Art for All

In typical Taschen style, the book is 38 centimeters long and weighs over 3 kg. One could easily use a lectern to be able to leaf through it comfortably. It accompanies a travelling exhibition starting at the Schirn Francfort then at the Albertina in Viena until 22 January 2017, and is a surprising trial to render art more democratic through the bias of an old technique, wood engraving. Its interpreters were the most avant gard creators of Viena in 1900, a golden age which continues to nourish a stubborn nostalgia. These artists worked for the mythical magazine Ver Sacrum, for editors of postcards, calendars or advertising brochures, etching urban agitation, bourgeois intimacy or animal’s lives, and they claimed an artisanal status. Most of them have remained little known. A child asleep, a carp swimming, a passing tram. Next to Koloman Moser (one of the founders of the famous Wiener Werkstätte), many other artists deserve to come out of their anonymity: Ditha Moser (Koloman’s first wife), Karl Otto Czeschka, Emil Orlik, Carl Anton Reichel, Franz Karl Delavilla, Franz von Zülow, among others.

• Art for All, directed by Tobias G. Natter, Max Hollein, Klaus Albrecht-Schröder, Taschen, 2016, 414 p., 49, €90.