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Women played a central role in the Wiener Werkstätte (WW), and in some cases even held leading positions. However, many female designers were overlooked for a long time. This was partly due to the misogynistic climate in Vienna around 1900, as evidenced by disparaging remarks from artists such as Adolf Loos and Julius Klinger: Loos spoke of ‘bored daughters of the upper classes’, Klinger of the ‘Viennese women’s arts and crafts’, and the architect Oswald Haerdtl called the Werkstätte an ‘outrageous doll’s shop’.
This room of the exhibition features works by Hermine Weiß, Lotte Frömel-Fochler and My (Marianne) Ullmann. They represent the diversity of the female artists who were involved in the Viennese arts and crafts movement and whose names are scarcely known today.
For a long time, art history drew a distinction between fine art – which included painting, sculpture and architecture – and applied art, which was regarded as ‘merely’ decorative and therefore of secondary importance. It was precisely this area of the so-called arts and crafts that was predominantly assigned to women: textiles, ceramics, fashion, book arts and graphic design were regarded as ‘feminine’ pursuits, associated with skill, good taste and domesticity. The hierarchy of genres was thus also a hierarchy of gender. Those working in the arts and crafts sector were often not regarded as ‘artists’ but as ‘craftswomen’, with consequences for their recognition, pay and public reception.
This allocation was institutionally entrenched. The Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna did not admit women until 1920, whilst the School of Arts and Crafts had been open to them earlier. Access to the arts and crafts was thus not only an expression of a prescribed role, but often the only route to an artistic education.