New York

Think Vienna 1900, and the mind's eye conjures scenes immortalized in the paintings of Rudolf and Franz von Alt and their circle: white-whiskered Emperor Franz Josef emerging from the Baroque splendor of the Hofburg; the tree-lined Ringstrasse; the neo-Renaissance Opera House; the brooding Gothic mass of St. Stephen's cathedral. Yet beneath the delectable cliché of alt Wien seethed a new wave of Modernism unveiled by the first Secessionist exhibition in 1897. Although Rudolf von Alt himself had been named honorary president of the Secession, the group was formed by artists who championed a radical break with the cozy conservatism of old Habsburg culture, among them Gustav Klimt, Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser.

Koloman Moser:

Designing Modern Vienna


Neue Galerie

Through Sept. 2

'Armchair' (c. 1903). Neue Galerie New York

At the Neue Galerie, "Koloman Moser: Designing Modern Vienna, 1897-1907," the first major U.S. retrospective of his work, reveals that although Moser (1868-1918) was long overshadowed by his colleagues, he was possibly the most versatile and prescient Secessionist. Curator Christian Witt-Dörring has selected more than 200 works that emphasize Moser's mastery of furniture, silver, ceramics, glass, jewelry, graphic arts, textiles, interior design and women's fashion (his ungainly dress designs being his least successful efforts). They were produced by an array of manufacturers, including the Wiener Werkstätte, which Moser co-founded and whose logo he designed. The inclusion of a 1910 Austro-Hungarian 100-crown banknote shows that he even designed the money with which clients might pay for it all.

"Moser was trained as a painter," notes Mr. Witt-Dörring, who edited the massive exhibition catalog—a tome hard to lift but harder to put down. "As a painter he worked in two dimensions, but in decorative arts Moser usually worked in three, so his oeuvre projects the bracing tension between managing the flat surface and managing spatial volume."

The exhibition's three galleries evoke the ambiance of Moser's creative world with wall treatments based on specific Moser motifs. In the first, exploring the period from 1898 to 1900, four drawings for book illustrations attest to Moser's thorough training at the venerable Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and summarize the rapid evolution of Moser's style from the realistic shaded naturalism of academic tradition toward a dreamlike manner reminiscent of the contemporaneous Belgian Symbolist Fernand Khnopff, and ultimately to the flat, planar idiom that would become his signature.

Seeking to forge a distinctly Austrian modernist style, Moser took ideas that were in the air and made them his own, often in ways ahead of his time. Certainly the cross-references between Moser's works and the work of other designers contribute their own frisson. Some of the early designs represent Moser's clever tweaking of current fashions. For example, his "Mushrooms" pattern fabric (1899) reflects the erotic curvilinear botanical forms applied to a fungus instead of a flower. Similarly, his early glass exploits Art Nouveau's molten fluidity. The diminutive vessels of his hand-blown liqueur glasses (1900) resemble fragile blossoms atop emphatically attenuated stems. An iridescent glass tulip vase (1900-01) recalls the shimmering favrile glass of Louis Comfort Tiffany while anticipating the bloblike shapes of some 1950s Murano glass. Moser's early ceramics adopt more primitive forms—a three-legged earthenware vase of 1900 simultaneously evokes Medieval cooking pots as well as designs from the 1870s and '80s by the protomodern Victorian, Christopher Dresser. And the utter rocketshiplike simplicity of Moser's 1905 silver Easter Egg, inlaid with four semiprecious cabochon stones, suggests Flash Gordon's riposte to Carl Fabergé's czsarist fantasies.

Moser quickly abandons his sinuous vocabulary for the emerging rectilinear idiom of early-20th-century Arts & Crafts and Cubism. Most striking is Moser's affinity for openwork grid patterns in silver and galvanized sheet iron. Influenced by his Glasgow contemporary Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Moser's grid pieces also anticipate the high-tech style of the 1980s. Moser also had a related affinity for diced (checkerboard) patterns in silver. He reinforces the geometrical regimentation of his cube-shaped silver sugar box (1903) with overall dicing in niello (a black silver alloy). But he lends the piece subtle buoyancy by raising it on four tiny silver-ball feet.

Likewise, in his white, slat-sided Armchair (c. 1903)—basically an incomplete cube—Moser softens the effect of the regimented vertical slats by joining them at the seat level with a horizontal row of blocks, each hollowed into a rounded arch. He positions the seat itself slightly above the vertical center—at the point just short of actual symmetry traditionally called "the golden mean." A black-and-white cushion in a checkerboard pattern serves as nominal upholstery. Hardly designed for comfort, it represents the long tradition of decorative fantasy pieces that were really sculptures in the form of utilitarian objects, such as elaborate 18th-century porcelain teapots too delicate to hold boiling water.

To please his wealthy clientele, Moser made liberal use of opulent materials, reflecting a modernist interpretation of Oscar Wilde's raffiné decadence. His silver belt buckle (1904) set with opal cabochons like flower petals evokes Herod's frantic bribery of Wilde's bloodlustful Salomé: "I have opals that burn always with an ice-like flame . . . sapphires big as eggs . . . and chrysoprases and rubies; I have sardonyx and hyacinth stones, and stones of chalcedony . . . ." And though the buckle's softly crimped rim is perfectly square, the cabochons are set well off-center, the deliberate positioning of their different sizes conveying the suggestion of random arrangement. Moser repeatedly espouses this modernist asymmetry: A rectangular silver centerpiece inlaid with lapis-lazuli (1904) features an offset ivory handle designed for one-handed lifting.

Again and again Moser's furniture, lamps and other accessories anticipate the sleek Art Deco idiom of 1930s Hollywood film in the same way that the glittering operas and orchestral works of Moser's young Viennese contemporary Erich Wolfgang Korngold anticipate the musical idiom Korngold would bring to his Hollywood film scores.

Like Tiffany, Moser identified himself as a lifelong painter, and representing this facet of his oeuvre are two self-portraits in oil. In the first (c.1895), Moser depicts himself as a youthful dandy in a high Piccadilly collar and bright cravat. The second (c.1916) suggests the pose of a gigolo, with slick hair, a provocative stare and a parted shirt exposing a broad chest. Most likely this robust sexuality represents wishful thinking—in 1916 Moser was diagnosed with the throat cancer that would soon kill him. Moreover, photographs of Moser and his colleagues show that, while always trim and natty, he was hardly a matinee idol. But more important, they repeatedly document an engaging smile and impish sense of humor, suggesting that among friends this exceptional designer was also delightful company.

Mr. Scherer writes about the fine arts and music for the Journal.