  About the Artwork
  
  
  In this work, based on "Ornament and Crime," a treatise by Adolf Loos protesting the decorative excesses of the Austrian Art Nouveau movement that became one of the founding statements of twentieth-century architecture and design, McElheny was looking at the intersections between history, design, and fiction. Adolf Loos’ Ornament and Crime is inspired by the casework in the American Bar in Vienna, designed by Loos in 1908, the same year the essay was written. The glass vessels are recreations of classic designs by Loos and others that would have been used in such a setting. But while Loos’s sumptuous interior blended mirrors, marble and mahogany into a richly colorful and pattered room, McElheny’s interpretation of it is a uniform, affectless white that takes Loos’s idea of suppressing decoration to its logical extreme: in a world made white there is no gradation, no individuation, and ultimately no authorship. 
 
 
From Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts 89 (2015)
  
  
  Title
  Adolf Loos&#039; Ornament and Crime
  
  
  Artwork Date
  2002
  
  Artist
  Josiah McElheny
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  born 1966
  
  
  
  
  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  American
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
  ----------
  
  
  Medium
  Blown glass with overlay of clear glass, wood, light bulbs and paint
  
  
  Dimensions
  Overall: 49 × 60 × 10 1/2 inches (124.5 × 152.4 × 26.7 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Sculpture
  
  
  Department
  Contemporary Art after 1950
  
  
  Credit
  Museum Purchase, Catherine Kresge Dewey Fund; the Janis and William Wetsman Foundation Fund in honor of Rebecca Hart
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  2003.19
  
  
  Copyright
  Non-commercial all standard museum
