"But what is success, really? " asks Reiner, a young Viennese architect with artistic ambitions, as he slowly rolls a cigarette. Immediately afterward, he’ll moisten the edge to seal the cigarette and reach for a stylish silver lighter.
Is it that people say you’re successful and place you somewhere on some hierarchical ladder or in some group that isn’t a place for losers? — adds Gabi, dressed in a faded black uniform and very dark sunglasses. It’s the first warm weekend in March. We’re sitting with our faces turned toward the sun in the garden of Café Schubert, in front of which well-dressed Austrian retirees and groups of teenagers are strolling by. We arrived here after an unusual morning opening at a nearby children’s museum. After all, who takes their kids to exhibition openings after afternoon tea?
Or even just for the sake of it. We’re not in high school. Let’s think about the millions of weary professionals who have neither the aspirations nor the opportunity to do anything that stands out in any way… —adds Holger, a balding, lanky guy shrouded in the smoke of his own cigarette, an artistic project producer.
All right, so is success measured by external perception —that is, how others see us? If they judge that you’ve made it, that you’re surely fulfilled, are you supposed to feel that way? What if you feel like it’s an illusion, or worse, you give the impression that it’s true, but in reality you’re cowering inside with anxiety, afraid it’ll come out that it isn’t? — Reiner continues.
You mean that someone might consciously make all kinds of self-promotional efforts, trumpeting left and right that they’re at a great point in their career, while at the same time trembling about the future and suffering from imposter syndrome? I guess that’s what social media and PR agencies were created for, right? — says the very straightforward Gabi. In her painful honesty, she once confessed to me that she despises journalists who have gone over to the dark side, as she calls the public relations industry.
They’re whole armies of cynical charlatans. They work for a pathological system that casts spells of happiness on each other and on us, the suckers, and we’re too stupid or too clueless to figure out that it’s all a sham covering up greed and insignificance — she said back then, scolding me for collaborating with PR people and organizers of various industry events.
“Success is a nasty American term,” Holger says. “ I prefer fulfillment. It sounds a bit more lofty.”
To which Reiner replies: “Call it what you will. Fulfillment can also be a trap for those who think of their work as more than just a business. If you’re fulfilled, that means you don’t have to do anything anymore, right? You don’t have to make an effort, search, or grow.”
“Growth sounds suspicious, too,” Gabi croaks, reaching for an amber beer in which the early afternoon rays are reflected. Stories of businesses that fell victim to their own complacency after trumpeting their success flash through my mind. Kodak, foremost among them. You don’t have to be an artist to be paralyzed by the spell of ultimate fulfillment.
In the Saturday crowd on Wiener Straße, we spot the tall figure of Janice, a sculptor from New York who’s come to Austria for her first residency outside the States. I met Janice at a sewing class somewhere in Queens a good twelve years ago. She was wearing the same blue jumpsuit then as she is now. After the workshop, we took the subway back to Brooklyn via a roundabout route through Manhattan. Janice, a graduate of the sculpture department at a university in Detroit, told me how she combines her day job with sculpting. Thanks to a public university, she took a welding course as part of her studies. A few courses later, she ended up in the Big Apple, and after passing her medical exams, she landed a job as a high-altitude welder. She joined a union, which allows her to work two weeks a month welding skyscraper structures hundreds of meters above the ground, and spend the other two weeks sculpting. In steel, no less. Janice joins us at the table. She orders a beer, and we fill her in on the story. She takes a big gulp of liquid gold in the form of a Zipfer Märzen, wipes the foam from her lips, and says: “For me, success is simply the fact that I can do what I love and that I’m independent. Almost no one interferes with my work.” Almost, because I exhibit and sell through galleries, so there are gallery owners and curators involved, but I have a ton of independence because I don’t have to make a living from my art.”
Well, but you want to be recognized by the art world in some way, whatever that means, right? Doesn’t that interest you at all? — asks Gabi provocatively, whose work running a small architecture studio constantly gives her heart palpitations due to the uncertainty of her income. Gabi has no passive income or side business. Although she receives industry awards from time to time and people value her ideas, her anxiety is alleviated more by the set of social benefits that come with living in Red Vienna—including a cheap municipal apartment—than by the prospect of high earnings.
Janice finally agrees with her. Financial independence doesn’t translate into complete autonomy in the symbolic sphere. Of course I want the people I respect to tell me I’m doing a good job. I don’t live on a desert island. Judgment and discussion are also forms of relationship—even if it doesn’t sit well with me, because someone might criticize me.
Think about those who find themselves in the middle ground: they sort of have that coveted success—people around them appreciate them, they sell their work, and maybe they’re even doing quite well, but it’s not exactly a dazzling career. They don’t earn enough to invest in things that will secure their future in old age. They don’t have retrospectives at the Guggenheim or the Reina Sofía—only at local kunstvereins. Their work is sold by a cool gallery in another city or even another country, but it’s no Gagosian or Goodman,” says Holger, who knows various art scenes well, having worked in New York, Berlin, and Cologne.
I know what you mean. In architecture, that would be the scale of solid small and medium-sized firms run by middle-aged people. The kind that design interesting public commissions and homes, but not opera houses in Taipei or skyscrapers in Dubai. But they also don’t design any hopeless office buildings or high-baywarehouses ,” nods Reiner, who, before opening his one-person practice, interned at several small Swiss firms that specialized in meticulously crafted medium- and small-scale projects.
So what—are these architects supposed to feel like losers? What does success meanto them? — Gabi asks, probably just rhetorically by now. The sun is starting to beat down hard. We unbutton our jackets. I order some lemonade.
Exactly, what is this success supposed to be—or, as Holger prefers to say, fulfillment? Scale? Awards? Money? Whispers of envy behind our backs? Our portraits in industry publications, where we strike poses of power and confidence? A guarantee of immortality? Or maybe it’s simply about being able to do what you more or less like and what brings you joy. Maybe even what you love. That you’re doing your own thing. Even if that “own thing” differs greatly in some ways from how you imagined your future career and yourself. Even if you pretend you don’t need rewards for it, because the ones you get are somehow insufficient for you, and you yourself suspect that you’re not good enough to get more from the world.
You’ve got to do your thing,” Gabi sums up, apparently reading my mind.
“Let’s drink to that! ” Janice exclaims.
The sound of glass clinking can be heard. Somewhere on the sidewalk of an Old Town street, at a table in a century-old restaurant in a provincial town in the heart of Europe.
Jakub SZCZĘSNY
more: A&B 4/2026 – City Architect,
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