Against Design

Josef Frank’s exhibition at MAK gives a comprehensive overview of the multi-layered oeuvre of an extraordinary designer, while being much more than a survey of his work.

Josef Frank
“One can use everything that can be used,” proclaimed Josef Frank, one of the most important architects and applied artists of modernity, who, with this undogmatic, democratic design approach, was far ahead of his time.
Josef Frank
Top: Josef Frank, Teheran, 1943–1945. Photo © Svenskt Tenn, Stockholm, Sweden. Above: Josef Frank, Villa Beer, Wenzgasse, Vienna, 1929–1931. Photo © Stefan Oláh
More and more, Frank’s architectural sensibility, which placed comfort above form, counts as trend-setting. The exhibition “Josef Frank: Against Design” gives a comprehensive overview of the multi-layered oeuvre of this extraordinary designer, while being much more than a survey of his work. This MAK solo exhibition delves into Frank’s complex intellectual and creative strategies, which continue to gain traction in the international design field. The exhibition title “Against Design” encapsulates this undogmatic stance. Highly productive as a “designer,” Frank developed a plethora of furniture and textiles, while being a leading architect of modernity who grappled with all of the themes having to do with architecture and living environments, including sociopolitical ones.
Josef Frank
Josef Frank, Villa Beer, Wenzgasse, Vienna, 1929–1931. Photo © Stefan Oláh
Within the avant-garde, however, he adopted a very critical position. He expressly declared himself opposed to the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, standardized furnishings, and innovative forms for their own sake. He could not really warm up to either the individual-artistic paradigms of the Wiener Werkstätte or to functional, mechanized production deriving from the Bauhaus. Frank strove for a socially and culture-critically motivated serviceability, for comfort, livability, and stylistic diversity. Despite Josef Frank’s relevance as a leading figure of modernity, his work has been little known up to now. Born into a Jewish family in the town of Baden bei Wien in 1885, Frank studied architecture at the University of Technology in Vienna. Growing anti-Semitism prompted him to emigrate to Sweden in 1933, where he became a citizen in 1939.
Josef Frank
Josef Frank, Secretaire, ca. 1930 (manufacturer Haus & Garten). Photo © MAK/Georg Mayer
During his sojourn in Sweden, Frank was closely affiliated with the home furnishings company Svenskt Tenn as their chief designer. From 1939 to 1947 Frank lived in the USA, where he taught at the renowned New School of Social Research in New York. His hopes of establishing himself as an architect and eventually to become involved in city planning were disappointed, however. Not least with his designs for Svenskt Tenn, many of which are still produced today, did Frank, who died in 1967 in Stockholm, leave his imprint on post-war Swedish design.
Josef Frank
Josef Frank, Portrait, ca. 1960. Photo © Svenskt Tenn, Stockholm, Sweden
Curated by architect Hermann Czech and by Sebastian Hackenschmidt, curator of the MAK Furniture and Woodwork Collection, the exhibition “Josef Frank: Against Design” traces an arc encompassing Frank’s architectural work, his interior and furniture designs, and his theoretical positions.

16 December 2015 – 3 April 2016
Josef Frank: Against Design
MAK
Stubenring 5, Vienna

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