1918 was a difficult year. With the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I the political order in Europe changed. The artistic upheaval though, had already started earlier. At the turn of the century the art world was evolving. Vienna was one of the biggest cities in Europe, merging numerous different cultures and fostering a vibrant intellectual exchange.
New ideas were being tossed about in its lively “Kaffeehaus” (café) scene and artists dared to leave tradition behind to develop something new, something entirely modern: a movement that we now know as “Wiener Moderne” (Viennese Modernism).
It spans not only fine and decorative arts but also architecture, literature, music and science. The idea of “Gesamtkunstwerk” was advocated here, the “total work of art” that embraces all disciplines and art forms to unite them in one philosophical expression of art.
A break away movement of modern artists called “Secession” was founded in 1897 and given a home with the iconic building of the same name located in the centre of Vienna. It is the “original white cube” with a nod to Art Nouveau (or “Jugendstil” as it is called in German) in the form of its golden dome fashioned out of laurel leaves.
The basement of the building still houses the Beethoven Frieze (see image at the top of article) which was created by the Secession’s founder Gustav Klimt for the movement’s exhibition of 1902. This exhibition centred around a sculpture of Beethoven by Max Klinger and together with Klimt’s mural, which was inspired by Beethoven’s Ninth symphony, is a prime example of a “Gesamtkunstwerk”.
Klimt was an extraordinary avant-garde artist. His portraits of women and his revolutionary depiction of nudity put him in a class of his own. The world knows him for his richly decorated, highly expressive and emotional paintings that are often dominated by the colour gold and always expressing the desires and emotions of his sitters. His works from the golden period and his late landscapes with their array of organic forms can be considered forerunners of Art Nouveau and Cubism respectively.
Klimt’s work influenced his contemporary, but much younger, colleague, Egon Schiele, whose mentor he became. Schiele was to lead Austrian Expressionism, and indeed, influence Expressionismus on an international level. During his career, tragically cut short by his untimely death of the Spanish flu, he developed his idiosyncratic style of drawing and painting. His lines and brushstrokes bring to the fore psychological, more than physical, characteristics of his subjects. Far ahead of his time he depicts gender fluidity, and produces remarkable - often explicit - self portraits that show the anguish he experienced in his short life.
Both these artists, as well as the architect Otto Wagner and the founder of the “Wiener Werkstaette” (the arts and crafts movement of Viennese Modernism), Koloman Moser, died in the year 1918.
Which makes 2018 the year of “centenaries”… By remembering the deaths of these masters, we celebrate their lives and their oeuvres. Vienna, especially, is more than ever filled with Klimt’s gold and Schiele’s portraits.
It is anniversaries like these that make museums go deep into their archives and bring out pieces that they would not normally display. It might be that they are too fragile and delicate to be permanently exposed to the conditions in busy exhibition halls or it could even be that they are too “insignificant” to be displayed unless they are put in the wider context of the complete oeuvre of an artist.
The Leopold Museum in the Museums Quartier in Vienna has gone through such an exercise and has put on two comprehensive exhibitions to honour Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, making available sketches, letters and photographs in addition to their works, to illustrate the lives of these two men:
Gustav Klimt - Artist of the Century and Egon Schiele The Jubilee Show RELOADED.
The Albertina Museum of Vienna is loaning a lot of its works by Klimt and Schiele to the Royal Academy of Arts in London for an exhibition that is going to open in November. Do watch the short video in the link for some interesting insights by the curator of the Albertina.
The photos in the gallery below were taken at the exhibitions at the Leopold Museum in September as well as during several other visits to Vienna and the Egon Schiele museum in Cesky Krumlov/Czech Republic over the past 2 years. Please refer to the captions of the photos for more information about the individual works of art, exhibits and locations.