Art History with Anne

Newsletter April 2023

Live Lectures for April

The Vienna Secession 1897-1918

The highlight of my visit to Vienna in 2018 was the chance to scale scaffolding to get up close to Klimt’s paintings on the staircase of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. I came face to face with his larger-than-life image of Athena/Minerva, the Greek goddess of War and the Arts, who would become the talisman of the Vienna Secession in 1897.

As its titular leader, Klimt was the foremost artist of the Secession. His world renown rests on his golden images of Adele Bloch Bauer and The Kiss. Egon Schiele was the Secession’s wild child, whose subjects still have the power to shock. However, it was the architect Otto Wagner and his student Joseph Maria Olbrich who transformed Vienna into a modern city, collaborating on the construction of the Vienna Stadtbahn. Another student, Josef Hoffman, renounced useless ornament in favour of simple squares. Inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement, Hoffmann and Kolo Moser founded the Wiener Werkstätte/ Vienna Workshops with financial backing from the industrialist Fritz Wärndorferin 1903. Advocating the concept of a building as a Gesamtkunstwerk or ‘total artwork’, Hoffmann’s greatest achievement was the Palais Stoclet, Brussels (1905-11)

Over three lectures I will explore the paintings, architecture, and design of fin de siècle Vienna.

The architecture of the Vienna Secession: from Otto Wagner to Adolf Loos

Olbrich’s Secession House (1898), known locally as the ‘Golden Cabbage’, and Wagner’s House with medallions (1898/99) set the tone for the white and gold phase of the Secession. The commission for the Church of St Leopold/ Kirche am Steinhof (1902/07) allowed Wagner to realise his dreams for a modern style of church construction. At the centre of a large new psychiatric hospital, this ‘total artwork’ is both beautiful and practical.

Declaring ‘Necessity is the only mistress of art’, practically led Wagner to develop a Nutztil or ‘Use-Style’ for the Österreichische Postsparkasse/ Austrian Postal Savings Bank (1904-06). Architect Adolf Loos went even further declaring ornament to be a crime! Lavish decoration was to be swept away by smooth and clear surfaces. The Looshaus (1912) exemplifies his functionalist outlook. Yet although starkly plain, the building uses sumptuous materials. Its nakedness was an affront to emperor Franz-Joseph’s sensibilities. Loos conceded to his objections by adding some decoration, flowerpots!

The Wiener Werkstätte: the designs of Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser

Inspired by the English Arts and Crafts ethos, artist designed hand-crafted products, Hoffmann and Moser founded the Wiener Werkstätte. The range of products was inclusive, furniture, metalwork, ceramics, leatherwork, bookbinding, postcards, jewellery, and clothing. Influenced by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald, who showed their designs at the 8^th Secession exhibition of 1900, they adopted a restrained, linear style rather than the organic curvilinear forms associated with Paris and Brussels. The square and grid, often expressed in black and white, would become the signature of the Wiener Werkstätte, as seen in Hoffmann’s Sitzmaschine Armchair (1905) and Glitterwerk metal baskets (c.1906-1916). Hoffmann’s constant use of squares and cubes earned him the nickname Quadratl-Hoffmann (“Square Hoffmann”). Similarly, Moser’s design for a wallpaper, Die Reifezeit (Harvest Time) (1901), is dominated by a black and white grid pattern.

Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Freud

Klimt and Schiele tackled taboo subjects; Klimt celebrated the sexualised woman, while Schiele was fascinated by the fragility of youthful innocence. With the advent of psychoanalysis, both artists appear to reflect the thinking of Sigmund Freud. Critics accused them of creating pornography, of revelling in the sordid and bringing art down into the gutter. In today’s climate of ‘political correctness’, audiences might still be shocked by their subject matter. However, with the distance of time, their works allow us to tackle sensitive issues allowing us to explore aspects of the human condition, especially birth and death, love and loss and desire.