Crossing the Line: The Vienna Secession
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| Fatalism (1893) by Jan Toorop |
Our idea of the fin de siècle avant-garde artist is of an impoverished outcast, ignored by the establishment, whose genius was only recognized after death. This fits in with our view of art as something ethereal that doesn't quite belong in the material world. However, except for a few tragic cases, artists are just as practical and hard-headed as the rest of us. This is also the impression given by an exhibition of art from the Vienna Secession at the Bunkamura.
Founded in 1898 by artists who felt excluded by the academic art establishment, the Vienna Secession was definitely not a grouping of impoverished social outcasts. Many of the artists, like Gustav Klimt, were established if somewhat controversial figures on the Viennese art scene, while the focus of the movement was a stately gallery building erected for the group's exhibitions, the first of which even saw an appearance by the emperor Franz Joseph. If this was revolution, it was well-heeled revolution organized with characteristic Teutonic efficiency and deference for authority.
Although focusing on pre-WWI Vienna, the exhibition also includes works by earlier and non-Viennese artists, such as the Symbolist Odilon Redon and the Expressionist Edvard Munch, revealing the wide influences on the group, which also included craft artists.
Despite being something of a catch-all for fin-de-siecle styles, the Secessionists did have a real agenda. The earlier artistic revolution of the Impressionists had been mainly one of technique in the depiction of surface reality, but now the intellectual understanding of reality was being questioned, nowhere more so than in Vienna, where Freud's apparent insights into psychology and sexuality competed with the mysticism of the spiritualist, Rudolf Steiner. Indeed, the young and impressionable Adolf Hitler, also striving to be an artist at the time, picked up most of his ideas from the rich but not always healthy intellectual ferment of Vienna.
Realism and Impressionism were giving way to styles like Symbolism and Expressionism that attempted to capture profound mystical or psychological truths. Just as often the attempt resulted in crass affectation as in Fatalism (1893), a work by Jan Toorop, a Dutch Javanese painter, who successfully exhibited at the Secession in 1901. With its swirling lines, elongated figures, and morbid subject matter, the painting is more evocative of the charlatanism of the ouija-board seance than any profound spiritual truth.
A more subtle rendering of spirituality through line is seen in the work of the Secessionists' first leader, Gustav Klimt, and that of the man who influenced him, Charles Rennie Mackintosh. In his graphic art, architecture, and furniture, such as the beautiful White Oval Table (ca. 1902) with its inlaid ivory rose design, Mackintosh expertly played straight lines off against curved ones. Klimt expressed the same fine sense of line through the beauty and eroticism of the female form, as in his pencil study for Moving Water (1898). The most stunning of his works here, however, shows the feminine form in the uncharacteristically militant pose of the Greek goddess Pallas Athene (1898) in her golden armor.
Although eroticism was a keynote of Klimt's work, it was an even more vital element in that of Egon Schiele, an excellent selection of whose works represent the core of this exhibition. Whereas Klimt's lush, full-bodied, Art Nouveau beauties suggest the pleasure-loving tastes of the imperial capital, Schiele's emaciated nudes, done with black chalk and watercolours on paper or card, suggest the vulnerability of lonely, tormented spirits, haunted by sexuality rather than fulfilled by it. In works like Mime Van Osen and Nude Girl (both 1910), a masterful sense of form shines through the jagged lines and blotchy colors, giving the sickly figures an unexpected strength.
The Vienna Secession 1898 - 1918 ran until Feb. 24 at the Bunkamura Museum of Art
C.B.Liddell
International Herald Tribune Asahi Shimbun
26th January, 2002
Founded in 1898 by artists who felt excluded by the academic art establishment, the Vienna Secession was definitely not a grouping of impoverished social outcasts. Many of the artists, like Gustav Klimt, were established if somewhat controversial figures on the Viennese art scene, while the focus of the movement was a stately gallery building erected for the group's exhibitions, the first of which even saw an appearance by the emperor Franz Joseph. If this was revolution, it was well-heeled revolution organized with characteristic Teutonic efficiency and deference for authority.
Although focusing on pre-WWI Vienna, the exhibition also includes works by earlier and non-Viennese artists, such as the Symbolist Odilon Redon and the Expressionist Edvard Munch, revealing the wide influences on the group, which also included craft artists.
Despite being something of a catch-all for fin-de-siecle styles, the Secessionists did have a real agenda. The earlier artistic revolution of the Impressionists had been mainly one of technique in the depiction of surface reality, but now the intellectual understanding of reality was being questioned, nowhere more so than in Vienna, where Freud's apparent insights into psychology and sexuality competed with the mysticism of the spiritualist, Rudolf Steiner. Indeed, the young and impressionable Adolf Hitler, also striving to be an artist at the time, picked up most of his ideas from the rich but not always healthy intellectual ferment of Vienna.
Realism and Impressionism were giving way to styles like Symbolism and Expressionism that attempted to capture profound mystical or psychological truths. Just as often the attempt resulted in crass affectation as in Fatalism (1893), a work by Jan Toorop, a Dutch Javanese painter, who successfully exhibited at the Secession in 1901. With its swirling lines, elongated figures, and morbid subject matter, the painting is more evocative of the charlatanism of the ouija-board seance than any profound spiritual truth.
A more subtle rendering of spirituality through line is seen in the work of the Secessionists' first leader, Gustav Klimt, and that of the man who influenced him, Charles Rennie Mackintosh. In his graphic art, architecture, and furniture, such as the beautiful White Oval Table (ca. 1902) with its inlaid ivory rose design, Mackintosh expertly played straight lines off against curved ones. Klimt expressed the same fine sense of line through the beauty and eroticism of the female form, as in his pencil study for Moving Water (1898). The most stunning of his works here, however, shows the feminine form in the uncharacteristically militant pose of the Greek goddess Pallas Athene (1898) in her golden armor.
Although eroticism was a keynote of Klimt's work, it was an even more vital element in that of Egon Schiele, an excellent selection of whose works represent the core of this exhibition. Whereas Klimt's lush, full-bodied, Art Nouveau beauties suggest the pleasure-loving tastes of the imperial capital, Schiele's emaciated nudes, done with black chalk and watercolours on paper or card, suggest the vulnerability of lonely, tormented spirits, haunted by sexuality rather than fulfilled by it. In works like Mime Van Osen and Nude Girl (both 1910), a masterful sense of form shines through the jagged lines and blotchy colors, giving the sickly figures an unexpected strength.
The Vienna Secession 1898 - 1918 ran until Feb. 24 at the Bunkamura Museum of Art
C.B.Liddell
International Herald Tribune Asahi Shimbun
26th January, 2002
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