that he stated to have used for the first time in 1934 and to have applied in subsequent projects such as his design for Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery. At this point Dorazio, with the contribution of his wife, was already acting as a mediator between the two; Zevi in fact wrote to Kiesler a few days later on February 6, 1958: Dear Mr. Kiesler, Your letter was ready to go to the press, when I received a call from Mrs. Dorazio, stating that you did not wish it to be published. Following your desire, I have taken the letter back.

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3   Piero Dorazio and Frederick Kiesler at Caffè Rosati, Rome 1957 [Photograph by Virginia Dortch, © Bildrecht, Wien, 2018]

I believe, however, that the letter should be published … I believe that in Italy your research is not known as well as it deserves, and I am ready to fill this gap publishing an article of yours, or this letter, with all the illustrations.19 A later correspondence between Kiesler and Zevi indicates that the conflict was resolved and that the two had occasion to meet in person in Rome.20 Zevi’s intuition guided him to acknowledge Kiesler’s eccentric position in the panorama of international post-war architecture and Dorazio’s role might have been instrumental in this. IV. Endless Federico

In a photo by Dortch, both Dorazio and Kiesler seem dominated by the architecture of one of the two twin churches in Piazza del Popolo in Rome, while sitting at Caffè Rosati, a hangout for Roman artists.21, 3  In a letter to Dorazio, Kiesler writes: “Dear Dorazio, I am designing a reclining barber

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4   Piero Dorazio and Frederick Kiesler at the Roman settlement amphitheater in Ostia, 1957 [Photograph by Virginia Dortch, © Bildrecht, Wien, 2018]

chair for Café Rossati [sic] so you don’t have to tire yourself out by coming and going, but recline and relax like Madame Recamier,” 22 confirming that quite a lot of artistic life took place there. In another picture they are sitting in the amphitheater of Ostia Antica, again in a picture that frames an architectural surrounding rather than the two subjects; small actors on the stage of ancient architecture.23, 4  Dorazio, who studied at the University of Rome in the Faculty of Architecture without completing his studies, was irremediably struck by the Endless House. He frequently praised Kiesler’s qualities in drawings24: “What Kiesler really does is design prototypes of new lifevisions through architecture,” he states in the second part of their conversation on sculpture.25 In Kiesler’s draftsmanship Dorazio recog­ nized a classic education coupled with an ability to envision the invisible.26 That same capacity to envision is praised by Dorazio in the Endless House, “one of the most genial works produced by surrealist and abstract visual culture from the thirties to the fifties.” 27 A product of both abstract and surrealist culture, Dorazio therefore framed the Endless House within the artistic avant-garde of the twentieth century: Kiesler’s vision challenges the traditional concept that architecture is subject to gravitational forces and opposes them with orthogonal

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structures, columns, and architrave. It is a vision that derives from his original way of conceiving space following that of the cosmos; continuous, curved, multidimensional, and constantly moving like the flow of life, where every phenomenon, every object, is related to other phenomena and other objects.28 When Dorazio and Kiesler met, the latter was still working hard to see his concept of continuous tension in architecture and his iconic Endless House building acknowledged and appreciated in the U.S. In 1958, when their correspondence was very intense, Kiesler wrote a rather long letter to Dorazio to inform him that he wouldn’t be able to join the art dealer Leo Castelli and his wife on a trip to Italy where they would also reunite with their friend Dorazio. In this letter, which had a very personal tone, Kiesler shared with Dorazio his life-long obsession with the project of the Endless House and his devotion to his profession. He wrote to Dorazio, “how strange that the artist should be the very corporeality of a compulsion, while he imagines himself to be the very symbol of freedom.” 29 In February 1958, Kiesler received 12,000 dollars from the R. H. Gottesman Foundation to produce a model and preliminary plans of the Endless House which was supposed to be built in the garden of the MoMA in New York.30 From 1959 to 1960 the Endless House was largely published in inter­ national magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, and started to have a large circulation even outside the art world. Perhaps stimulated by his Italian trip of 1959, profusely described in Inside the Endless House, he envisioned Italy as the ideal setting for his project, so he wrote a few letters to Dorazio and Zevi in which he sought support and assistance to build the house in Italy, “perhaps for the Triennale in Milan, but of course, I would just love to see it in Rome—simply as a natural transforma­tion of an old Mediterranean building into a new one.” 31 On May 23, 1961, Kiesler, Dorazio and Lillian talked about the Endless House in their meeting recorded in the book Inside the Endless House. Dorazio defined the Endless House as “an encyclopaedia britannica of art” 32 praising its complexity and completeness at once, but no progress was made with regards to its construction. On August 1, 1963 Kiesler wrote to Dorazio to find out who was on the Board of the Venice Biennale in order to try and build the Endless House there with money coming from the U.S.33 Dorazio answered just a few days

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later, this time from his new studio near Villa Borghese—most probably the one at Valle Giulia: For the Venice Biennale … write immediately to Apollonio, Scarpa and Santomaso. The first two are still deeply connected with the shaping of future program. Write also to Peggy Guggenheim … she is rather influential in Venice anyhow.34 Well before planning to build the Endless House at the Venice Biennale, Dorazio wrote to Kiesler in a very personal note: … I should have written you before and mentioned something I still have in mind about your endless house (home) … She [Virginia] likes it too, so much so that whenever we have enough money, we shall ask you to let us build it here on the Mediterranean sea. A woman has that kind of sensibility and the house is a symbol to her; even more so an aim in her life. Now, as any other girl dreams of a house where she might belong in the future, Virginia dreams of your endless house and she talks like she is going to live in it some­day; and I hope it is so.35 In September, the development of the Endless House project suddenly had to stop, as is revealed by Kiesler to Dorazio in a letter of October 11, 1963: his first wife Stefi had died. On a dictated typescript he added in his hand­ writing: “The impact of Stefi’s illness and death will dominate me to the end of my life.” 36 In the last couple of years of his life, Kiesler devoted himself to the writing and editing of his book Inside the Endless House, where many pages were dedicated to a reflection on the Endless House, now finally solely a theoretical project. In 2001, Dorazio still had a very precise vision of the Endless House and of its importance as a source of inspiration for the generations to come: [The Endless House] belongs more to the twenty-first century. The Endless House is the conclusion of the twentieth century and a state­ ment for the coming century. With the Endless House he went back to a primitive idea of life based on water and fire. He was thinking of a society which could go back to real values, but nowadays we are pushed in the opposite direction by globalization and by the genetic transformation to nature. The Endless House eventually could be a seed for a new vision of our future.37

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  5  Piero Dorazio, Cercando la Magliana, oil on canvas, 1964 [Private Collection; digital image courtesy of Archivio Piero Dorazio, Milan; photograph by Davide Sebastian; Piero Dorazio © Bildrecht, Wien, 2018, © Eredi Dorazio, 2019]

6   Piero Dorazio, Endless Federico I (Per Federico Kiesler), oil on canvas, 1965 [Collezione Beatrice Monti della Casa, Donnini; digital image courtesy of Archivio Piero Dorazio, Milan; Piero Dorazio © Bildrecht, Wien, 2018, © Eredi Dorazio, 2019]

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Coda

On December 27, 1965, Kiesler died in New York, and three days later Dorazio sent a condolence telegram to Lillian. He then wrote at length on January 29, 1966: we are at loss [sic] after Kiesler death. I cannot quite believe it and will not be convinced untill [sic] I see New York without him, for me something unconceivable [sic] … I feel also that we have lost more than a friend, an example in mankind, and a creative mind and a great artist … An artist never dies because an artist is his work more than his life. In the same letter, Dorazio announced to Lillian that he had just started on a painting entitled Endless Frederick 38, 5 , 6  that he intended to exhi­bit at the XXXIII Biennale in 1966 (and he would indeed do so), where he also wanted to initiate a campaign to build the Endless House. This painting, now in an important Italian private collection, is based on the theme of the curved line that can either allude to the infinity of a repeat­able module or combine in knots to form oval shapes. Both interpretations are relevant in Kiesler’s imagery; first and foremost in the eggshell of the Endless House. As described by Dorazio in a conver­ sation with Adachiara Zevi: In Endless Federico there is the possibility to see the colors on different planes; the waves move both in parallel to the surface and orthogonal to it, from the inside to the outside. The tension of the painting is therefore due to the composition, both in relation to the surface plane and to the minimal thickness of the painting thanks to the color contrasts, the light and the brushstroke.39 This painting gave birth to a limited series of paintings based on this module that Dorazio abandoned after circa 20 pieces.40 Dorazio probably felt that the oval shape related to his reflection on Kiesler’s conception of the space rather than to his own research, although his friend’s idea of the endless space continued to resound in his art in unpredictable and unexpected ways.

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Endless Federico

Thanks to the inscrutable paths that led me to come across their work, this essay is dedicated to the art of Frederick Kiesler and Piero Dorazio.

Although they likely met in 1952, as is recorded in an interview with Eva-Christina Kraus and Valentina Sonzogni on April 11, 2001. Transcriptions and recordings are preserved at the Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation in Vienna (ÖLFKS). From this mention on, this interview will be referred to as: Dorazio, interview. 2 The group Forma 1, founded in 1947 by Piero Dorazio together with Carla Accardi, Ugo Attardi, Pietro Consagra, Mino Guerrini, Achille Perilli, Antonio Sanfilippo and Giulio Turcato placed itself at the center of the Italian artistic scene. 3 Frederick Kiesler, Inside the Endless House. Art, People and Architecture: A Journal (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966), 408. 4 Natalie Edgar, ed., Club Without Walls. Selections from the Journal of Philip Pavia (New York: Midmarch Press, 2007). 5 Piero Dorazio, La fantasia dell’arte nella vita moderna (Rome: Polveroni e Quinti, 1955). The artist also designed the book cover and layout. 6 I have analyzed this topic in “The Written-Word in the World of Frederick J. Kiesler,” 2004, an unpublished text preserved at the ÖFLKS. The Kiesler Archive also holds Kiesler’s “Thirsty Paper” in several versions; the most extensive is TXT 3023/0. 7 In 1955, in fact, Kiesler wrote to Dorazio that he would like to organize a show of his Galaxies in Italy and Switzerland. Unfortunately this did not happen. Frederick Kiesler, letter to Piero Dorazio (manuscript), January 8, 1955, ÖLFKS, LET 1048/0, Gift of Piero Dorazio. 8 From the exhibition brochure of Cartographies by Piero Dorazio, Rose Fried Gallery, April 26–May 22, Archivio Piero Dorazio, Milan. In 1957, after Kiesler’s suggestion, Dorazio worked on a series of bronze reliefs as stated in a letter to Kiesler (manuscript), October 14, 1957, ÖLFKS, LET 1050/0. 9 Kiesler, Inside the Endless House, 417. 10 Piero Dorazio, ed. Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco (Rome: Officina Edizioni, 1966), IX. (Translated from Italian; this and all following Italian quotes were translated by the author.) 11 Kiesler, Inside the Endless House, 407. 12 Ibid., 407. 13 Ibid., 118. 14 See letters preserved at ÖFLKS, especially those from December 1957. 15 Dorazio, letter to Kiesler (manuscript), December 26, 1957, ÖLFKS, LET 1020/0. 16 L’Espresso (December 22, 1957), 16. 17 Ibid. (Translation from Italian.) 18 Kiesler, letter to Dorazio (typescript), February 10, 1958, ÖLFKS, LET 1055/0, Gift of Piero Dorazio. 19 Zevi, letter to Kiesler (typescript), February 6, 1958, ÖLFKS, LET 2186/0.

327 20 Cf. Kiesler, letters to Zevi (all carbon copy), April 9, 1958, ÖFLKS, LET 2188/0; October 28, 1959, ÖFLKS, LET 2192/0; May 25, 1960, ÖFLKS, LET 2194/0; August 24, 1964, ÖLFKS, LET 2197/0. 21 In an undated letter to Kiesler [April 8], Virginia Dortch writes: “A friend of mine is bringing me a new camera from Germany this week, and I hope she arrives before you do as I would love to take a photo of you in the Pantheon.” Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Lillian and Frederick Kiesler Papers, bulk 1958–2000. 22 Kiesler, letter to Dorazio, November 9, 1959, ÖLFKS, LET 1075/0, Gift of Piero Dorazio. 23 These photographs, taken by Dortch who was interested in photography and who put together important books acting as a witness of the inter­ national artistic postwar scene, are not casual but obviously reflect the information and suggestions she shared with Dorazio and Kiesler at that time. 24 “Un altro artista completo è Kiesler, che si considerava architetto e scultore (i suoi disegni sono di un interesse artistico eccezionale, anche se poco noti).” Piero Dorazio, “Gli architetti disegnano l’arte,” Casabella XL, no. 412 (April 1976), republished in Rigando dritto. Piero Dorazio scritti 1945–2004, ed. Massimo Mattioli, (Cologno Monzese: Silvia Editrice, 2005), 311. In a letter to Kiesler, Dorazio writes: “I have been drawing a lot too and I believe that drawing is fundamental (at least for my type of nature, to let the interior shape up and come to the surface through the fingers).” Dorazio, letter to Kiesler (manuscript), May 31, 1959, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Lillian and Frederick Kiesler Papers, bulk 1958–2000. 25 Kiesler, Inside the Endless House, 413. 26 “I think that talking to Kiesler and seeing Kiesler drawing was inspiring: he was letting his hand guide his mind tracing an image … Kiesler had a classical education. He was aware of philosophy, history … Kiesler had an element which most architects do not have and this is the feeling for poetry.” Dorazio, interview. 27 Mattioli, Rigando dritto, 311. (Translated from Italian.) 28 Piero Dorazio, “La casa senza fine di Frederick Kiesler,” Il Tempo, 1 maggio 1996, republished in: Mattioli, Rigando dritto, 437. (Translated from Italian.) 29 Kiesler, letter to Dorazio (typescript), July 3, 1958, ÖLFKS, LET 1064/0, Gift of Piero Dorazio. 30 For details of the Endless House’s chronology see Valentina Sonzogni, “Endless House. A Chronology,” in Friedrich Kiesler: Endless House 1947–1961 (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2003), exhibition catalog, 103–117. 31 Kiesler, letter to Zevi (carbon copy), August 17, 1959, ÖLFKS, LET 2191/0. 32 Kiesler, Inside the Endless House, 412. 33 “Could you be kind enough to tell me who is in the higher board of the Venice Biennale? These

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[Apollonio, Santomaso and Scarpa] were the three who were interested in building the model of the Endless House in Venice—the money to be found in the US.” Kiesler, letter to Dorazio (typescript), August 1, 1963, ÖLFKS, LET 1089/0, Gift of Piero Dorazio. Dorazio, letter to Kiesler (manuscript), August 19, 1963, ÖLFKS, LET 1030/0. Dorazio, letter to Kiesler (manuscript), November 22, 1959, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Lillian and Frederick Kiesler Papers, bulk 1958–2000. Kiesler, letter to Dorazio (typescript with handwritten notes), October 1, 1963, ÖFLKS, LET 1090/0, Gift of Piero Dorazio. Dorazio, interview. The painting is actually titled Endless Federico I (per Federico Kiesler). Cf. Dorazio, ed. Marisa Volpi Orlandini (Venice: Alfieri Edizioni d’Arte, 1977), catalog number 845 and related files at Archivio Piero Dorazio, Milan. Adachiara Zevi, “Conversazione con Dorazio,” in Dorazio (Ravenna: Essegi, 1985), 63. (Translated from Italian.) There are a few published on catalog from Dorazio, ed. Orlandini, 1977, and their catalog numbers are in parenthesis: Drole d’ame, 1966 (880); Endless Federico II, 1966 (881); Tira e molla, 1966 (882); La lingua franca, 1967 (920); Endless I, 1967 (921); Litania, 1968 (1053); Kebrabrasa, 1968 (1054); Ambaradam, 1968 (1055); Come mi pare, 1968 (1056); Gruenewellen, 1968 (1057); Rotta, 1968 (1058); Iosa I, 1968 (1064); Iosa III, 1968 (1066); Ideal I, 1968 (1067); Ideal II, 1968 (1068); Fabula rasa, 1968 (1068); Vistoso, 1968 (1070).

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Narratives of National Rebirth in the Shrine of the Book Elana Shapira

Events and memory of events are continually transformed by the present to procreate the future. This is the correalism of nature, and it is a pluralistic genesis.1 “Next Year in Jerusalem”

In his design for the architectural structure Shrine of the Book 1 , architect Frederick Kiesler made a visual allusion to the religious ritual of “Tahara” (purification) practiced on the eve of the Yom Kippur holiday. Also known as the “Day of Atonement,” Yom Kippur is a day of reconciliation between people and between individuals and God.2 Kiesler’s symbolic gesture towards this purification and reconciliation is seen both in the design’s use of water and in the stairs reaching to the entrance of the Shrine located on a lower plaza, emulating the steps leading to a Mikveh.3 It may be further said that the architectural structure is also—in its very presence and location in Jerusalem—an affirmation of a sentiment attached to the holy day, especially as it is celebrated in the Jewish diaspora. At the conclusion of the Yom Kippur service, the words “Next

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Year in Jerusalem” are recited. These words express the hope that the Temple service in Jerusalem will be restored and that Jews will gather there to serve God. For many secular Jews in the Diaspora of the early twentieth century, the return to Jerusalem was a romantic but farfetched wish. Zionism received its name from the religious tradition in which Jerusalem is identified as Zion; yet it was an idea, a text, a longing: Jerusalem always existed as an abstract entity out of reach, as a subject of yearning, of essential distance. The possibility of reaching Jerusalem, of concretizing the idea in an actual tangible territory, presented itself as an inner contradiction.4 For those engaged in the Zionist building project of the Yishuv in Palestine during the British Mandate and, after 1948, during the formation of the Israeli state, the question of “return” to Jerusalem became subordinated to the concerns of Tel Aviv and Haifa, the centers of economic and cultural happening. Israeli architectural historian Alona Nitzan-Shiftan points out how Israeli political and cultural leaders were ambivalent regarding the heritage of Jerusalem, quoting defense minister Moshe Dayan who during the 1967 war stood on Mount Scopus and, gazing at the Old City, asked: “What do we need all this Vatican for?” 5 Simultaneous to the early stages of the Jewish state, and easily brought into the discourse of historical longing and religious sentiment in relation to Jerusalem, would be the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in early 1947. In a cave not far from Khirbat Qumran, about 40 kilometers from East Jerusalem and close to the shores of the Dead Sea, Bedouins found a trove of scrolls that preceded the oldest known biblical texts by about 1000 years. Most of the texts were written in Hebrew (some in Aramaic and a few in Greek) by members of a Jewish settlement in the Hellenistic period, during the time of the late Second Temple in Jerusalem. In the post-Independence war of 1948, the Old City, which included the Jewish quarter and the remaining wall of the Second Temple (the Western Wall), stayed in Jordanian hands, which imbued a certain urgency to the sense of yearning that had long been attached to the idea of Jerusalem. Kiesler’s Shrine of the Book (1957–1965), built when Jerusalem was divided—ruled in the East by Jordan and in the West by Israel—

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1   Frederick Kiesler and Armand Bartos, Shrine of the Book, external view looking at dome and basalt wall, Jerusalem 1965 [Photograph by Alfred Bernheim, © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem]

aimed to bridge the inner contradiction of Jerusalem as a “mythological” place of longing and a “real” place of political dispute, a two-thousand year old religious center “foreign” to the modern state-oriented society. An Emergent Politics of Longing

Kiesler’s Shrine was meant as a monumental tribute to Jerusalem, with a central message of “longing” projected onto it, but what political and cultural interests was he paraphrasing here? He was eager to demonstrate his authorship within the project, designing his Shrine of the Book (so named by Education Minister, Ben Zion Dinur)6 in a manner that would engage with the esoteric aspects of the scrolls. Including him­ self among a certain creative collective of Jewish designers, Kiesler referenced numerology in relation to the creative process.7 He refers to specific numbers in his calculation of historical dates/numbers associated with Jewish persecution, which proceed from the date of the Jewish rebellion against the Romans to the estimated date of completion of the Shrine:

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antidote to numerologic 66 C.E. A.D. 70 C.E. A.D. 73 C.E. A.D, 135 C.E. A.D. 1881 past the present 1942 C.E. A.D. 1943 C.E. A.D. 1944 C.E. A.D. 1945 C.E. A.D. 1965 C.E. A.D. if mysticism would not be the halo of reality we could discount the interpretation of the passing time numeral 1881 made up of 2 18’s the equivalent in Hebrew of “Hai” implying LIFE 1,000,000 butchered, crucifixed 500,000 put to the sword 6,000,000 gassed, asphyxiated, smothered 7,500,000 killed, nipped in the bud But the spirit remains indestructible. It is now 1965, ’67, ’68 … ad infinitum-carnivorous, Man of any blood and color choose between greed and creed! I have. And the crest of life blossoms continuously the gush of white carnations.8

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Kiesler identified those who had escaped persecution and were parti­ cipating literally and symbolically in “rebuilding Jerusalem” with life as representing the “forces of light,” as against the enemy’s “forces of darkness.” 9 In this manner, the Jewish text Kiesler grafted onto the Shrine of the Book was based on the ancient apocalyptic text: The whole Shrine is based on opposites: the open and the closed, light and dark, curved and straight. But the contrasts are so calculated, and so coordinated, that they suddenly become natural.10 Army general and archeologist Yigael Yadin, who organized the finance of the purchase of the scrolls, helped formulate the ideology that the Shrine’s contrast “was to symbolically correlate with the literary content of one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, that of the apocalyptic text on the war between the sons of light and sons of darkness.” 11 Significantly, two of the scrolls were purchased by Yadin’s father, archeologist Eliezer Sukenik, on the day the UN declared Israel’s independence. Four of the scrolls were bought by Metropolitan Athanasius Yeshue Samuel (Mar Samuel), among which the Isaiah scroll was perhaps the most famous. Samuel smuggled the scrolls to the U.S., and from 1947 to 1951 they were displayed in different cities.12 The exhibits emphasized the scrolls’ Christian or proto-Christian connections and contributed to popularizing the idea of Judeo-Christian heritage in the U.S. In June 1954, Samuel published an ad in the Wall Street Journal advertising the sale of the four scrolls. Yadin succeeded in obtaining the finances for the purchase with the help of the Hungarian-born American Jewish philanthropist David Samuel Gottesman, a pulp-paper merchant. In 1955, Israel’s second Prime-Minister, Moshe Sharett, announced that the four scrolls were in Israel and Edmund Wilson published a book on the discovery that became a best-seller in the United States.13 “The Scrolls raised the question of whether Jesus was a member of the Jewish apoc­alyptic Essene sect. Wilson argued that the scrolls proved the continuity between Judaism and Christianity.”14 The popularity of Wilson’s con­jecture and the controversy about the scrolls’ meaning reflected “a cultural fascination with religious subjects and emphasized the idea of

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a general Judeo-Christian heritage.”15 The message of a shared JudeoChristian heritage would become a second central message grafted onto Kiesler’s design. Rephrasing the rhetoric of “Next Year in Jerusalem”

Following the first exhibit of the scrolls in a small overcrowded room during a Jewish Studies symposium in Givat Ram in July 1957, a new commission was erected to collect money for financing further exhibitions. The Gottesman family, an important American Jewish family engaging in philanthropy and art collection, agreed to finance the exhibition gallery and the commission was granted to Armand Bartos (Celeste Ruth Gottesman’s husband, i.e. Samuel Gottesman’s son-in law) and his partner Kiesler. Kiesler first designed the Shrine of the Book for the National Library as a hall crowned with a dome, but this proposal provoked opposi­ tion since it did not conform to the Cubist-style building influenced by Le Corbusier, and so his design was “exiled.” Finally, on the fourth and the last relocation, an independent white-domed building beside a black wall was decided upon and realized within the complex of the Israel Museum on the hill between the Hebrew University campus and the Monastery of the Cross.16 Kiesler saw his work as being a contrast to the “modernist, Bauhaus-styled Arab Village,” as he described Al Mansfeld’s design of the Israel Museum buildings.17 For Kiesler, the Shrine of the Book would be a reference to the Jews (the people of the book). Its “closed” hybrid match of architecture and environmental sculpture was more in­su­ lar than the surrounding structure. The upper part of the dome is seen above ground, while the exhibition area is below ground (simulating the idea of entering a cave).18 It was also meant to contrast the “objective” rationale of the museum building, standing in as a kind of moder­n­ ized synagogue and, furthermore, as a memorial to Jewish victims across time, from their expulsion from Jerusalem till “the return” to Israel. At the same time, Kiesler subverted the most recognized and contentious symbols of the “Old City”: the golden Dome of the Rock (which he echoes in his smaller, white dome covered with thousands of small ceramic tiles19 and the large stone structure of the Wailing Wall (trans­lated into a black basalt wall). In subverting the images/structures that most represented Jews’ historical longing for a return to Jerusalem, Kiesler rephrased the rhetoric of “Next Year in Jerusalem.” Kiesler’s avant-garde

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design for the Shrine of the Book represented the “Israeli correalism,” meaning the co-related realities of threats of destruction and demonstra­ tions of survival; of thousands of years of longing for Jerusalem and of devastating losses such as that of the old city during the Independence war. Furthermore, Kiesler’s work represented the co-realities of Israel as a nation/place of two cultural languages, that of Near East antiquity but also of Western urban projects such as the university/modern art museum. The U.S. was emerging as the leader of the Western world postWWII and was enjoying post-war prosperity, and despite the Israeli economy’s struggles during that same time, Israel was a state looking to the future and aligning itself with an American cultural revitalization. Kiesler and Ben Gurion: Biblical Imagination and the Myth of “Rebirth”

The museum collections are manifold: the Shrine of the Book houses the Dead Sea Scrolls and other religious manuscripts from the beginning of our era, together with some personal belongings of the original owners of the scrolls. These manuscripts represent a public attraction as great as that of the ‘Night Watch’ in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, or the ‘Mona Lisa’ in the Louvre.20 In the context of earlier exhibition space designs, Kiesler suggested that a successful designer is measured through making “the pictures and sculpture look as good as they are supposed to, or even better.” 21 The idea that design serves to market an artwork, to grant it the requested “aura,” was even more challenging in his design of the Shrine of the Book. Kiesler was aware that he had to guide the relationship between the viewer and the scrolls, realizing that visitors from outside Israel as well as those from within Israel would have difficulties reading the Hebrew and Aramaic of the scrolls. In June 1962, when the Jerusalemite author, playwright, radio anchor and journalist Yehuda Haezrachi described viewing the con­ struction of the future Shrine of the Book, he remarked that the looks of the new building would cause a debate. “Those who support simplicity, the ‘straight line’ and the eternal modesty will accuse the Shrine of the Book of presumption and artificial extravagance. The various ‘Romanticists’ will praise its stylistic uniqueness which fits its content. Both sides would not be able to ignore the exceptional, from its mere daring appearance.” 22 Haezrachi further noted that the building was clearly functional, i.e. the builders calculated exactly the size of the halls, corridors, the

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2   Boris Chaliapin, Portrait of David Ben-Gurion, 1956, tempera, pencil and ink on board [National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Time Magazine; © Chris Murphy]

arrange­ment of the visitors’ entrance and exit, the placement of the gates, doors, and windows, the acoustical arrangement (especially in the dome hall), and the safety of the bunker which would house the scrolls in times of emergency, etc. And yet, all these considerations were subjected to the guiding idea—to serve as a memorial—and became an expression of this: from this perspective we can view the ‘Shrine of the Book’ not as a building but as a memorial site. We are looking at a large sculpture, abstract in its form, and symbolic in its content.23 But what exactly is the Shrine of the Book a memorial for? Only for the scrolls? Or, as Kiesler’s numerological text above suggests, also for another, more concrete and recent collective trauma? Israeli historian Anita Shapira argues that according to David BenGurion 2 , Israel’s first Prime Minister: “The Bible was the third component of the Jewish ‘holy trinity’ of people, land, and book.” 24 The promotion of the Bible was meant to demonstrate the paradox of Israel’s politics and culture, i.e. its “Jewish uniqueness and Jewish similitude, ‘like all the

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nations’ (I Samuel 8:5); ‘Materialism’ and ‘Spirituality;’ historical continuity and historical severance between the people and the land.” 25 In the late 1950s, when Kiesler and Bartos received the assignment to design the Shrine of the Book, the Bible’s importance in the construction of Jewish identity among politicians was critical: When Ben-Gurion summoned Yadin to consult on [army] strategic matters, the first part of the conversa­tion was devoted to archaeo­lo­ gical matters. Yadin reported to the Prime Minister on the discoveries at Hazor. He hoped to find proof for I Kings 9:15, on Solomon’s building at Hazor, Meggido, and Gezer. Ben Gurion listened attentively, voiced a desire to visit the digs, and even bothered to jot down the conversation in his journal, alongside the political issues on the agenda.26 It was further critical for the Israeli public to relate the recent historical trauma to the (biblical) past. In 1947, upon dedicating a day in com­ memoration of the Holocaust, the 10th of the month of Tevet, the day on which the Babylonian King, Nebuchadnezzar, had breached the walls of Jerusalem in 586 CE, the chief Rabbinate of Palestine estab­lished an official connection between the Holocaust and the destruction of the Temple.27 In 1951, the Israeli Ministry of Interior dedicated a Memorial Day for the Holocaust and the Ghetto Uprising (26th of Nisan) and, in 1953, Yad Vashem—the Authority of Remembrance for the Holocaust and Heroism—was established by a Knesset Law. At the Remembrance Day ceremony in April, 1954, the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett stated: Our nation was saved from total destruction thanks to the memory of its past and its sons’ lust for life. … We are heading toward a future loaded with memory, and we must shape this future—and that is one of the roles of Yad Vashem. It must turn suffering, disgrace, blood, and bravery into a heritage for all generations to come. Our state and freedom will not survive if for one day it forgets the vale of tears of [from] which it arose.28 In 1959 the Knesset passed the Law establishing a Memorial Day for the Holocaust and Heroism.29 According to historian Dalia Ofer, in the midst of interpretations of what led to the Holocaust and its influence on future Jewish life, as well as divisions between religious and nonreligious commemoration and between right and left political fac­tions:

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3   Frederick Kiesler, Shrine of the Book, first drawing of the dome, 1957

Israel was aiming to construct a master narrative of the Holocaust that would ensure recognition of the major element of the Zionist ethos of destruction and rebirth and those of exile and redemption by utilizing the tools it had devised—Yad Vashem, state ceremonies, and the education system.30 If indeed a “master narrative” of “destruction” and “rebirth”—a Jewish collective memory—was being produced in Israel, did the Shrine of the Book play a part in this? I suggest that Kiesler wanted to commemorate victims but he also wanted to integrate the Holocaust within a positive heroic narrative of rebirth and, moreover, his prominent political clients wanted the Shrine not to become exclusively Jewish but rather to serve as a pilgrimage site for both Jews and Christians. Ben Gurion and his close assistant Teddy Kollek’s (a member of the board of the Israel Museum Jerusalem and future mayor of Jerusalem) aim was to unite Israel with the rest of the world, specifically the Western world in order to secure the consensus and legitimization of the new Israeli state. In an unpublished text, Ben Gurion remarked on the museum complex’s completion: It is fitting that Jerusalem should be able—together with Rome and Athens, the earliest leaders of civilisation—to be represented by an institution which can display the artistic achievement of all civilisations and countries.31

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Kiesler’s theatrical mystical experience of “rebirth” in the Shrine monumentalized Ben Gurion’s ideal of equating national revival to Biblical narrative. The Jerusalem Bride and a House of Prayer

No building in Israel is as clearly based upon the exploitation of anatomical shapes and erotic symbols. In the Shrine of the Book, archeology and nationalism are mated as in an ancient rejuvenation and fertility rite.32 Kiesler’s first documented drawing for the dome (New York, 1959) 3  shows the transformative image of a woman with long dark hair and a spreading skirt turning into a dome or, alternately, a dome transforming into an image of a woman. This refers to the visualization of the Ideal Jerusalem, delivered in the Christian tradition through generations from St. John’s Book of Revelation (XXI–2), which had inspired Kiesler: “And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” 33

4   Frederick Kiesler and Armand Bartos, Shrine of the Book, dome hall with the Isaiah scroll as central exhibit, Jerusalem 1965 [Photograph by Ezra Stoller, © Ezra Stoller / Esto]

5   Bruno Taut, Pavilion of the Glass Industry, interior view, Werkbundausstellung (Werkbund exhibition), Cologne 1914 [Photograph by Franz Stoedtner; © Bildarchiv Foto Marburg]

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Kiesler was not the first to connect the image of the dome4  with the image of the “Ideal Jerusalem.” In fact, Kiesler may have found an inspira­ tion for this in German modern architecture—an early reference would have been the architect Bruno Taut’s Pavilion of the Glass Industry at the Werkbundausstellung (Werkbund exhibition) in 1914 displaying the form of a fourteen-sided drum, crowned by a glass mirror dome that reflected the sky and created the illusion of merging with it. The ground floor, with a seven-level water construction 5 , may have reflected “Cabalistic and Talmudic perspectives in which Jerusalem erected on a rock which covers the orifice of the underground water (this is an allegory of the victory over chaos, repre­sented by waters), should in future grow to the Heavens.” 34 Kiesler paraphrased its esoteric symbolism and projected this narrative on the image of the white shining dome designed and viewed as environ­ mental sculpture: the “dome of the building ‘floats’ on a reflecting pool filled by a fountain.” 35 Yet, Kiesler’s direct inspiration for his Shrine was an unfinished project by British architect Patrick Geddes 6 , (drawn by Frank Mears, 1919–1925) for the main house of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.36 Accord­ing to design historian Diana Dolev, like many travellers, Geddes “trans­formed the actual city into an imagined biblical Jerusalem.” Dolev refers to Geddes’s own assertion that the biblical image of heavenly Jerusalem that he wanted to bring to his project came from The Book of Revelation (Apocalypse of John), cited above.37 He designed the building of the Hebrew University “as a detached entity, as a temple on an acropolis.” 38 Similarly to the completed Israel Museum complex, Geddes’s drawings for the University’s structures were also cubic in shape but would be domi­nated by the “colossal domed building in the center,” which would be immediately noticed and become the focal point of the entire complex.39 The ceiling of Geddes’s dome showed a painted Star of David, whereas Kiesler, in his dome, would replace this with a concrete magnified handle of the Torah Scroll in the Synagogue at the center.40, 4  The erected magnified (phallic) “handle” of a modern Torah Scroll was for Kiesler another way to reconstruct and combine past and present. Kiesler’s wish was to simulate not only the experience of “re-discovering” the scrolls as they had been discovered in the cave, but furthermore to simulate the experience of reading the Torah scrolls in a modern synagogue. This is alluded to in the central piece, designed as a modernist Bimah, where

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6   Patrick Geddes, Plan for Hebrew University in Jerusalem, 1920s [The University of Edinburgh, Library & University Collections, Centre for Research Collections, Special Collections]

7   Plan for the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, based on drawings by Patrick Geddes, 1920s [The National Library of Israel; courtesy of Roger Mears]

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a member of the congregation would be called to read from the Torah scrolls. The visitor to this Bimah would have the chance to literally read the open stretched roll, in this case the great Isaiah scroll (one of the oldest of the Dead Sea Scrolls), reenacting a religious experience. If the dome part of the structure recalled the “burying” and subsequent “rediscovery” of the ancient scrolls, as well as an emblem of Jerusalem itself, then the magnified handle of the Torah Scroll Kiesler invoked attending a ceremony in the synagogue. Kiesler thus intended that multi­ fold Jewish experiences be reconstructed through the “architectural ritual” of his Shrine, replicating the “long time wandering.” 41 The simple unified shape of the dome, preferred in many synagogues at the time reflected contemporary avant-gardist trends in architecture, which included a search for pure geometric forms.42 Kiesler’s avant-gardist Shrine applied another numerological play, making a “Tikun Olam” for his Shrine; “Tikun Olam” is a Jewish concept from the Mishnah defined by an act of kindness performed to repair the world—in this case, a kind of historical correction to the six million Jews killed during the Holocaust: sixteen different units, each entirely different in shape, expanse, height and width, darkness, dimness, or light. These sixteen units correlate to one large complex, strongly contrast to each other yet correlate to the ultimate goal which is the awareness of a great past and the awareness of a great future.43 When the visitor emerged from Kiesler’s Shrine of the Book, s/he faced the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. The hybrid architecture of “cavesynagogue-shrine” assured this viewer with a sense of national rebirth: But you should briefly mention in your releases that the origin and concept of the design has to do with the rebirth of the scrolls and of Israel, and that is why the re-circulation of the water is an important symbolic part of the architecture. It is not for decorative affect.44

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1

Narratives of National Rebirth in the Shrine of the Book

Frederick Kiesler, “Epilogue III: The Correalism of Nature,” in Inside the Endless House: Art, People, and Architecture—A Journal (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1966), 145. 2 Kiesler addresses the religious meaning of this holiday in his report on his first “vision” in Jerusalem. It was on Yom Kippur, and he saw a cloud that looked “very much like Jehovah’s beard, torn to shreds in anger, striking at the roofs of Jerusalem.” (Ibid., 317.) 3 Mikveh is a bath in which Jewish ritual purifications are performed. The custom of Yom Kippur Tahara is practiced by some Orthodox Jewish communities. Yet, Kiesler located the water not below the ground as in traditional baths but above the dome of the shrine as a water fountain. See also: Jill Meißner, “Kiesler and Bartos: The Shrine of the Book,” in Kiesler and Bartos: The Shrine of the Book, ed. Peter Bogner (Vienna: Frederick Kiesler Founda­ tion, 2015), exhibition catalog, 31. 4 Quoted in Alona Nitzan-Shiftan, “The Walled City and the White City: The Construction of Jerusalem / Tel Aviv Dichotomy,” Perspecta 39 (2007), 97. Original source: Zali Gurevitz and Gidon Aran, “Al-Hamakom” (On the Place), Alpaim 4 (Tel Aviv: Am Oved Publishers, 1991), 9–44. 5 Nitzan-Shiftan, “The Walled City and the White City,” 97. Source: Nadav Shragai, Temple Mount Conflict: Jews and Muslims, Religion and Politics since 1967 (Hebrew), (Jerusalem: Keter, 1995), 18. 6 Anita Shapira, “The Bible and Israeli Identity,” AJS Review 28, no. 1 (April 2004), 11. I thank Osnat Sirkin (Design Department, Israel Museum Jerusalem) for referring me to this article. 7 “Many Jewish architects encourage their buildings to be read like Jewish texts, with many meanings, with hidden messages, …” Source: Samuel D. Gruber, “Jewish Identity and Modern Synagogue Architecture,” in Jewish Identity in Contemporary Architecture, ed. Angeli Sachs and Edward van Voolen (Munich: Prestel, 2004), 22. 8 Kiesler, Inside the Endless House, 322. See also: Frederick Kiesler, “Kiesler by Kiesler,” The Archi­ tectural Forum 123, no. 2 (September 1965), 68. 9 “Let me explain to you that the form and shape of the upper part of the Dome has nothing to do with the ‘Couvercle’ of the original jar [reference to the Jars which contained the scrolls]; it is the logical conclusion of a double parabolic vessel: by its curvatures to drive the hot air up and out and by its very formation to indicate plastically the striving from the dark underground into the light of free space (The forces of Darkness and of Light)” Source: Kiesler, letter to Yohanan Beham (director of the Israeli Tourism office and the Israel Museum, appointed by Teddy Kollek), March 31, 1965, Israel Museum Jerusalem Archives. 10 “The Shrine of the Book,” Progressive Architecture 46 (September 1965), 129. 11 Michael S. Sgan-Cohen, “Frederick Kiesler: Artist,

343

Architect, Visionary—A Study of his Work and Writings” (PhD diss., The City University of New York, 1989), 553; source: Yigael Yadin, The Message of the Scrolls (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957). 12 Adolfo Roitman, “Shrine of the Book,” lecture in Hebrew, April 2000, http://cms.education.gov.il/ EducationCMS/Units/Mazkirut_Pedagogit/Omanut/ ItunKesherOmanuti/KesherOmanuti02Content/ HeihallAsefer.htm (Accessed October 1, 2017). 13 Wilson’s book was on the New York Times bestseller list from November 1955 to June 1956. Source: Michelle Mart, “The ‘Christianization’ of Israel and Jews in 1950s America,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 14, no. 1 (Winter 2004), 137. 14 Ibid., 116 (109–147). Mart suggests that the religious revival in the U.S. in the 1950s was connected to a cold war strategy of constructing a “God-fearing West united against atheistic Communists.” (Ibid., 109.) She further argues that: “The popular celebration of Israel also romanticized its people at the expense of their Arab (mainly Muslim) neigh­ bors. Battling foes outside of the Judeo-Christian family, Israelis seemed just like Americans.” (Ibid.) 15 Ibid. 16 A second design for a house with a dome to be seated next to the National Library was also rejected. A third option for a domed house, with underground corridors connecting to the National Library on one side and to the Monastery of the Cross on the other, was also put aside. 17 Eran Neuman, “Al Mansfeld and the interpretation of the Israel Museum,” The Journal of Architecture 20, no. 5 (October 2015), 805. Neuman refers to a similar description by Kiesler: “an Arab village in International Style.” 18 Kiesler, Inside the Endless House, 325. 19 During the renovation of the Dome of the Rock between 1959 and 1962 by the Jordanians its blackened lead dome was replaced with aluminumbronze plates covered with gold leaf. 20 Willem Sandberg, “The Israel Museum in Jerusalem,” Museum 19, no. 1 (January/December 1966), 18. 21 Cynthia Goodman, “The Art of Revolutionary Display Techniques,” in Frederick Kiesler, ed. Lisa Phillips (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art in association with W.W. Norton & Company, 1989), exhibition catalogue, 80. Source: Frederick Kiesler, “Art, Money, and Architecture,” typescript, 1–2. Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation (ÖFLKS), TXT 3008/0. 22 Haezrachi, “Andarta Lamegilot Hagnuzot” (Memorial to the Hidden Scrolls), Maariv (Hebrew), June 15, 1962, 19. 23 Ibid. 24 Shapira, “The Bible and Israeli Identity,” 11. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid., 27. Source: Yoman David Ben Gurion (Ben Gurion’s Diary), 16.08.1958, Archive of the

344

21

Kiesler Facing Jerusalem

Ben-Gurion Heritage Institute. 27 Dalia Ofer, “We Israelis Remember, But How? The Memory of the Holocaust and the Israeli Experience,” Israel Studies 18, no. 2 (Summer 2013), 74. 28 Ibid., 75. Source: Ha’aretz, April 30, 1954. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 David Ben Gurion, “Draft Message from Prime Minister David Ben Gurion for National Museum Brochure,” c. 1965, quoted in Neuman, “Al Mansfeld and the interpretation of the Israel Museum,” 808. 32 Amos Elon, The Israelis: Founders and Sons (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 284. 33 Diana Dolev, The Planning and Building of the Hebrew University, 1919–1948: Facing the Temple Mount (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016), 30. 34 Igo Doukhan, “Beyond the Holy City: Symbolic Intentions in the Avant-Garde Urban Utopia,” in The Real and Ideal Jerusalem in Jewish, Christian and Islam Art, Studies in Honor of Bezalel Narkiss, ed. Bianca Kühnel (Chicago, Ill.: Spertus College of Judaica Press, 1998), 567. Doukhan’s reference: F. Burros, “Some Cosmological Patterns in Babylonian Religion,” in S. H. Hooke, The Labyrinth (London: S.P.C.K., 1935). The Jewish Midrash narrative concerns the Foundation Stone, “Even ha-Shtiyya” and it is mentioned in the prayers (Selichot) in the days leading up from Rosh Hashana to Yom Kippur. 35 Michael Levin, “Jewish Identity in Architecture in Israel,” in Sachs and van Voolen, Jewish Identity in Contemporary Architecture, 39. 36 I thank Judith Kaplan (Department of Photography, Israel Museum Jerusalem) for a copy of her lecture on “The Shrine of the Book—the transformation story of the construction of domes in Jerusalem as documented by photographers in the collection of the Israel Museum Jerusalem” (Hebrew), held in the Symposium for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, Haifa, September 2016. 37 Geddes in Dolev, The Planning and Building of the Hebrew University, 1919–1948, 2016, 30. 38 Ibid., 31. Although only a small part of Geddes and his son-in-law Mears’s plan was realized, Mears’s drawing of the Grand Hall with the Dome was printed on postcards and brochures to raise money in the U.S. and Europe (Dolev, 36); it further served as inspiration for imaging Jerusalem in synagogues in the interwar period in Europe. 39 Ibid., 32. 40 The two handles of the Torah scroll are at the bottom and the top end. 41 “Architectural ritual” is noted in connection with earlier plans, in Kiesler, Inside the Endless House, 334; reference to the wandering in Transcript of six tapes, with Lillian Kiesler, Kiesler Archives in The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and quoted in Sgan-Cohen, “Frederick Kiesler,” 551. 42 Gruber, “Jewish Identity and Modern Synagogue

Architecture,” 29. Kiesler may have borrowed a few expressive elements from Erich Mendelsohn; the design of the corridor entering the domed-cave with its arches can refer to the inner-structure of Mendelsohn’s Hat Factory in Luckenwalde (1923) and the courtyard leading to the entrance and the idea of the dome may have been inspired by Mendelsohn’s drawings for a synagogue in Cleveland, Ohio (1946–1950). 43 Kiesler, “Kiesler by Kiesler,” 65. 44 Frederick Kiesler, letter to Yohanan Beham, March 31, 1965, Israel Museum Jerusalem Archives.

346 Index

Persons A Aalto, Alvar (Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto) (1898–1976): 216, 238 Abbott, Berenice (Berenice Alice Abbott) (1898–1991): 30, 48, 174, 251, Abraham, Raimund (1933–2010): 44, 52 Acconci, Vito (1940–2017): 309f., 313 Adler, Victor (1852–1918): 71 Afro (Afro Basaldella) (1912–1976): 319 Alcopley (Alfred Lewin Copley) (1910–1992): 318 Ambasz, Emilio (*1943): 309 Anderson, Margaret Caroline (1886–1973): 133, 190, 199, Anderson, Sherwood (1876–1941): 199 Antheil, Böske, née Erzsébet Markus: 195, 201f., 204, 205 Antheil, George (Georg Karl Johann Antheil) (1900–1959): 10, 21, 28, 47, 193–205, 221, 355 Apollonio, Umbro (1911–1981): 324, 328 Arnaud, Leopold: 29 Arp, Hans (Jean Arp) (1886–1966): 10, 25, 64, 161, 182, 189, 219–236, 240–248, 280, 283, 291, 307, 355 Auerbach, Alfred (1881–1944): 24, 27, 28, 48, 133, 208, 212, 218 Aufricht, Ernst Josef (1898–1971): 74f., 77, 81, 82 Aquinas, Thomas (1225–1274): 231 Aycock, Alice (*1946): 309 B Bach, David Josef (1874–1947): 87, 90, 96, 112, 197, 204 Balla, Giacomo (1871–1958): 115f., 125, 132 Barr, Alfred H. Jr. (1902–1981): 32, 36, 39f., 51, 96, 175f., 216–218, 286, 288, 297, 355 Barta, Sándor (1897–1938): 136f., 147 Bartos, Armand Jr. (Armand Phillip Bartos) (1910–2005): 236, 305, 331, 334, 337, 339, 343, 357 Bartos, Celeste, née Celeste Ruth Gottesman, (1913–2013): 334 Bauer, Rudolf (Alexander Georg Rudolf Bauer) (1889–1953): 27, 48, 286 Baumeister, Willi (Friedrich Wilhelm Baumeister) (1889–1955): 99 Beach, Sylvia (1887–1962): 52, 194, 198, 205 Beck, Julien (1925–1985): 43, 52 Behne, Adolf (Adolf Bruno Behne) (1885–1948): 64, 117f., 132, 166, 175 Bely, Andrei (1880–1934): 55 Ben-Gurion, David (David Grün) (1886–1973): 336f., 344

Benson, E. M.: 28, 48 Bergner, Elisabeth, née Elisabeth Ettel, (1897–1986): 89 Bergson, Henri (Henri-Louis Bergson) (1859–1941): 120 Bernard, Lucien: 208 Bernhard, Ruth (1905–2006): 209 Bernheim, Alfred (1885–1974): 331 Bill, Max (1908–1994): 307 Binazzi, Lapo (*1943): 309f. Binder, Joseph (1898–1972): 43, 49, 52, Binder, Sybille (1895–1962): 73 Blaffer Owen, Jane (1915–2010): 40 Blümner, Rudolf (1873–1945): 103 Boehme, Jacob (1575–1624): 231 Bogler, Friedrich Wilhelm (1902–1945): 102, 104, 108, 112 Bogler, Theodor (1897–1968): 101 Bontecou, Lee (*1931): 301 Bortnyik, Sándor (1893–1976): 137 Bottero, Maria: 41f., 45f., 51, 52, 280 Bouchard, Thomas (1895–1984): 231 Boulez, Pierre (1925–2016): 43, 51 Bouy, Jules (1872–1937): 208 Bowles, Paul (Paul Frederick Bowles) (1910–1999): 29, 200, 202 Bragaglia, Anton Giulio (1890–1960): 121 Brâncuşi, Constantin (1876–1957): 123, 199 Branzi, Andrea (*1938): 309 Brauner, Victor (Viktor Brauner) (1903– 1966): 35, 50, 276, 278 Brecht, Bertolt (1898–1956): 75, 81 Breton, André (1896–1966): 31–34, 49f., 174, 221, 223f., 247, 251, 258f., 262, 271– 280, 291 Bruckner, Ferdinand (1891–1958): 58 Buffet-Picabia, Gabrielle, née Gabrielle Buffet, (1881–1985): 251 Burchard, John E. (1898–1975): 238 Burckhardt, Rudy (1914–1999): 303 C Cage, John (1912–1992): 43, 51f. Cahill, Holger (Edgar Holger Cahill) (Sveinn Kristjan Bjarnarsson) (1887–1960): 265 Cahill, Thaddeus (1867–1934): 201 Calas, Nicolas (Calamaris) (pseudonym Nicolas Calas, Nikitas Randos, M. Spieros) (1907–1988): 33, 50, 269, 271f., 279, 283 Calatrava Valls, Santiago (*1951): 307 Calder, Alexander (1898–1976): 25, 169, 176, 185f., 236, 277 Čapek, Karel (1890–1938): 18, 54, 58, 75, 86, 99, 115, 119, 132, 153, 165, 177, 194, 205 Castelli, Leo (Leo Krausz) (1907–1999): 44–46, 52, 131, 301–304, 323 Cézanne, Paul (1839–1906): 288f., 294

Index

Chagall, Marc (Moishe Zakharovich Shagal) (1887–1985): 139 Chaliapin, Boris (1904–1979): 336 Chaplin, Charlie (1889–1977): 288 Chermayeff, Serge (1900–1996): 29, 49 Čižek, Franz (František Čížek) (1865– 1946): 20, 113, 140f., 148 Clark, Anne (1914–1997): 256 Consemüller, Erich (1902–1957): 106 Cook, Peter (*1936): 309 Corpora, Antonio (1909–2004): 319 Creighton, Thomas H. (1904–1984): 18, 46f., 66, 81f., 132, 163f., 189 Crompton, Dennis (*1935): 309 Csokor, Franz Theodor (1885–1969): 17, 87, 91, 180 Cunningham, Merce (1919–2009): 43, 52, 224 Cummings, Edward Estlin (1894–1962): 313 Curjel, Hans (1896–1874): 244, 248 Curtis Bok, Mary Louise, née Mary Louise Curtis, (1876–1970): 193 Cushing, Edward (Edward Thomas Francis Cushing) (1903–1956): 198, 205 D Davis, Stuart (1894–1964): 265, 268, Davis, Wyatt: 268 Dayan, Moshe (1915–1981): 330 De Kooning, Elaine, née Elaine Marie Fried, (1918–1989): 41, 51 De Kooning, Willem ”Bill” (1904–1997): 42, 51 Delaunay, Robert (1885–1941): 224, 227, 236 Delza, Sophia, née Sophia Hurwitz, (1903–1996): 24, 201 Denes, Agnes (*1931): 309 Depero, Fortunato (1892–1960): 10, 117, 121–127, 129, 130–133 Deren, Maya, née Eleonora Derenkowska, (1917–1961): 255 Deskey, Donald (1894–1989): 208, 213 Dexel, Walter (1890–1973): 149, 166, 175 D’Harnoncourt, Rene (1901–1968): 15, 36, 38, 39, 51 Dicker, Friedl (Friedl Dicker-Brandeis) (1898–1944): 74, 113 Dickinson, Edwin (1891–1978): 41, 51 Diller, Burgoyne (1906–1965): 289 Dinur, Ben-Zion (1884–1973): 331 Dlugoszewski, Lucia (1931–2000): 15 Döblin, Alfred (1878–1957): 60, 89, 95 Doesburg, Nelly van, née Nelly van Moorsel, (pseudonym Cupera, Pétro van Doesburg) (1899–1975): 21, 24, 47, 66, 154, 156, 158f., 161, 164, 181, 190, 199, 201, 205, 220, 231, 235

347 Doesburg, Theo van (Christian Emil Marie Küpper) (1883–1931): 10, 19–25, 47, 61, 63f., 66, 88, 97, 99, 112, 117–123, 132, 140–142, 148f., 151–164, 166, 168f., 174, 176f., 180f., 190, 198–201, 205, 219–221 Dolbin, Benedikt Fred (Benedikt Fred Pollak) (1883–1971): 18, 21, 46, 53, 65, 86f., 96, 122, 154, 180 Donati, Enrico (1909–2008): 34f., 50, 272, 279, 358 Dorazio, Piero (1927–2005): 11, 131, 315– 328, 356 Dortch, King: 319 Dortch, Virginia (1925–2010): 319, 321f., 327 Dottori, Gerardo (1884–1977): 121 Downey, Juan (1940–1993): 309f. Doyle, Tom (*1955): 304 Draper, Muriel (1886–1952): 200, 202 Dreier, Katherine (Katherine Sophie Dreier) (1877–1952): 23, 27, 47f., 95, 126, 133, 159, 164, 167–170, 176, 220, 249, 251, 253, 263 Drexler, Arthur (1925–1987): 36, 39, 51 Duchamp, Marcel (1887–1968): 10, 30–32, 34f., 49f., 126, 174, 185–187, 220f., 223f., 247, 249–263, 272, 275f., 278–280, 283, 289, 302, 353, 355f., 358 Dudensing, Valentine (1892–1967): 171–173, 176, 350 Dunham, Harry: 29 Duval, Rémy (1907–1984): 259, 277 Dvorak, Rosa: 91 E Effenberger, Hans (pseudonym Jan Śliwiński) (1884–1950): 196f. Eggeling, Viking (1880–1925): 152, 178, 181f., 186 Ehrenstein, Albert (1886–1950): 17 Ehrlich, Franz (1907–1984): 57 Ehrlich, Gaby: 92 Ehrlich, Georg (1897–1966): 91 Ehrman, Marli, née Marie Helene Heimann, (1904–1982): 102 Eidlitz, Walther (1892–1976): 91 Einstein, Albert (1879–1955): 293 Einstein, Carl (1885–1940): 25, 163, 169 Emmerich, Paul (Paul Wilhelm Carl Eberhard Emmerich) (1876–1958): 139 Engel, Fritz (1867–1935): 59, 66, 163 Engel, Morris (1918–2005): 273 Ermers, Max (1881–1950): 86f., 141f., 148 Ernst, Jimmy (1920–1984): 50, 52, 174 Ernst, Max (1891–1976): 31f., 50, 173f., 185f., 223f., 227, 236, 272, 276, 291 Erskine, John (1879–1951): 28, 200–203, 205 Evans, Madge (1909–1981): 15

F Feininger, Lyonel (1871–1956): 105 Ferber, Herbert (1906–1991): 41 Feuerstein, Bedřich (1892–1936): 22 Ficker, Ludwig von (1880–1967): 71 Fineman, Martin: 210 Floch, Josef (1894–1977): 92 Földes, Sándor: 142 Fontana, Oskar Maurus (1889–1969): 20, 95 Forster, Rudolf (1884–1968): 73 Franchetti, Giorgio Jr. (1865–1922): 319 Frankl, Paul T. (1886–1958): 24, 27, 47, 207f., 217 Franz Joseph I (1830–1916): 71 Frazer, Sir James George (1854–1941): 276 Fritz, Hans (1883–1952): 20 Fry, Varian (1907–1967): 29, 49 Fuller, Richard Buckminster (1895–1983): 8, 11, 27, 36, 39, 48, 162, 238 G Gabo, Naum (Naum Abramowitsch Pewsner) (1890–1977): 139, 153, 294, 297 Gahlberg, Arnold: 18 Gallatin, Albert Eugene (1881–1952): 220, 227, 235 Gauguin, Paul (1848–1903): 288 Geddes, Patrick (1854–1932): 340f., 344 Gehry, Frank (Frank Owen Goldberg) (*1929): 307, 309 George, Manfred (Manfred Georg Cohn) (1893–1965): 187, 190 Gershwin, George (1898–1937): 202 Giedion, Sigfried (1888–1968): 10, 237f., 240–248 Giedion-Welcker, Carola (1893–1979): 235, 242, 244, 246–248 Girsberger, Hans (1898–1982): 244, 247f. Glassgold, C. Adolph (Adolph Cook Glassgold) (1899–1985): 24, 27, 208 Goetz, Curt (1888–1960): 58 Goncharova, Natalia (1881–1962): 123 Gorky, Arshile (Vostanik Manoug Adoian) (1904–1948): 10, 33, 35, 50, 260, 265– 282, 287, 291, 356 Gottesman, David Samuel (1884–1956): 333f. Graeff, Werner (1901–1978): 19, 99, 117, 153, 177, 190 Graham, Dan (*1942): 309 Graham, John (1886–1961): 268 Graham, Martha (1894–1991): 201 Graham, Miralda: 309 Grant, Dwinell (1912–1991): 255 Greenberg, Clement (pseudonym K. Hardesh) (1909–1994): 287, 292, 297 Greene, Balcomb (1904–1990): 173

348

Index

Gris, Juan (José Victoriano Carmelo Carlos González-Pérez) (1887–1927): 21, 47 Gris, Josette: 21 Gropius, Walter (1883–1969): 22, 57, 62, 64, 66, 97, 100f., 104–107, 111–113, 164, 217, 229, 239, 241, 247 Grosz, George (1893–1959): 74, 91, 111, 318 Guevrekian, Gabriel (1900–1970): 22 Guggenheim, Peggy (1898–1979): 31, 35, 49f., 173f., 176, 183, 185, 216, 222f., 245, 253f., 256, 282, 289, 291f., 320, 324 Guggenheim, Pegeen (1925–1967): 254 Guttuso, Renato (1912–1987): 316 H Hadank, Günther (1892–1973): 139 Hadid, Zaha (1950–2016): 307 Haerdtl, Oswald (1899–1959): 22 Haezrachi, Yehuda: 335, 343 Hagenbach, Marguerite (1902–1994): 226, 230f., 233–236, 248 Halle, Fannina (1881–1963): 87, 91f., 96 Halpern, Leo: 139 Hammid, Alexander (Alexander Siegfried Georg Smahel, Alexander Hackenschmied) (1907–2004): 256 Hamsun, Knut (Knud Pedersen) (1859–1952): 74 Hare, David (1917–1992): 33, 269, 272, 279 Harrison, Wallace K. (1895–1981): 27, 48 Hauer, Josef Matthias (1883–1959): 149 Hawkins, Erick (1909–1994): 15, 46 Heap, Jane (1883–1964): 22f., 47, 112, 123, 133, 158, 166, 181, 190, 199, 205, 251 Heartfield, John (Helmut Herzfeld) (1891–1968): 74, 111 Heisler, Jindřich (1914–1953): 35, 50 Hellmann, Irene, née Irene Redlich, (1882–1944): 87 Hemingway, Ernest (1899–1961): 197 Hermann, K. W.: 255 Herrmann, Bernard (1911–1975): 200 Hesse, Eva (1936–1970): 304 Heyman, Ken (*1930): 309 Higgins, Dick (1938–1998): 310 Hindemith, Paul (1895–1963): 101 Hirschel-Protsch, Günter (died 1938): 144, 149 Hirschfeld-Mack, Ludwig (1893–1965): 59, 101f., 108, 110f. Hitchcock, Henry-Russell (1903–1987): 36, 39, 245 Hitler, Adolf (1889–1945): 49, 66, 71, 190 Höch, Hannah (1889–1978): 63f., 66 Hock, Stefan (1877–1947): 91 Hoeflich, Eugen (1891–1965): 138, 148 Hofmann, Hans (1880–1966): 11, 266, 287–297, 354 Hoffmann, Josef (1870–1956): 20–22, 70f., 81, 95, 196, 204,

Hoffmann, Pola, née Pola Weinbach, (1902–1984): 208 Hoffmann, Wolfgang (1900–1969): 208 Hollaender, Felix (1867–1931): 56 Holt, Nancy (1938–2014): 309 Holtzman, Harry (1912–1987): 172f., 176 Homolka, Oskar (1898–1978): 75, 77 Hönigsfeld, Rudolf (1902–1977): 142 Horthy, Miklós (1868–1957): 135 Howe, George (1886–1955): 29, 238 Huelsenbeck, Richard (1892–1974): 229 Huszár, Vilmos (1884–1960): 22, 63, 151 I Ihering, Herbert (1888–1977): Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique (1780–1867): 269, 282 Imbs, Bravig (1904–1946): 161, 200, 205 Indiana, Robert (Bob) (Robert Clark) (1928–2018): 304, Iolas, Alexander (1907–1987): 33, 269 Itten, Johannes (1888–1967): 47, 56, 66, 74, 78–82, 111, 113 J Jackson Steele, Peggy: 44 Jacoby, Irving (1909–1985): 183 Janco, Marcel (1895–1984): 189 Janik, Allan (*1941): 71, 81 Janis, Harriet, née Grossmann, (Hansi Grossmann, Harriet Janowitz) (1899–1963): 258, 265, Janis, Sidney (Sidney Janowitz) (1896–1989): 11, 27f., 48, 171, 227, 234, 236, 258, 265, 281, 283–285 Jean, Marcel (1900–1993): 35, 236, 275, 280 Jensen, Alfred (1903–1981): 289 Jessner, Leopold (1878–1945): 55f. Johns, Jasper (*1930): 44f., 52, 301f., 304, 315 Johnson, Philip (1906–2005): 36, 40–42, 51, 216–218, 245, 304 Jonas, Ralph: 23 Joyce, James (1882–1941): 194, 198f. K Kaiser, Georg (1878–1945): 74, 81 Kallir, Otto (Otto Nirenstein) (1894–1978): 139 Kalmer, Josef (1898–1959): 138, 140, 148 Kaminsky, Walter: 106 Kamrowski, Gerome (1914–2004): 33, 269, 272, 279 Kandinsky, Wassily (1866–1944): 99, 105, 139, 224, 227, 236, 288, 291 Kaprow, Allan (1927–2006): 309 Karasz, Ilonka (1896–1981): 208 Kassák, Lajos (1887–1967): 10, 20, 135–149, 175, 356

Kaufmann, Oskar (1873–1956): 58 Kerr, Alfred (Alfred Kempner) (1867–1948): 75, 80 Kiesler, Frederick (Friedrich Kiesler) (1890–1965): see Projects by Kiesler Kiesler, Lillian, née Lillian Olinsey, (1911–2001): 36, 46, 48f., 51, 133, 181, 190, 210, 279f., 302, 305, 315, 344 Kiesler, Stefi, née Stephanie Frischer, (pseudonym Pietro Saga) (1897–1963): 16, 21, 24f., 28, 30, 32, 39, 47–52, 66, 72, 80–83, 86f., 89f., 93–96, 140, 148, 158f., 161, 164, 167, 169, 170–173, 176, 180f., 183, 185, 188–191, 195, 205, 210, 217f., 220, 230, 234f., 240, 247, 255f., 262f., 355 King, Alexander (Alexander König) (1899–1965): 24, 200 King, Nettie: 24 Kingsley, Sidney (Sidney Kirshner) (1906–1995): 15 Kirstein, Lincoln (1907–1996): 202 Klee, Paul (1879–1940): 105, 286, 318 Kline, Franz (1910–1962): 317f. Körner, Edmund (Edmund Hermann Georg Körner) (1874–1940): 27 Kok, Antony (1882–1969): 151 Kokoschka, Oskar (1886–1980): 25f., 47, 88 Kollek, Teddy (1911–2007): 338, 343 Koltanowski, George (1903–2000): 32 Kortner, Fritz (1892–1970): 73f. Kosuth, Joseph (*1945): 311, 314 Kracauer, Siegfried (1889–1966): 59, 66, 257, 263 Krasner, Lee (1908–1984): 291 Kraus, Karl (1874–1936): 26, 67, 71f., 75, 78–82, 355 Kuhn, Max: 139 L Labrouste, Pierre-François-Henri (1801– 1875): 269 Lam, Wifredo (1902–1982): 33, 269, 271, 279 Lampl, Fritz (1892–1955): 17f., 89 Landshoff, Hermann (1905–1986): 174 Langner, Lawrence (1890–1962): 199 La Pietra, Ugo (*1938): 309 Larsen, Jack Lenor (*1927): 15 Larson, Carl Theodore (1903–1988): 27 Laske, Oskar (1874–1951): 91, 95f. Latouche, John (1914–1956): 28f., 48, 256 Leblanc, Georgette (1869–1941): 199 Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret) (1887–1965): 169, 334 Léger, Fernand (1881–1955): 20, 25, 59, 92, 96, 169, 174, 176, 182, 185, 195–197, 204, 231, 241, 268, 283, 285 Lescaze, William (1896–1969): 50, 208 Leuppi, Leo (1893–1972): 224, 236

Index

Levy, Julien (1906–1981): 32, 49, 186, 191, 273 Leyda, Jay (1910–1988): 183, 263 Lichtenstein, Roy (1923–1997): 301 Liegler, Leopold (1882–1949): 72 Lincoln, Fay Sturtevant (1894–1975): 212f. Lippold, Richard (1915–2002): 41 Lissitzky, El (1890–1941): 19, 60–62, 97–99, 112, 117f., 120, 132, 139, 140, 144, 149, 153, 177, 219 Lönberg-Holm, Knud (1895–1972): 27, 48, 240 Loos, Adolf (1870–1933): 22, 24, 26, 70–72, 81, 137, 180, 196, 199, 204, 210 Lord, Chip (*1944): 309, 310 Löwitsch, Franz (1894–1946): 145, 149 Lucchi, Michele de (*1951): 309 Lux, Eugene: 171 Lux, Gwendolyn, née Gwendolyn Creighton, (Gwen Lux) (1908–2001): 171 M Macpherson, Kenneth (1902–1971): 185 Maeght, Aimé (1906–1981): 224 Magnelli, Alberto (1888–1971): 224, 236 Mahler, Gustav (1860–1911): 197 Mahler-Werfel, Alma, née Alma Schindler, (1879–1964): 87, 88 Malevich, Kazimir (1879–1935): 61 Malina, Judith (1926–2015): 43, 52 Mallet-Stevens, Robert (1886–1945): 22 Mann-Borgese, Elisabeth (1918–2002): 44, 52 Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky) (1890– 1976): 185f., 199f., 263 Mansfeld, Al (1912–2004): 334, 343f. Marchi, Virgilio (1895–1960): 121 Marcus, Stanley (1905–2002): 286 Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso (1876–1944): 20, 22, 118–122, 132, 140–143, 148f. Markelius, Sven (1889–1972): 238 Matchabelli, Norina, née Eleanora Erna Cecilia Gilli, (Maria Carmi) (1880–1957): 23, 127 Martin, Étienne (1913–1995): 317 Martins, Maria (1894–1973): 34f., 262, 276, 278, 358 Masson, André (1896–1987): 272, 292 Matta, Roberto (Roberto Matta Echaurren) (1911–2002): 30–33, 35, 49, 260, 262, 269, 271, 277–279 Matta-Clark, Gordon (1943–1978): 309, 310 Mayer, Adele: 122, 140, 148 Mayer, Herbert: 230 Mayne, Thom (*1944): 309 Maywald, Willy (1907–1985): 277 McEvoy, J. P. (1897–1958): 27, 200 McMahon, John: 300 Mears, Frank (1880–1953): 340, 344

349 Melnikow, Konstantin (Konstantin Stepanowitsch Melnikow) (1890–1974): 21 Menczel, Philipp (1872–1941): 91 Mendini, Alessandro (*1931): 309 Mensendieck, Bess (Elizabeth Marguerite de Varel Mensendieck) (1864–1957): 23 Meredith, Burgess (1907–1997): 44, 52 Mergentime, Charles (1891–1975): 51, 213 Mergentime, Marguerita, née Marguerita Straus, (1894–1941): 39, 51, 208, 210, 213, 218 Messer, Thomas (1920–2013): 26, 48 Meyer, Hannes (1889–1954): 144, 149 Meyerhold, Vsevolod Emil’yevich (1874–1940): 62, 143 Michals, Duane (*1932): 44f. Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig (1886–1969): 19, 99, 117, 152f., 163, 177, 190, 213, 284 Miller, Dorothy (1904–2003): 36, 297 Miró, Joan (1893–1983): 231, 265f., 276, 291, 318 Miss, Mary (*1944): 309 Moholy-Nagy, László (1895–1946): 21, 59, 97–99, 101, 104, 106, 109–113, 117, 144, 149, 153, 175, 177, 201, 217, 219 Molnár, Farkas (1897–1945): 104, 112f., 144, 149 Mondrian, Piet (1872–1944): 10, 25, 48, 63, 97, 151, 158, 161, 165–176, 291, 294, 355 Moore, Henry (1898–1986): 241, 307 Mordo, Renato (1894–1955): 90f. Moreno, Jacob Levy (1889–1974): 20, 47, 141, 144f., 148f. Morris, George L. K. (1905–1975): 176, 224, 236 Motherwell, Robert (1915–1991): 224, 236, 291f., 297 Murnau, Fritz (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau) (1888–1931): 288 Murphy, Dudley (1897–1968): 182, 195 Musil, Robert (1880–1942): 74 Mussolini, Benito (1883–1945): 141 N Nádass, József (1897–1975): 141, 148 Nagy, Etel (1907–1939): 140, 148 Natalini, Adolfo (*1941): 309 Németh, Andor (1891–1953): 139, 141 Nessen, Walter von (1889–1943): 208 Neumann, J. B. (Israel Ber Neumann) (1887–1961): 24, 27 Neurath, Otto (1882–1945): 91 Neuziel, Walter (1894–1992): 145, 149 Nevelson, Louise (1899–1988): 289 Newman, Barnett (1905–1970): 43, 51 Nierendorf, Karl (1889–1947): 30, 49, 113, 173, 190 Nivola, Costantino (1911–1988): 44 Noever, Peter (*1941): 309

Noguchi, Isamu (1904–1988): 33, 269, 276f., 279, 300 Norden, Heinz (1905–1978): 265, 279 Nouvel, Jean (*1945): 309 O Oldenburg, Claes (*1929): 300 O’Neill, Eugene (1888–1953): 54, 75, 105, 153, 178 Onslow Ford, Gordon (1912–2003): 30f., 49 Oppenheim, Dennis (1938–2011): 309 Oud, Jacobus Johannes Pieter (1890–1963): 87, 112, 151, 160 Owen, Robert (1771–1858): 40 Ozenfant, Amédée (1886–1966): 22, 47, 49, 174, 176 P Paalen, Wolfgang (1905–1959): 289, 292 Paladini, Vinicio (1902–1971): 121 Pannaggi, Ivo (1901–1981): 121 Parker, Robert Allerton (1889–1970): 258 Pavia, Philip (1911–2005): 43, 51, 300, 316, 327 Perret, Auguste (1874–1954): 21f., 47, 201 Pesce, Gaetano (*1939): 309 Pettena, Gianni (*1940): 309f. Pevsner, Antoine (Anton Abramowitsch Pewsner) (1884–1962): 294 Phillips, Helen (1913–1995): 33, 269, 271, 273, 279 Picasso, Pablo (1881–1973): 181, 251, 265f., 273, 281, 283 Piscator, Erwin (1893–1966): 56–59, 66, 111 Pitkowsky, Len (1930–2015): 15 Poelzig, Hans (1869–1936), 55f., 62 Poljanski, Branko Ve (Branislav Micić, Virgil) (1898–1947): 123 Pollock, Jackson (1912–1956): 41f., 51, 291f., 304 Pound, Ezra (1885–1972): 194f., 197–199, 205 Prampolini, Enrico (1894–1956): 10, 20f. 117–122, 124, 131–133, 140f., 143, 148f., 154 Prix, Wolf Dieter (*1942): 309 Puni, Ivyan Albertowitsch (1892–1956): 61, 119f., 139 R Rainford, Percy (1901–1976): 258, 296 Raggi, Franco (*1945): 309f. Rathe, Kurt (1886–1952): 21, 47, 95f., 122, 140, 148 Rathenau, Walther (1867–1922): 55 Rauschenberg, Robert (1925–2008): 15, 44, 46, 52, 301f., 304, 313, 315 Raynal, Maurice (1884–1954): 98, 112, 164, 279

350

Index

Rebay, Hilla von (1890–1967). 27, 48, 169f., 176, 183 Reinhardt, Max (Maximilian Goldmann) (1873–1943): 23, 55f., 62, 74, 81, 91, 279 Reiss, Winold (1886–1953): 208 Rexroth, Kenneth (1905–1982): 43 Reynal, Jeanne (1903–1983): 33, 269, 271 Reynolds, Florence (1879–1949): 199, 205 Richter, Hans (1888–1976): 10, 19, 47, 63, 66, 86f., 95, 98f., 112, 117f., 120, 152f., 165, 176–191, 205, 219, 229f., 236, 254–257, 263 Rieti, Vittorio (1898–1994): 32 Rietveld, Gerrit (1888–1964): 22, 63 Robert, Eugen (1877–1944): 18, 46f., 54, 58, 65, 86, 153 Rockefeller, Nelson A. (1908–1979): 216 Rodenberg, Hans (pseudonym Curt Baumann, H. Berg, Rudolf Müller) (1895–1978): 87 Roessler, Arthur (1877–1955): 85, 95 Rosen, Lia (*1893): 87, 90f. Rosenberg, Harold (1906–1978): 287 Rosenquist, Jim (1933–2017): 304 Rothko, Mark (1903–1970): 41f., 51, 291 Rotondi, Michael (*1949): 309 Rudolf, Crown Prince (1858–1889): 70 Runge, Philipp Otto (1777–1810): 107 Russolo, Luigi (1885–1947): 120, 121 Ruttmann, Walter (1887–1941): 182 S Saarinen, Eero (1910–1961): 239 Sage, Kay (Katherine Linn Sage) (1898–1963): 34f., 272, 278, 358 Salzedo, Carlos (1885–1961): 201 Samuel, Athanasius Yeshue (Mar Samuel) (1909–1995): 333 Sandler, Irving (1925–2018): 287 Sandt, Alfred: 102 Santomaso, Giuseppe (1907–1990): 324, 328 Scarpa, Carlo (1906–1978): 324, 328 Scarpitta, Salvatore (1919–2007): 44f., 131, 319 Scarpitta, Claudia: 131 Schawinsky, Xanti (1904–1979): 32, 57, 104, 284 Scherer, Rudolf (1891–1973): 145,149 Schiaparelli, Elsa (1890–1973): 221 Schlemmer, Oskar (1888–1943): 62, 99–101, 103f., 106–108, 112f. Schmidt, Kurt (1901–1991): 98, 100f., 103, 108, 144 Schnabel, Artur (1882–1951): 194 Schnabel-Hoeflich, Mirjam (1893–1980): 138f. Schoenberg, Arnold (Arnold Schönberg) (1874–1951): 15, 197, 314 Schreier, Curtis (*1944): 309

Schreyer, Lothar (pseudonym Angelus Pauper) (1886–1966): 62, 99, 101, 103, 106f. Schwerdtfeger, Kurt (1897–1966): 110 Scialoja, Toti (1914–1998): 319 Schwitters, Kurt (1887–1948): 19, 22, 64, 117, 143, 149, 153, 177, 224, 227, 236, 283f. Seden, Gül: 303 Segal, George (1924–2000): 300, 355 Seligmann, Arlette: 32, 49 Seligmann, Kurt (1900–1962) 30, 49, 174 Sert, Josep Lluís (1902–1983): 187–190, 240f., 245, 247 Seurat, Georges (1859–1891): 288 Shahn, Ben (1898–1969): 245 Sharett, Moshe (1894–1965): 333, 337 Siedhoff, Werner (1899–1976): 106 Simon, Andor: 137 Simon, Jolán (1885–1938): 137, 148 Simonson, Lee (1888–1967): 24, 208 Singer, Franz (1896–1954): 74f., 113 Smithson, Robert (1938–1973): 309–312, 314 Soby, James Thrall (1906–1979): 258 Sonfist, Alan (*1946): 309 Sottsass, Ettore (1917–2007): 309 Starr, Cecile (*1921): 186, 190 Stefan, Paul (1879–1943): 195f., 204 Stephan, Ruth (1925–1975): 15 Steiner, Hugo (1878–1969): 86, 91 Steiner, Lilly, née Lilly Hofmann, (1884–1961): 86, 91, 95 Stella, Frank (*1936): 297, 301 Still, Clyfford (1904–1980): 41 Stoedtner, Franz (1870–1946): 339 Stoller, Ezra (1915–2004): 339 Stravinsky, Igor (1882–1971): 115f., 123, 132, 194, 200 Strnad, Oskar (1879–1935): 22, 91f., 96 Stuckenschmidt, Hans Heinz (1901–1988): 194, 197, 204 Sugarman, George (1912–1999): 300 Sukenik, Eliezer (1889–1953): 333 Suschny, Hans: 139, 145, 148 Sutnar, Ladislav (1897–1976): 48, 240 Swedenborg, Emanuel (1688–1772): 276 Sweeney, James Johnson (1900–1986): 36, 51, 173, 176, 237, 245, 247, 259 Swiczinsky, Helmut (*1944): 309 T Tairov, Alexander (1885–1950): 143, 146, 149 Tanguy, Yves (1900–1955): 34f., 50, 271, 278, 358 Tanning, Dorothea (1910–2012): 32, 50 Tatlin, Vladimir (1885–1953): 61 Taut, Bruno (1880–1938): 339f. Taeuber-Arp, Sophie (1889–1943): 220f., 223–228, 236, 283

Teige, Karel (1900–1951): 143 Teltscher, Georg (1904–1983): 101, 108, 144 Theremin, Léon (1896–1993): 201 Thomson, Virgil (1896–1989): 15, 29, 197, 202, 205, 313 Tietze-Conrat, Erica (1883–1958): 10, 19, 47, 82–96, 138, 180, 190 Tietze, Hans (1880–1954): 19, 39, 51, 84–86, 90, 93–96, 138–140, 148, 153 Tillich, Paul (1886–1965): 40, 51 Timms, Edward (1937–2018): 67f., 70, 81f. Toller, Ernst (1893–1939): 91 Toraldo, Cristiano (*1941): 309 Toyen (Marie Čermínová) (1902–1980): 35, 50 Tschumi, Bernard (*1944): 309 Tuszynsky, Ladislaus (1876–1943): 103 Twombly, Cy (1928–2011): 319 Tzara, Tristan (1896–1963): 21–23, 47, 161, 199, 201, 205 U Uitz, Béla (1887–1972): 91, 136–140, 147f. Újvári, Erzsi, née Erzsébet Kassák, (1899–1940): 137, 147 Ukeles, Mierle (Mierle Laderman Ukeles) (*1939): 309 V Vajda, Sándor: 145, 148f. Valentin, Curt (1902–1954): 224f., 229, 236 Van der Leck, Bart (1876–1958): 151 Van Eesteren, Cornelis (1897–1988): 22 Varèse, Edgard (1883–1965): 44f., 49, 52, 161, 201 Vasari, Ruggero (1898–1968): 117–119, 132 Vass, Gene (1922–1996): 304 Vass, Joan (1925–2011): 304 Venturi, Robert (*1925): 309 Vertov, Dziga (David Abelevich Kaufman) (1896–1954): 288 Viertel, Berthold (pseudonym Europäensis, Parolles) (1885–1953): 10, 68, 70–82, 105, 113 Viertel, Salka, née Salomea Sara Steuermann, (1889–1978): 74f., 81 Vordemberge-Gildewart, Friedrich (1899– 1962): 224, 236 W Wagner, Otto (1841–1918): 70 Walden, Herwarth (1878–1941): 60, 98, 103 Wallerstein, Victor (1878–1944): 91 Warhol, Andy (1928–1987): 44f., 304 Wassilko, Otty von: 167 Wauer, Wilhelm (William Wauer) (1866– 1962): 103 Webb, Michael (*1937): 309 Weber, Kem (1889–1963): 208, 213

Index

Wedderkop, Hans von (1875–1956): 197 Wegerif-Gravestein, Agathe (1867–1944): 21, 201 Weininger, Andor (1899–1986): 108 Werfel, Franz (1890–1945): 87 Westheim, Paul (1886–1963): 92, 96 Wiegand, Charmion von (1896–1983): 173, 176 Wiener, Paul Lester (1895–1967): 188 Wieselthier, Vally (1895–1945): 49, 208 Wiley Corbett, Harvey (1873–1954): 22f., 47, 95 Wilk, Jacob: 94 Wils, Jan (1891–1972): 22 Wilson, Edmund (1895–1972): 333, 343 Wines, James (*1932): 11, 299f., 314, 356, 358 Wines, Suzan: 305 Wright, Frank Lloyd (1867–1959): 27, 208, 239, 286, 308, 320 Wright, Russel (1904–1976): 208, 210 Y Yadin, Yigael (1917–1984): 333, 337, 343 Young, Marguerite (1908–1995): 15 Z Zevi, Adachiara: 326, 328 Zevi, Bruno (1918–2000): 319–321, 323, 327 Zervos, Christian (1889–1970): 161 Zweybrück, Emmy (1890–1956): 29 Zyperowitsch, Mura: 138f.

  Places, Associations and Institutions 8th Street Club (The Club), New York City: 40, 43f., 51, 316 A Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts: 293 Akademie der bildenden Künste (Academy of Fine Arts), Vienna: 17, 46, 53 Albertina, Vienna: 88 Ant Farm: 309 Anthology Film Archives, New York City: 132, 190, 256 Arbeiterzeitung (daily newspaper), Vienna: 89 Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Workers Council for Art), Berlin: 59 Archigram: 309 Architectural Forum (magazine), Boston, Massachusetts: 27, 46, 48, 175, 343 Architectural Record (magazine), New York City: 29, 48f., 51, 249f., 252f., 262 Arts & Decoration (magazine), New York City: 212, 218

351 Art Front (magazine), New York City: 268, 279 Art Students League, New York City: 289 Art of This Century, New York City: 30f., 35, 49f., 176, 183f., 190, 222f., 235, 245, 253–256, 262, 282, 291, 297, 320 Art of This Century Films, Inc.: 185 AUDAC (American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen), New York City: 23f., 27, 47, 207–210, 213, 217f. Aufbau (magazine), New York City, Zurich: 81, 187, 190 Austro American Tribune (magazine), New York City: 80 B Ballets Russes (Paris 1909–1911, Monte Carlo 1911–1929): 115 Bauhaus (Weimar 1919–1925, Dessau 1925–1932, Berlin 1932–1933): 10, 19, 28, 48, 57, 59, 62–64, 74, 97–108, 110, 112f., 143f., 149, 152, 163, 213, 216–218, 286, 320, 334, 354 Bécsi Magyar Újság (daily newspaper), Vienna: 135, 148 Berliner Börsen-Courier (daily newspaper): 56, 66, 81 Berliner Tageblatt (daily newspaper): 59, 66, 80, 112 Brooklyn Daily Eagle (daily newspaper): 198, 205 Brooklyn Museum, New York City: 23, 168, 176, 210, 217f., 220, 235, 251 Buchholz Gallery, New York City: 224 C Café Central, Vienna: 68, 72, 81 Café du Dome, Paris: 123 Café Imperial, Vienna: 72 Café Museum, Vienna: 18, 72 Caffè Rosati: 321 Carnegie Hall, New York City: 200 Central Park Casino, New York City: 207 Circus Schumann on Schiffbauerdamm, Berlin: 55 City College of New York City: 183 Contimporanul (avant-garde magazine), Rumania: 143, 149 Coop Himmelb(l)au, Vienna: 309 Cubist Scenography, Paris: 120 CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne): 237–242, 244, 246f. Columbia University, New York City: 27, 29, 31, 49, 172, 176, 202, 237, 249, 284, 288 Coordinating Council of French Relief Societies, New York City: 50, 221

D Dada, Neo-Dadaists: 61, 63f., 74, 136, 147, 178, 187, 189–191, 199, 219, 251, 302 Das Zelt (The Tent) (magazine), Munich: 138, 148 De Stijl (artist association and magazine), Leiden: 10, 18, 22, 36f., 47, 51, 61, 63f., 66, 87, 95, 97,99, 112, 117–120, 122, 132, 149, 151–153, 155–158, 160f., 163–166, 169, 175, 180f., 190, 288, 294, 320 Der Gong (puppet theater), Vienna: 141, 148 Der Sturm (gallery and magazine), Berlin: 60, 66, 113, 148 Die Bühne (magazine), Vienna: 148f., 196, 204 Die Fackel (magazine), Vienna: 78f., 82 Die Tribüne für Freie Deutsche Literatur und Kunst in Amerika (The Tribune for Free German Literature and Art in America), New York City: 80 Die Truppe (The Troupe), Berlin: 73–76, 78, 105, 109 Die Wage (magazine), Vienna: 140, 148 Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem: 334, 343 F Film Arts Guild, New York City: 24, 297 Forma 1 group: 316 Frankl Galleries, New York City: 207 Freie Bewegung (Free Movement), Vienna: 137, 148 G G: Zeitschrift für elementare Gestaltung (magazine), Berlin: 87, 112, 163, 165, 180, 190, 205 Galerie »Au Sacre du Printemps«, Paris: 196 Galerie Maeght, Paris: 33f., 223, 240, 242, 247, 259, 269, 277, 279 Galerie van Diemen, Berlin: 60, 139 Galerie Würthle, Vienna: 139, 148 Gallery Dudensing, New York City: 173, 176 Gallery of Living Art, New York City: 220 Gesellschaft zur Förderung moderner Kunst in Wien (Society for the Promotion of Modern Art in Vienna): 10, 19, 47, 95f., 138, 139 Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California: 187, 191, 279, 309 Gläserne Kette (The Crystal Chain): 59 Good Furniture and Decoration (magazine): 208 Gotham Book Mart, New York City: 35, 50 R. H. Gottesman Foundation, New York City: 36, 51, 232, 323 Grand Central School of Art, New York City: 266 Grand Palais, Paris: 21, 123, 199

352

Index

Great Jones Gallery, New York City: 43 Guarino Gallery, New York City: 126f., 133 H Harper’s Bazaar (magazine), New York City: 39, 51, 323 Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts: 46, 217, 237, 248, 279, 297, 316 Haus-Rucker-Co (Haus-Rucker), Vienna, Düsseldorf, 309 Hebbel-Theater, Berlin: 58 Hebrew University, Jerusalem: 334, 340f., 344 Hofmann School of Fine Arts, New York City: 287, 289 Hôtel Helvétia, Paris: 197 Hugo Gallery, New York City: 33, 50, 269, 271, 273, 279 I Illustrierte Kronenzeitung (daily newspaper), Vienna: 102f. Israel Museum, Jerusalem: 231, 331, 334, 338, 340, 343f. Italian Futurists: 63, 141 J Jay’s Shoes, Buffalo, New York: 28 Julien Levy Gallery, New York City: 32, 273, 292 Juilliard School of Music, New York City: 28, 183, 200, 203, 205, 221 Juilliard String Quartet: 15, 43, 314 K Kamernij, Moscow: 120 Karlsplatz, Vienna: 18, 46, 69, 72 k.k. Technische Hochschule (Imperial and Royal College of Technology), Vienna: 17 Knesset, Jerusalem: 337, 342 Kootz Gallery, New York City: 39, 294–296 Kunstgewerbeschule (College of Applied Arts), Vienna: 113, 140, 141, 148 L L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui (magazine), Paris: 243, 248, 314 League of Composers, New York City: 172 Leo Castelli Gallery, New York City: 45, 131, 301, 303 L’Espresso (weekly news magazine), Rome: 320, 327 Library of Congress, Washington, DC: 204f., 358 The Little Review (magazine), Chicago, Illinois, New York City: 123, 133, 143, 149, 158, 166, 181, 190, 199, 251 Louvre, Paris: 235, 335 Lustspielhaus, Berlin: 76f.

M MA (artist association and magazine), Budapest, Vienna: 20, 91, 135–140, 142–145, 147–149, 153, 163 Malik-Verlag, Berlin: 65 Mellon Galleries, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 265, 279 Merz (dadaist magazine): 165, 175 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City: 269 Meyerhold Theater, Moscow: 120 MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts: 49, 132, 189, 237, 247, 263, 314 Modernage Furniture Company, New York City: 28, 212f., 218 Morphosis, Los Angeles, California, New York City: 309 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City: 15, 26, 30, 35–39, 41, 49–51, 61, 64, 125, 133, 182, 216f., 221, 224, 232f., 235–237, 244, 248, 251, 254, 258f., 263, 286, 288f., 297, 304, 323, 344, 354 Museum Folkwang, Hagen, Hesse: 27 N Naschmarkt, Vienna: 89 National Library of Israel, Jerusalem: 341 Neiman Marcus, Dallas, Texas: 286 Neon (magazine), Paris: 35, 50 Neue Freie Presse (newspaper), Vienna: 21, 47, 149 Neue Galerie (Otto Kallir-Nirenstein), Vienna: 91, 96, 139 Neues Wiener Journal (daily newspaper), Vienna: 112, 156, 163 Neues Wiener Theater, Vienna: 86 Newark Airport Administration Building: 267f. The Newark Ledger (daily newspaper): 268, 279 Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey: 268 New Bauhaus, Chicago, Illinois: 217 New School for Social Research, Brentwood, New York City: 176, 239 New York Public Library, New York City: 23, 80, 171, 183, 205 New York School, New York City: 42f., 49 The New York Times (daily newspaper), New York City: 124, 133, 200, 204f., 217f., 223, 297, 343 The New York Times Magazine (weekly newspaper supplement), New York City: 223 New York University, Institute of Fine Arts, New York City: 238 Noi: Rivista d’Arte Futurista (magazine), Rome: 116, 118–121, 132, 143, 149 Novembergruppe (November Group), Berlin: 59, 66, 194 Nyolcak (The Eight), Hungary: 137

O Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie, Vienna: 138 P Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 38f., 50–52, 227, 235, 251, 260, 261, 263, 278f., 302, 355 Progressive Architecture (magazine), New York City: 18, 46, 66, 91, 132, 151, 163f., 189, 343 Q Quarterly Brochure (magazine), New York City: 126 Der Querschnitt (magazine), Berlin: 163, 197 R Raimund Theater, Vienna: 90 Récamier, Madame (film, 1920): 322 Retailing, Home Furnishings Edition (magazine): 24, 48, 218 Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam: 335 Robert-Bühnen (Robert Stages), Berlin, Vienna: 86 Rose Fried Gallery, New York City: 318, 327 Roxy Theatre, New York City: 125f. S Saks Fifth Avenue, New York City: 24, 125–127 Schule für Bildende Kunst, Munich: 289 Schwarzwaldschule (Eugénie Schwarzwald’s reformist girls’ school), Vienna: 138 Sears, Roebuck and Co., Chicago, Illinois: 28 Secession, Berlin: 58 Secession, Vienna: 84 Shakespeare & Company, Paris: 194 Shelter (magazine): 27, 48, 161, 164, 227, 231 Sidney Janis Gallery, New York City: 227, 234, 283–285, 355 Simon and Schuster, New York City: 46, 50, 234, 327, 343 SITE, New York City: 313f., 356 Société Anonyme, Inc., New York City: 23, 26f., 47, 95, 126, 168, 176, 220, 251, 263 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City: 26, 36, 48, 235, 284, 354 Sozialdemokratische Kunststelle (Social Democratic Arts Section), Vienna: 67, 78, 204 Stadttheater Jena: 108 Stavba (magazine), Prague: 143, 149 Superstudio, Florence: 309 Structural Studies Associates (SSA): 27

Index

T Teatro Costanzi, Rome: 116 Theater am Kurfürstendamm, Berlin: 54, 58, 75, 86, 153, 163 Theatre Arts Monthly (magazine), Detroit, Michigan, New York City: 48, 133 Theatre Guild, New York City: 199, 205 U UFO, Florence: 309 Underwood & Underwood, Ottawa, Kansas, New York City: 168 University of California, Berkeley: 289, 297, 354 University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia: 316 University of Rome, Faculty of Architecture: 322 V Vanity Fair (magazine), New York City: 125 View (magazine), New York City: 31, 50, 257f., 263 Vogue (magazine), New York City: 124, 133, 323 VVV (magazine), New York City: 31, 50, 185, 190, 254f., 263, 292, 297 W Wailing Wall, Jerusalem: 324 Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City: 132, 217, 290, 296f., 343 Wiener Konzerthaus, Vienna: 79, 94, 140, 190 Wiener Werkstätten, Vienna: 71 Women’s Wear Daily (magazine), New York City: 208, 218 Works Progress Administration (WPA): 268, 289 World (weekly/monthly newspaper), Johannesburg: 124 World House Galleries, New York City: 230, 320 Y Yad Vashem, Jerusalem: 337f. Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut: 18, 46f., 50, 95, 176, 179, 190, 205, 217, 263, 279 Z Zander & Labisch, Berlin: 77

353 Conferences, Exhibitions and Events 15 Americans, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, 1952: 36, 41, 50, 297 A Ann Arbor Conference on Design, University of Michigan, School of Architecture, 1940: 49, 239 ARP, Art of This Century, New York City, 1944: 223, 235 AUDAC, Twelfth Annual Home Show, Grand Central Palace, (Home Show) New York City, 1930: 24, 208–210, 218 AUDAC’s exhibition, Brooklyn Museum, New York City, 1931: 210 B Bloodflames 1947, Hugo Gallery, New York City, 1947: 33, 50, 269, 272f., 279 C CIAM conference, 6th, Bridgwater, 1947: 240f. CIAM conference, 7th, Bergamo, 1949: 244 Cubism and Abstract Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, 1936: 36, 251, 288, 297 D De Stijl, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, 1952–1953: 36f., 51 E Erste Russische Kunstausstellung, Galerie van Diemen unter den Linden, Berlin, 1922: 60, 97, 139 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts), Paris, 1925: 60, 97, 139 Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme (International Surrealist Exhibition), Galerie Maeght, Paris, 1947: 33f., 50, 188, 223, 240, 244, 259, 269, 272, 277, 317 F Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, 1936: 251 First Papers of Surrealism, Whitelaw Reid Mansion, New York City, 1942: 31, 50, 221, 256 G Galaxies by Kiesler, Sidney Janis Gallery, New York City, 1954: 284 Große Berliner Kunstausstellung (Great Berlin Art Exhibition): 60f., 175

H First Exhibition: Hans Hofmann, Art of This Century, New York City, 1944: 291, 297 I The Imagery of Chess, Julien Levy Gallery, New York City, 1944–1945: 32, 50, 186, 190 Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik (International Exhibition of New Theater Techniques), Konzerthaus, Vienna, 1924: 10, 19, 47, 54, 62, 66, 78, 84, 86, 92f., 95f., 100f., 112f., 141–143, 145, 147, 149, 154f., 163, 178–180, 189, 195 International Exhibition of Decorative Arts, Monza, 1927: 129 International Exhibition of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York City, 1926: 168, 176, 220, 263 The International Style, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, 1932: 64 International Theatre Exposition, New York City, 1926: 23, 47, 104, 112, 123–125, 133, 143, 158, 169, 175, 181f. Internationale Kunstausstellung, Secession, Vienna, 1924: 84f., 95, 175 J Juryfreie Kunstausstellung (Jury-free Art Exhibition), Berlin, 1923: 63 K Kongress der Union Internationaler Fortschrittlicher Künstler (Congress of the International Union of Progressive Artists), Weimar 1922: 152 M Modern Architecture: International Exhibition, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, 1932: 36, 50 Modern Sculpture: USA, Museum of Modern Art, New York City and Paris, 1965: 39 The Muralist and the Modern Architect, Kootz Gallery, New York City, 1950: 39, 294f. Musik- und Theaterfest der Stadt Wien, 1924: 78, 92, 140, 153 O Old and New Paths in American Design, Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey, 1936: 268 P Painting in the United States, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1945: 273, 279

354

Index

S Symposium on Contemporary Architecture, New York University, 1939: 238 Symposium, “How to Combine Architecture, Painting and Sculpture”, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, 1951: 244 T Two Houses. New Ways to Build, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, 1952: 36 V Venice Biennale: 323f., 327 Visionary Architecture, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, 1960: 36, 38, 45 W Werkbundausstellung (Werkbund exhibition), Cologne, 1914: 339f.

Projects by Kiesler A Figue Anti-Tabou (Anti-Taboo Fig), sculpture: 224, 236, 244, 259 Aphrodite’s Left Turn, film script/story board: 255f., 263 Art of This Century, exhibition design: 30f., 35, 49f., 176, 183–185, 190, 222f., 235, 245, 253–256, 262, 282, 291, 297, 320 AUDAC Home Show, exhibition design: 24, 208–210, 218 B Bed Couch, furniture design: 215–217 “Biotechnique versus Architecture”, article: 237 Bloodflames 1947, exhibition design: 33, 50, 269, 272f., 279 Nucleus House, architecture: 28 C Contemporary Art Applied to the Store and Its Display, book: 125, 128, 133, 160, 164, 169, 176, 293, 297 Correalist Chairs, furniture design: 271 Correalist Rocker, furniture design: 282 D Daylight Gallery, Art of This Century, exhibition design: 183f., 222, 291 “Design-Correlation”, Column in Architectural Record, article series: 49, 249f., 262f. Dreams That Money Can Buy, film booklet: 183, 185–188, 191, 256f., 263

E The Emperor Jones, stage design: 54, 59, 63, 75–77, 79, 82, 105, 109, 153, 178–181 Endless House, architecture: 31, 35f., 39, 50–52, 217, 227, 290, 292, 294, 296f., 303, 306f., 310, 322–324, 326–328 “The Endless House and Its Psychological Lighting”, article: 35, 39, 50f. Endless Theatre, theater architecture: 35f., 57, 144 F Film Guild Cinema, architecture: 127f., 160, 287, 291 Flying Desk, furniture design: 208f. G Galaxies, Galaxy Paintings, painting: 35f., 39–41, 43, 51, 223, 225, 284, 303f., 310, 318, 327 Galaxy D, painting: 223, 225 Galaxy for Nelson Rockefeller, sculpture: 35f., 39, 40 Galaxy H, painting: 223 Grotto for Meditation, architecture: 40 H Helen Retires, stage design, costume design: 28, 200f., 203–205, 221 I Inside the Endless House. Art People and Architecture. A journal, book: 40, 44, 46, 49–52, 82, 234f., 297, 323f., 327, 343f. J Jean Arp (1947), portrait: 224, 232 K “Kunst und Architektur vereint. Ein Manifest des Korrealismus” (Art and architecture united. A manifesto of correalism), unpublished manuscript: 243, 247 L Laboratory for Design-Correlation, Columbia University: 237 “L’Architecture magique de la salle de superstition”, article: 242, 247, 280 Le Dédale, Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, exhibition design: 34, 188 “Ornament and Crime”, lecture: 210 Leger und Trägersystem (L + T), L+T system, exhibition design: 98, 112, 154–158, 163f.

M “Manifeste du Corréalisme”, article: 243f., 247f., 293, 314 “Menschen, Kunst und Architektur. Ein Manifest des Korrealismus” (People, art and architecture. A manifesto of correalism), unpublished manuscript: 243, 248 Mergentime Apartment, interior design: 214–218 The Modern Show Window and Store Front, brochure: 125 N Neue Formen der Demonstration. Die Raumstadt, unpublished book: 97 O “On Correalism and Biotechnique”, article: 237 P Painting Library, Art of This Century, exhibition design: 222f. Party Lounge, furniture design: 213, 215–217 Place de la Concorde, urban planning: 181 R Raumbühne (Space Stage), theater architecture: 20, 26, 47, 54, 57, 61–63, 66, 75–77, 79, 81, 90, 92, 102, 109, 111f., 142, 144, 148f., 154 Raumstadt (City in Space), urban planning/exhibition design: 21f., 36, 87, 97–99, 112, 156f., 164, 166, 180f., 190, 201, 207 R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), stage design: 18f., 54, 58f., 61, 63, 66, 75, 86, 99, 108, 110f., 115f., 118–121, 132, 153, 165, 175, 177f., 194, 205 S Saks Fifth Avenue, New York City, shop window design: 24, 125–127 Salle de Pluie, Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, exhibition design: 34, 277 Salle de Superstition, Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, exhibition design: 34, 223f., 227, 242, 244, 247, 259, 275f., 280 Shell Sculptures, sculpture: 303 Shrine of the Book, architecture: 11, 42f., 231, 234, 294, 305, 329–331, 333–339, 342–344 Space House, architecture: 28, 48, 163, 210–213, 216–218, 292

Index

Space-Poem Dedicated to H(ieronymous) Duchamp, foldout photomontage in View, 1945: 257 Le Rayon Vert (The Green Ray), conceptual drawing: 249, 260, 262 T Thirsty Paper, poetry: 317, 327 Totem of All Religions (Le Totem des religions), sculpture: 35, 224, 236, 259 U Universal Theatre, theater architecture: 27 V Vessel of Fire, sculpture: 319 W World House Galleries, exhibition design: 230, 320

355

356 Authors’ Biogra­phies

Lucinda Barnes serves as Curator Emerita at the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, after many years as Chief Curator and Director of Programs and Collections. Prior to BAMPFA, she held senior curatorial posts at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College; and the Newport Harbor Art Museum (now the Orange County Museum of Art). Barnes is currently at work on Hans Hofmann: The Nature of Abstraction, a major retrospective exhibition set to premiere at BAMPFA in February 2019. Raffaele Bedarida is an art historian and curator specializing in art, politics, and cultural diplomacy between Europe and America in the 20th century. As Assistant Professor of Art History at Cooper Union, New York, he regularly lectures on modern and contemporary art topics at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and MoMA. Torsten Blume works as artistic and research associate at the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, where he curated many exhibitions including Mensch-Raum-Maschine, Bühnenexperimente am Bauhaus (Dessau, Oslo, Seoul, 2013) and Große Pläne. Die angewandte Moderne in Sachsen-Anhalt 1919–1933 (2016). His research focuses on the historic Bauhausbühne (Bauhaus stage) as an educational format. He is currently developing a project called “Performative Architektonik. Leibesübungen für Gestalter” in cooperation with national and international universities which aims to update the stage pedagogy of Bauhaus. Dieter Bogner is an art historian, university lecturer, curator and museum planner. In 1989 he developed the concept for the MuseumsQuartier in Vienna. In 1994 he founded the company bogner.cc (since 2017: bogner. knoll), dedicated to museological specialist planning, curating the presentations of collections and the development of cultural and strategic museum concepts. Bogner is a founder of the Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation. Together with Gertraud Bogner he manages Kunstraum Buchberg, Schloss Buchberg am Kamp, a private collection of site-specific contemporary art installations. Peter Bogner is an art historian, curator and cultural manager. After positions as secretary general of the Austrian Gallery Association and as director of the Vienna Künstlerhaus, he is currently director of the Frederick Kiesler Foundation. Most recently he (co-)curated Frederick Kiesler: Architect, Artist, Visionary at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, personal shows on Laurence Weiner, Bruce Nauman, Andres Jacque and a survey exhibition on the laureates of the Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts.

Authors’ Biographies

Stephanie Buhmann is the Director of The Estate of Frederick Kiesler, New York and a doctoral candidate in the History of Art at the Humboldt University, Berlin. In 2015, she received an Archive and Library Stipend from the Arp Foundation, Berlin and was a Sheila Hugh Mackay Foundation Critic-in-Residence at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in New Brunswick, Canada in 2016. She is the author of New York Studio Conversations—Seven­ teen Women Talk About Art (2016), Berlin Studio Conversations—Twenty Women Talk About Art (2017) and New York Studio Conversations Part II—TwentyOne Women Talk About Art (2018). Marilyn F. Friedman is a design historian who focuses on the development and popularization of modern design across America during the 1920s and 30s. She is the author of Selling Good Design: Promoting the Early Modern Interior (2003) and Making America Modern: Interior Design in the 1930s (2018). She has contributed articles to various design journals and museum publications and has lectured widely. Judit Galácz is an art historian and associate curator at the Hungarian Theatre Museum and Institute—Gizi Bajor Actors’ Museum and PhD candidate at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. Her research focuses on the history of avant-garde theatre in Hungary in the 1910s–1920s. Tilo Grabach has a PhD in history of art. He wrote a thesis entitled Kiesler, Glarner, Barr. Ansätze zur Rekon­ struktion einer Aesthetic Community um Piet Mondrian. Grabach has worked as a consultant for press and public relations as well as scientific assistant to the director at Kunstsammlungen und Museen Augsburg since 2005. He has curated numerous exhi­ bitions and contributed essays on art of the 19th, 20th and 21st century. Since January 2019 Grabach has been head of the 19th to 21st century art and design collection at Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg. Almut Grunewald has a PhD in history of art. She wrote a thesis entitled Friedrich Kiesler. Seine Skulpturen und sein offenes künstlerisches Konzept. She has worked as a research associate at the Neue Sammlung— The Design Museum at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich. Since 2005 she has been working as a project manager at the gta archive of the ETH Zurich. Carroll Janis was associated with the Sidney Janis Gallery during most of its fifty years existence and was its President and Director for two decades. He has taught in the Art History Departments of Columbia and Hunter Colleges in New York and in recent years has

357 published on: Leonardo, Marcel Duchamp, Jackson Pollock, Hans Arp and George Segal. Alexander Kauffman Alexander Kauffman is an art historian, educator, and curator. He is the Andrew W. Mellon-Anne d’Harnoncourt Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow in European Painting and Sculpture at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and an expert on the art of Marcel Duchamp. Laura McGuire is an architecture and design historian. She earned her PhD from the University of Texas at Austin and was the recipient of a U.S. Fulbright grant and an OeAD Richard Plaschka stipend for her work on Frederick Kiesler. McGuire is an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where she teaches architectural history and theory. Her essays have appeared in books, exhibition catalogs and journals, including Architectures of Display: Department Stores and Modern Retail (2017); Endless Kiesler (2015); Frederick Kiesler: Theatervisionär – Architekt – Künstler (2012); and Norman Bel Geddes Designs America (2012). Jill Meißner-Wolfbeisser has been working as an archivist and researcher at the Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation in Vienna since 2011. She earned Master degrees in Comparative Literature as well as in Theater, Film and Media Studies at the University of Vienna. She is currently writing a dissertation on Stefi Kiesler and the exiled community of Germanspeaking literati in New York during World War II. Mauro Piccinini is a freelance scholar living in Switzerland. He is currently writing the first complete biography of composer George Antheil and has published on musical and literary subjects, especially on the American musical avant-garde. Katharina Prager is a historian and cultural scientist. She works on Karl Kraus at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Geschichte und Gesellschaft and the Wienbibliothek. Her most recent exhibition at Wienbibliothek is Geist versus Zeitgeist: Karl Kraus in der Ersten Republik. Hani Rashid is the Design Principal and Co-Founder of New York based Asymptote Architecture. His ongoing academic career includes visiting professorships at the most distinguished universities. He is currently the Director of a Graduate Design Studio at the Uni­ versity of Applied Arts in Vienna. In 2000 Hani Rashid co-represented the United States at the 7th Venice Architecture Biennale, served on the Aga Khan steering committee for the international Archi­ tecture Prize and was awarded the Luis Barragán

358

Authors’ Biographies

Chair in Mexico. He also received the Austrian Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts in 2004. He presided the Frederick Kiesler Foundation in Vienna from 2013 to 2017. Elana Shapira is Project Leader of the Austrian Science Fund research project “Visionary Vienna: Design and Society 1918–1934” and is Senior Postdoctoral Fellow and lecturer in Design History and Theory at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Shapira is co-editor of Émigré Cultures in Design and Architecture (2017) and the editor of Design Dialogue: Jews, Culture and Viennese Modern (2018). Valentina Sonzogni is presently the director of the Archivio Piero Dorazio. She has previously worked, among other places, at the Frederick Kiesler Foundation and she is the co-director of the philosophy journal Animot. L’altra filosofia. Merse Pál Szeredi is an art historian, researcher and curator at the Petőfi Literary Museum—Kassák Museum and PhD candi date at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. His research focuses on the international networks of the Hungarian avant-garde during the 1920s. Michael R. Taylor has a PhD in history of art and is Chief Curator and Deputy Director at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia. A highly regarded scholar and curator, he has organized a large number of exhibi­ tions, including Salvador Dalí: The Centennial Retro­ spective (with Dawn Ades) (2004); Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective (2009); and Picasso and the AvantGarde in Paris (2010). In 2010, Taylor’s exhibition catalog, Marcel Duchamp: Étant donnés, won the vprestigious George Wittenborn Art Book Prize. Christian Welzbacher has a PhD in history of art and is based in Berlin. He works as a journalist, curator and translator. His recent publications include Das totale Museum (2017) and Europas Moscheen. Islamische Architektur im Aufbruch (2017). James Wines winner of the 2013 National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement, is the founder and president of SITE, an environmental art and design organization chartered in New York City in 1970. His architecture, landscape and public space designs are based on a response to surrounding contexts. He has designed and built more than one hundred and fifty projects for private and municipal clients in eleven countries. James Wines is also a Professor of Architecture at Penn State Univer­ sity. The main focus of his current work is on the fusion of art, architecture and landscape, plus the writing of essays on environmental topics.

Gerd Zillner is archivist, curator and senior researcher at the Frederick Kiesler Foundation. He (co-)curated several exhibitions including most recently Frederick Kiesler: Architect, Artist, Visionary at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin (2017). Currently he is working, together with Spyros Papapetros, Princeton University, on the edition of Frederick Kiesler’s unpublished book manuscript Magic Architecture. The Story of Human Housing, for which they received a Graham Foundation Grant.

359 Credits

This publication is a true matter of the heart. To research Frederick Kiesler’s artistic context and network was, is and remains a desideratum of the research conducted by the Frederick Kiesler Founda­­tion. On that basis the idea of putting Kiesler in a dialogue with his artist friends was obvious. The concept of collecting these dialogues in an edited volume was first developed on the occa­ sion of the exhibition Frederick Kiesler: Architect, Artist, Visionary at Berlin’s Martin-Gropius-Bau in 2017. Finally it gave way to the format of a classical exhibition catalog. This, however, made it pos­ sible to extend and enhance the academic character of the present publication. A lot had happened between the first concepts and the printing of this book: Elke Delugan-Meissl assumed the presidency of the Frederick Kiesler Foundation from Hani Rashid in 2019. Andrés Jaque (2016) and Yona Friedman (2018) received the Kiesler Prize, and Jill Meißner-Wolfbeisser, whom the editors would like to thank in particular for her editorial work, gave birth to a daughter. Jill played a major role in the success of the project. Without her devotion and endurance the publication would have never taken shape. Katja Weingartshofer, who replaced her during the maternity leave, completed the work she had begun. As office manager and assistant to the director Isabelle Abrokat accompanied every stage of the project. The editors would like to thank her in particular. The trust and support of Angelika Heller and David Marold from Birkhäuser Verlag should be mentioned at this point, too. Their commitment and patience deserves admiration. The book owes its great look to the wonderful design by Katja Hasenöhrl and Paulus M. Dreibholz from Atelier Dreibholz. It was a pleasure to work with them!

The editors would like to thank the following friends and colleagues for their help and support, which contributed to this book in a variety of ways—Armand Bartos Jr., Carlos Basualdo, Günter Berghaus, Virginia Beyer, Matthias Boeckl, Martin Böhm, Ralf Burmeister, Alexandra Caruso, Sylvia Eisenburger, Sebastian Hackenschmidt, Bechara Helal, James Housefield, Alexander Kaiser, Alexander Koisser, Eva Maria Kraus, Joachim Krausse, Markus Kristan, Liane Lefaivre, Barbara Lesák, Christopher Long, Barbara Ludwig, Jason McCoy, James McManus, Marianna Nenning, Ben Nicholson, Spyros Papapetros, Monika Pessler, Monika Platzer, Howard Pollack, Bernadette Reinhold, Anna Sauer, Gudrun Schreiber, Jasper Sharp, Gereon Sievernich and Przemysław Strożek.

Imprint

Editors Peter Bogner, Gerd Zillner

Library of Congress Control Number 2018937437

Frederick Kiesler Foundation www.kiesler.org

Bibliographic information published by the German National Library The German National Library lists this publication in the Deutsche National­ bibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

Printed with financial support of Bundeskanzleramt Österreich Dorotheum Gesellschaft der Freunde der bildenden Künste Hotel Beethoven Vienna With Contributions by Lucinda Barnes, Raffaele Bedarida, Torsten Blume, Dieter Bogner, Peter Bogner, Stephanie Buhmann, Marilyn F. Friedman, Judit Galácz, Tilo Grabach, Almut Grunewald, Carroll Janis, Alexander Kauffman, Laura McGuire, Jill MeißnerWolfbeisser, Mauro Piccinini, Katharina Prager, Hani Rashid, Elana Shapira, Valentina Sonzogni, Merse Pál Szeredi, Michael Taylor, Christian Welzbacher, James Wines, Gerd Zillner Project management Frederick Kiesler Foundation Jill Meißner-Wolfbeisser, A–Vienna Assistance: Katja Weingartshofer Acquisitions Editor David Marold, Birkhäuser Verlag, A–Vienna Project and Production Editor Angelika Heller, Birkhäuser Verlag, A–Vienna Translation from German into English Richard Watts, A–Graz Translation from Hungarian into English Júlia Laki, HU–Budapest Proof reading Alun Brown, A–Vienna Book design and typography Atelier Dreibholz, Paulus M. Dreibholz and Katja Hasenöhrl, A–Vienna

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in other ways, and storage in databases. For any kind of use, permission of the copyright owner must be obtained. ISBN 978-3-0356-1550-0 eISBN 978-3-0356-1541-8 © 2019 Birkhäuser Verlag GmbH, Basel P.O. Box 44, 4009 Basel, Switzerland Part of Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/ Boston © Cover image: Yves Tanguy, Kay Sage, Maria Martins, Enrico Donati, Marcel Duchamp and Frederick Kiesler at Town Farm, Woodbury/Connecticut, May 23, 1948 [Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna] Unless otherwise indicated, all images are © Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna. 987654321 www.birkhauser.com We thank all copyright holders for kindly giving us permission to reproduce their images. Every effort has been made to trace and contact the copyright holders, but if there have been any inadvertent omissions, all claims should be addressed to Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna, Austria.

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