Josef Hoffmann: Placeholder Text
Designed to match the neoclassical grandeur of Peter Behrens’s Festival Hall, Josef Hoffmann formulates this monumental scheme for the Werkbund’s first exhibition in Cologne. Its facade is dominated by a propylaeum-like entrance, lined with fluted pillars. Above, stepped attics raise the gable fronts upward. The lettering is an appropriately Werkbund bold sans-serif, yet in this drawing it has no meaning—the words are complete nonsense. It is a placeholder text.
In another version of the scheme, the inscription features the names of Austrian artists and designers. In its built reality it takes a more rhetorical stance:
DIE WISSENSCHAFT UEBERZEUGT DURCH GRUENDE DIE KUNST SOLL DURCH IHR DASEIN UEBERZEUGEN.
DIE SCHOENHEIT IST DIE VOLLKOMMENEN UEBEREINSTIMMUNG DES SINNLICHEN MIT DEM GEISTIGEN.
Which roughly translates to:
SCIENCE CONVINCES THROUGH REASONS. ART SHOULD CONVINCE THROUGH ITS EXISTENCE.
BEAUTY IS THE PERFECT HARMONY OF THE SENSUAL WITH THE SPIRITUAL.
Thank you to Iain Boyd-Whyte who while combing through Drawing Matter’s works by Otto Wagner, Emil Hoppe, Marcel Kammerer, Otto Schonthal, and Josef Hoffmann, came across this print.