ABSTRACT
In a letter sent to his brother during the preparations for the large-scale alpine photomontage of the Austrian pavilion at the Paris World's Fair in spring 1937, Robert Haas noted: ‘A lot is entirely wrong, with parts moved from left to right, copied the other way round etc., but altogether a good impression.’ 2 Haas referred to the complex process of assembling the montage, yet his comment strikes with the construction of rural modernism in interwar Austria on a larger scale. Combining different alpine landscapes with the presence of tourism through busses, cars, and a plethora of alpine flowers in the foreground, the photomontage is a stand-in for the complex dynamics that constituted modern art and visual culture in a rural setting. It makes clear that there was no ‘natural’ landscape as such. Instead, rural elements were consistently remodelled, shaped and reinterpreted in line with the needs of its predominantly urban creators. As an ars combinatoria with photographs provided by official channels, combined by an artist of high standing yet who was already erased at this time for his Jewish heritage, the work and its wider context underline that, persuasive as it was, the image of the simple idyllic Austrian countryside was highly deceptive.
