Ways and Byways. Tel-Aviv Museum of Art, October 26, 2012–April 20, 2013

124 book reviews Friedrich Adler: Ways and Byways. Tel-Aviv Museum of Art, October 26, 2012–April 20, 2013. Cata- logue by Batsheva Goldman Ida, (Tel-Aviv, 2012). Paperback, 123 pp., 96 ill., (57 color), Hebrew/ English. NIS 60. Forging Ahead: Wolpert and Gumbel, Israeli Silversmiths for the Modern Age. Israel Museum, Jeru- salem, November 23, 2012–April 6, 201. Catalogue by Sharon Weiser-Ferguson, (Jerusalem, 2012). Hardback, 193 pp., Hebrew/English. Common Roots. Design Map of Central Europe. Design Museum Holon, November 15–February 23, 2013. Catalogue edited by Agnieszka Jacobson and Galit Gaon (Holon, 2012). Hardback, 176 pp., Hebrew/English. NIS 80. New Narratives and Legacies of Israeli Modernisms the connections between Israeli design and the design produced in the ten Central and Eastern European Three exhibitions at Israeli museums this year, each countries between Russia and Germany since World accompanied by a catalog, could prove to be milestones War II, during and after Communist rule. in the study of Israeli design. By viewing the contribu- Taken together, the exhibition catalogs offer a tions of Ludwig Yehuda Wolpert, David Heinz Gumbel reevaluation of the key period during which the “Zion- and Friedrich Adler to the development of a local visual ist revolution” adopted modern design, by showing how language, we learn not only about the founding fathers modernism was fundamentally linked to the process of Israeli design, but also about how their work reflects of national renewal. At first glance there seems to be the process of forging a national identity during the a contradiction between the universal, “mechanistic” creative height of the modernist movement. While it identity attributed to modernism, and the idea of being would be incorrect to call the visual language that they rooted in the land that characterizes Jewish national- constructed original, their choice of particular elements ism. But in the past several years an increasing number from within the International repertoire, and the way of studies have appeared challenging most of the myths they adapted theoretical principles to the Israeli con- associated with modernism, including those attached text, laid the groundwork for a design language whose to the Bauhaus school.1 As a result, any analysis of influence can still be felt today. these three designers, and any reevaluation of the The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, held an exhibition principles that the New Bezalel School bequeathed to of the works of Wolpert and Gumbel, who taught at Israeli design, must adopt an “alternative to the Bau- the New Bezalel school (as it was then known) and haus narrative of modernism,” as Suzanne Landau, the in the 1930s laid the foundations of modern Israeli chief curator of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, notes in metalwork. The Tel Aviv Museum of Art showed the the preface to the Adler exhibition.2 work of Friedrich Adler, who was active in Germany As scholars have come to recognize, the theoretical at the turn of the twentieth century, the period of basis of modern design language was laid already in the most important revolution in the history of mod- the nineteenth century.3 The theories that were devel- ernism. Common Roots at Design Museum Holon, oped long before the Bauhaus opened its doors, or Le added another dimension to the works of these three Corbusier published his books, faithfully reflected the German-educated designers. This exhibition revealed mood of that century: on the one hand, they showed 1 See: Barry Bergdoll and Leah Dickerman, Bauhaus 1919–1933: 2 Suzanne Landau, preface to Friedrich Adler: Ways and Byways, Workshops for Modernity (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, by Batsheva Goldman Ida (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2009); Detlef Mertins, Modernity Unbound: Other Histories of Archi- 2012), 123. tectural Modernity (London: AA Publications, 2011); see also Alan 3 Colin Rowe, The Architecture of Good Intentions: Toward a Colquhoun, “Criticism and Self-Criticism in German Modernism,” Possible Retrospect (London: Academy Editions, 1994); Mitchell in the AA Files no. 28, (Autumn 1994): 26–33; Colquhoun, Essays in Schwarzer, German Architectural Theory and the Search for Modern Architectural Criticism: Modern Architecture and Historical Change, Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Harry Fran- (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1985), 46–47; Hilde Heynen, Archi- cis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou, ed. and trans., Empathy, tecture and Modernity: A Critique, (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873–1893 (Santa 1999), 43; Anthony Vidler, Histories of the Immediate Past: Inventing Monica: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, Architectural Modernism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008). 1994). © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2015 IMAGES 7 Also available online—brill.com/ima DOI: 10.1163/18718000-12340024 book reviews 125 enthusiasm for scientific and technological advance- early works, to the angular forms of Expressionism. ment and the freedom embodied in the revolt against But this was not a complete reversal. Adler never the “Old World”; on the other hand, they expressed abandoned decoration, and his fundamental design apprehension toward the “New World,” which was principles never changed: he treated nature as a increasingly perceived as intellectually bankrupt, source of inspiration and sought to give the objects mechanistic and alienating. The flowering of nationalist he designed a spiritual dimension that reflected “the movements, as well as the desire for a renewed con- great, simple and eternal form.” As an artist, he served nection to nature and/or the archaic world, stemmed (in his words) “as a medium and means of continuously from the various attempts to turn design into a tool for creative divine intent in the world, in which we have forging a new union of matter and spirit. Awareness been placed.”4 of the important role of Romanticism in formulating Goldman Ida describes Adler’s joining of the Werk- the theory of modern design also helps to deconstruct bund in 1910 as an important step in his career. Indeed, the enlightened, universalist and rational image that it was the establishment of the Werkbund, more than has usually been associated with the abstract language that of the Bauhaus, that marked the real revolution created in the early twentieth century in Europe and in the history of modern design. Founded in Germany the United States. by government initiative in 1907 as an association of It is in this intellectual context that the develop- designers, architects, intellectuals and industrialists, ment of Israeli design can be understood. Boris Schatz the organization’s members managed to combine founded Bezalel in 1906 with the aim of contributing the functional principles of Arts and Crafts (chief to Jewish national revival. Schatz may have fancied among which were “truth to material” and an empha- himself the Jewish William Morris, adopting the ideals sis on functionalist construction) with the demands of the English Arts and Crafts movement, but his world- of industrial manufacturing. This elite group, which view embodied the Romantic tradition of Central and quickly saw the need to adapt design to the economic Eastern Europe. A combination of ideals characterizes circumstances, contributed significantly to Germany’s Adler’s art; he could have joined Bezalel as an instruc- status as the cradle of the “modernist Revolution” and tor immediately after the school’s establishment. But to its becoming a pioneer of minimalist serial design unlike Schatz, Adler was capable of adapting to changes adapted for a mass society. in the zeitgeist: his shift from Jugendstil to Expression- At first glance it is difficult to find a link between ism and his joining of the Deutscher Werkbund gave Adler’s style and the standardized, industrial character him standing in progressive design circles in Germany attributed to the Werkbund. Similarly, the essays by even as their styles changed, and may have granted Adler included in the exhibition catalog do not seem him entrée to the New Bezalel. to match the materialistic and utilitarian myth that is The exhibition’s curator, Batsheva Goldman Ida, associated with German modernism. The transition hails Adler as a pioneering industrial designer of the to a geometric language, however compatible with modern age. Born in Germany in 1878, he was active in making industrial-type objects, did not eliminate the an era that saw the flowering of German industry at the influence of the Romantic tradition. It is enough to turn of the twentieth century, when awareness of the look at Bruno Taut’s Glass Pavilion, designed for the importance of the design of industrial goods fomented 1914 Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne, or his 1913 a genuine revolution in the field. Adler studied in Monument of Iron—works that featured the most Munich, an important center of the Jugendstil and the representative construction materials of the modern Expressionist movements, and taught in schools that age—to recognize the extent to which the central applied the principles of Arts and Crafts; meanwhile, figures of the Werkbund embraced both Romantic he continued designing decorative objects (fig. 1). In ideals and Expressionist design. Even an examination her catalog, Goldman Ida situates Adler in relation of the minutes of Werkbund meetings upends many to contemporary trends, while also documenting, in assumptions about the modernist revolution of the words and images, his stylistic shift from the curving, early twentieth century, not merely the famous rift flowing lines of Art Nouveau that characterized his between proponents of standard prototypes suitable 4 Friedrich Adler, “About Imagination,” cited in: Batsheva Goldman Ida, Friedrich Adler: Ways and Byways, p. 112..

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