Zprávy památkové péče 2018, 78(2):143-150 | DOI: 10.56112/zpp.2018.2.09

Eitelberger's Successor Jacob von Falke and the Art Industry

Lada Hubatová-Vacková

Vysoká škola uměleckoprůmyslová v Praze

At the time when Rudolf Eitelberger (1817-1885) was the director of the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry (Österreichische Museum für Kunst und Industrie), his closest professional colleague was Jacob von Falke (1825-1897). In the Museum, Falke held the position of a collector for many years and was also the vice-director. When Eitelberger died on 17 April 1885, they were in close working contact with each other up to the last few moments. As referred to by the National Sheets (Národní listy) on 21 April 1885, Falke was among others who gave the burial speech at the central cemetery in Vienna, and subsequently published in the Wiener Zeitung an obituary dedicated to Eitelberger's professional legacy. After Eitelberger's death, Falke became his successor in the position of museum director, as expected.
With a free reference to the paraphrased obituary, this study focuses on the relatively intense professional relationship between these two personalities. Over time, Falke's variable professional relationship with Eitelberger may be symptomatic in a more general sense for an understanding of the ideological, discursive, and stylistic shifts in the arts industry in the multi-ethnic environment of the Habsburg monarchy of the late 19th century, of which the Czech lands were a part. The Viennese concept of the Museum of Applied Arts and of the modern art industry was to be applied, among others through Eitelberger and Falke, to the Prague Museum of Applied Arts and to the contemporary production of applied art representing the monarchy. The Viennese artistic and craftsmanship style - favored and aesthetically refined by Eitelberger - was not accepted unconditionally in Prague.
At the time of the founding of the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry in 1864, and at the time of the industrial arts exhibition at the World Exhibition in Vienna in 1873, Eitelberger promoted the style of Viennese industrial arts for contemporary production in the field of applied art. In his intentions, Eitelberger's arts industrial product was not primarily conceived as a functional item, but was perceived as an artifact that had to meet a high standard of artistic and craftsmanship quality. For Eitelberger, individual authors' manuscripts, selected stylistic feelings loosely based on normative aesthetics and paraphrasing proven "classical" artistic and historical styles (n Eitelberger's era, especially the antiquity and Renaissance) were important criteria. For top artwork production, valuable, often luxurious, materials were considered appropriate. Eitelberger's required artistic sense for style and a uniqueness of artistic gestures not only contradicted serial production, but, moreover, it excluded the more liberal interconnection of the artistic concept (Kunstindustrie) with popular inspiration (Hausindustrie). Eitelberger was not inclined to mix "high" style with "low", or "elite" with "vernacular".
It was Eitelberger's wish that this "high" Viennese arts industrial style would become a universal aesthetic model for the entire Habsburg monarchy, and that this model would be codified and confirmed through the newly established network of arts industrial museums and schools in other countries of the crown, including the Czech lands.
When the Prague Museum of Applied Arts was founded in 1885, Prague was to follow the example of Vienna. But Eitelberger died in 1885, and Falke had the Vienna mission of helping to realize the transposition of the Viennese arts industrial style in Prague.
Falke did not believe in the sustainability of the "high" universal arts industrial style outside Vienna, because at the end of the 19th century in Prague he witnessed the rise of nationalism which also reflected the desire to create a "national style" in the field of applied art. Falke was open to the democratization of the arts industry, and he was even inclined to a symbiosis (from Eitelberger's perspective, a hybrid) of stylish artistic crafts and rural folk traditions. This connection between Kunstindustrie and Hausindustrie, high and low, elite and vernacular, i.e. what Eitelberger might have perceived as an inappropriate profanation and rusticism of the style, was understood by Falke as one of the possible ways of the modern style. His great support was then the colleague and theorist Alois Riegl, who professionally oversaw the position of folk crafts in the context of the arts industry and defended its discourse.
As is clear from the study, Falke undoubtedly recognized his colleague Eitelberger as an expert authority. However, since the 1880's, he began to move away from his postulated normative nature of aesthetic bases founded on classical historical styles and artworks; on the contrary, he opened up to the world of non-European art and especially to the field of folk and vernacular art. At the end of his life, Falke was evidently more convened by Alois Riegl, who broadly accepted even unpolished folk art into the arts industry. Falke was, then, Eitelberger's successor in office, but was his ideological follower and adherent only partially and up to a certain period.

Keywords: Rudolf Eitelberger, Jacob von Falke, the Arts Industry, Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna

Published: June 1, 2018  Show citation