A Storm in Turn-of-the-Century Vienna’s Cup

If art movements could be described in terms of the human stages of development, the Vienna Secession Movement would probably be the cranky hormonal teenager who just became aware that it has power to say “Boo” to the parents, tear down convention, be in love with love itself and forge ahead to make way for a life with a difference.

The Vienna: Art & Design exhibition currently showing at the National Gallery of Victoria has brought together the works of Gustav Klimt, Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser among other artists who were central to this artistic revolution taking 1900 Vienna by storm.

It is the first time that an exhibition of this size and scale focusing on the exquisite design of Vienna is shown in the southern hemisphere and it marks a coup for the National Gallery of Victoria on the gallery’s 150th anniversary.

Consultant Curator for the exhibition, Dr Christian Witt-Dörring, told The Epoch Times that Vienna, at the time, could be compared to a pressure-cooker.

“The individual for such a long time had no voice. The artists released an incredible creative energy, they felt that they were allowed to express themselves, because they were dealing with a totalitarian, hierarchic, Catholic Hapsburg society,” Dr Witt-Dörring explains.

By 1900 Vienna had become Europe’s fourth-largest city after London, Paris and Berlin, but its citizens were faced with a problem.

“The big problem in Vienna, at the turn of the century, was that form and content did not match any more. They used a form which belonged to the aristocratic courtly society, but there was an emerging strong bourgeoisie in Vienna and they needed their own aesthetic expression.

“There were new social, economic and technical developments. For example, what [architect Otto] Wagner criticises is that it doesn’t fit any more if you design a telephone in a Neo-Gothic shape,” said Dr Witt-Dörring.

So the Vienna Secession artists, as they called themselves, joined forces against the conservative institutions under the motto: ‘To the age its art. To art its freedom.’

Despite being short lived, the movement had significant impact. Their ideas and designs eventually filtered through and came to be mass produced not only in Austria but Germany as well. Nowadays, we are virtually surrounded by objects, graphics and furniture that were first unleashed by the Secession artists onto 1900s Vienna, and then rediscovered by the Post-Modern designers and architects of the 1970’s.

Among the 300 works on exhibit, the decorative objects and interior designs of Josef Hoffmann and the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop) are also featured, including furniture, jewels, silver and ceramic wares.

Two Opposing Views

From the beginning there were already two opposing views on creating the new aesthetic. Josef Hoffmann’s Vienna Workshop was on a mission to re-design the whole living space, while Adolf Loos opposed the ideas of the Secessionist movement.

According to Dr Witt-Dörring, “the cessation movement fought the war against eclecticism, the war for individualism but they also wanted to create a new modern style. And to be able to identify that style you need a specific ornament.

“But Loos’ [view was that] you cannot create a modern style through a new ornament. It’s about content and not form.”

“These people had no history, it was a new society. Adolf Loos allowed people to have a history in their apartments by combining the old and the new.”

But despite the two seemingly opposite approaches, both Hoffman and Loos wanted to break with tradition.

Ironically, it is clear from seeing the work coming out of the Vienna Workshop and Loos’ understated and unadorned designs that both designers borrowed heavily from old traditions, from Classical sources for Hoffman’s designs and Japanese minimalism for Loos.

International Modernism

Dr Witt-Dörring sees the essence of the Vienna Workshop’s mission as giving the individual a voice, with the help of aesthetics and decoration.

In fact the Secessionists also put on a Japanese exhibition, the flat surface decor being a running theme that echoes in the works of all the painters and graphic artists.

The heavy referencing of the Japanese aesthetic inadvertently forces one to go back to the ancestor of Japanese art and design. And by inevitable contrast, it is clear that the Secessionists lacked the coherence and holistic approach that is elemental to the Japanese interior. But then again, it took Japan a few centuries to develop that which the Vienna Secession Movement was aiming for.

Of course the big drawcard of the exhibition is the collection of work by Gustav Klimt (1862–1918). The exhibition has procured nine major paintings as well as a full scale facsimile of Klimt’s 30-metre-long Beethoven Frieze from the Vienna Secession building.

And while The Kiss is missing, as it never leaves the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere museum in Vienna’s Belvedere palace, Klimt aficionados will not be disappointed.

The Vienna: Art & Design will be open daily from 10am–5pm from 18 June to 9 October 2011 and until 9pm every Wednesday from 22 June for Art After Dark.

Admission fees apply. Visit www.ngv.vic.gov.au for further information.