Design Exhibition JOSEF FRANK – SWEDISH MODERN at JACKSONS Berlin / Photo: Noshe, courtesy JACKSONS Berlin
Tom Felber for ceative face Magazine
After almost 30th years in Stockholm, the Swedish design gallery JACKSONS opened its second gallery in Berlin. JACKSONS specializes in the best of Scandinavian and international vintage design 1900 - 2000 with main focus on Scandinavian classics. The location is carefully chosen in 'das Galerienhaus' on Lindenstrasse 34, one of the art hotspots in Berlin. Launched in 2007 and occupied by galleries such as Nordenhake, ZAK | BRANICKA and Galerie Volker Diehl among others, the building contains some of Berlins' leading galleries. This positioning provides a meaningful and highly interesting backdrop to the collection and offers an expanded platform to view and acquire historical design in a contemporary art setting. Under the title Josef Frank - Swedish Modern from August 20 until October 11, 2008 JACKSONS presents the Swedish-Austrian designer Josef Frank in collaboration with the Swedish Embassy.
The author Christopher Long wrote on Josef Frank in 'Josef Frank Life and Work': In September 1934, Svenskt Tenn, then one of only a handful of outlets for Modern design in Sweden, opened an exhibition at the Liljevalchs Konsthall in Stockholm. It consisted of a suite of four rooms, featuring an array of furnishings and other decorative objects. What struck the critics and casual viewers alike were not only the clean lines of the pieces, but their unconventional forms, bright colors, and emphasis on comfort. Many realized that they were witnessing something entirely new: a design idiom that was modern and up-to-date, yet also comfortable, relaxed, and unpretentious.
The designer of the collection was the Viennese architect Josef Frank (1885-1967). Frank, who had been strongly influenced by Adolf Loos, already had a long career behind him by the time he arrived in Sweden. In the 1910s, together with two other young Viennese architects, Oskar Strnad and Oskar Wlach, he had developed a novel aesthetic (which later came to be known as the Wiener Wohnkultur) that fused the elements of historical styles with a language of simplicity, solace, and eclecticism. At the core of this new design philosophy was their belief that Modernism did not necessarily have to exclude the past, that Modern design marked a continuation of history, not a break from it. Frank and the others stressed the importance of serving the real needs of their clients, not only to create spaces that were functional in the usual sense, but which also offered a feeling of material pleasure and psychological ease.
In the 1920s, Frank and Wlach went on to found their own home furnishings shop, Haus & Garten. It was modeled after Morris and Company, William Morris's shop in London, and Josef Hoffmann's Wiener Werkstätte. But Frank's underlying principles for Haus & Garten were different from those of either Morris or Hoffmann. Though he and Wlach insisted on the highest standards of craftsmanship, they rejected Morris's emphasis on medieval styles and Hoffmann's insistence on matched "suites" of furniture; instead, they encouraged their clients to choose and match pieces at will, and to arrange them piecemeal in their rooms. Frank also rejected the hard-edged geometric forms of the Bauhaus, specifying softened contours and comfortable, ergonomic forms. "A modern living space," he wrote in the early 1930s, "is not an art work, it is neither conspicuous, nor effective, nor exciting." Rather, "it is comfortable, without one being able to say why, and the less reason that one can provide, the better it is."
It was this basic set of ideas that Frank brought with him to Stockholm in 1933. Frank's decision to seek exile in Sweden from the rising forces of fascism was prompted in part by an offer from Estrid Ericson, owner of Svenskt Tenn. Ericson had founded the company in 1924 to produce modern pewter design-hence its name, which means Swedish pewter. In the early 1930s, she decided to expand the firm's line to include furniture. Having seen and admired some of Frank's designs in Sweden (Frank had regularly traveled and worked there during the previous decade because his wife, Anna, was Swedish), she wrote to him and asked him to send her some designs. Pleased with the pieces, she asked him the following year to redesign the company's showroom on Strandvägen. Ericson had previously advocated a style more in keeping with the German Neue Sachlichkeit, but she was quickly won over to Frank's notion of a mitigated and comfortable Modernism. Over the course of the next three decades, Frank produced hundreds of designs for the firm, including furniture, textiles, lamps, carpets, and other decorative articles, which would broadly influence the course of design in Sweden and beyond.
The Liljevalchs exhibit caused an immediate stir in Swedish design circles. Most of the Swedish design vanguard up to that time had followed German and Dutch trends, but Frank's sensitive melding of Swedish patterns and forms with his subdued Modernism struck many as an ideal alternative to the more radical language of functionalism, and a number of Swedish designers, including Carl Malmsten and Gustav Axel Berg, adopted a similar aesthetic-soon dubbed Swedish Modern.
Throughout his time in Sweden, Frank continued to advocate his belief in an aesthetic that could appeal to both the mind and the senses. Frank's own version of Swedish Modern suggested a very different course for mid-20th-century design-away from regularity and the dictates of functionalism; away from a rejection of the historical past and the celebration of novelty for its own sake; away from machine forms and simple geometries. In his celebration of vitality and freedom and his conviction that all design must serve those who use it, Frank helped to set an different course for Modernism, one that was genuinely affective and appealing.
