Inspired by the new installation of the MAK Permanent Collection VIENNA 1900. Design / Arts and Crafts 18901938, the designer Patrick Rampelotto has created a piece of furniture evoking Adolf Looss well-known but never realized design of a villa with black-and-white striped marble façade for the scandalous Josephine Baker. For her dance performances in her scanty banana outfit Baker had been acclaimed since 1926 in the Folies Bergère in Paris as the Black Venus; but in Vienna her solo appearance planned for the Ronacher Theater was cancelled at short notice; eventually she was banned from appearing on stage in Vienna and several other European cities. Adolf Loos and his contemporaries saw the opposing polarities of Modernism united in the controversial persona of the American dancer; with her attitude she symbolized contemporary America with elements of the cosmopolitan, the savage, and of art.
With the intervention Patrick Rampelotto: Josephine curated by Marlies Wirth and on show starting Tuesday, 1 October 2013, a designer is taking the stage for the second time in MAK on Display in Wien Mitte  The Mall. The curtain went up first on Marco Dessí with his interpretation of a salon cabinet by Dagobert Peche (1913).