Café society
A brief exhibition at the Royal College of Art this month focuses on the Viennese Kaffeehaus at the turn of the last century, with displays of historical photographs, graphics, film, sound and other ephemera. Accompanied by a festival of Viennese-themed events including talks, concerts and film screenings, the season will be honoured by a visit from seminal Viennese pastry and chocolate company Demel, which will be running a café at the RCA to delight the tastebuds of exhibition visitors.
A world away from Starbucks, the traditional Vienna coffee house was at the heart of city life in the early 20th century, and remains a part of the Viennese character. Around 1900, a visit to a café was a spectacular experience with newspapers displayed on custom-made stands, waiters in tailcoats and celings decorated with elaborate chandeliers. The Viennese café was a monument to the fruitful wasting of time: an idea that has much to offer today’s time-starved city-dwellers.
Dr Simon Shaw-Miller, Senior Lecturer in History of Art, Birkbeck, University of London suggests: “It would be no exaggeration to claim that but for the Viennese coffeehouse modern life and culture would not be the same for any of us.” In Vienna there were cafés for everyone: artists, intellectuals, the respectable bourgeoisie and the not-so-respectable. People gathered in cafés to chat, eat, read, work, play, gamble and argue in a city at the heart of an ancient empire. The fluid character of this social space stimulated the minds whose intellectual and creative achievements made such a dramatic contribution to the development of European modernity at this time. Professor Christopher Frayling, Rector, Royal College of Art says:
“For those of the current generation who thought the coffeehouse started with Starbucks, this exhibition will come as quite an eye-opener.”
Vienna Café 1900, 13-24 October 2008
Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore SW7
020 7590 4444
www.rca.ac.uk/viennacafe