Page 31 - Studio International - January 1971

Ends and

beginnings:

Viennese art

at the turn of

the century

Frank Whitford

Kolo Moser
Detail from Presentation
Casket
c. 1905-6
Coll : Museum of Applied
Arts, Vienna
2
Berthold Löffler
Costume Design 1913
Oil on canvas
210x 80 cm.
Hermann Bahr, the Vienna Secession's most centrated for the most part on the mass pro- first President. Hermann Bahr was one of
lucid explainer and one of the editors of its duction of gigantic mythological machines or Klimt's greatest admirers, and it was cer-
journal, Ver Sacrum, could not contain his on the exploitation of coyly erotic subject- tainly Klimt that Bahr had in mind when he
enthusiasm. He was so overwhelmed by what matter. The most progressive Austrian artists wrote about the Viennese artists who might
he had seen at the group's first exhibition that were painters like Schindler and Pettenkofen be compared with the best Europeans. But the
he addressed the Secession's members in the who, towards the end of the nineteenth cen- six works which the group's President showed
pages of its magazine. 'Dear friends', he wrote, tury, continued to paint as though they were at the first exhibition, among them an alle-
`you have worked a miracle in our country. in the Barbizon forest. The Secession, then, gorical drawing of Tragedy and a painting
Never before have I seen such an exhibition. pledged to renew and revitalize Austrian art, symbolizing music, were still very much in the
An exhibition without a single bad picture! had a mammoth task before it. spirit of historicism and represented only a
An exhibition which is a resume of all modern In spite of the tentative nature of the group's small advance on the earlier murals and
painting! An exhibition which shows that we, first exhibition, however, Bahr seems to have ceiling-paintings which Klimt had designed
we poor Viennese, have among us artists who been taken at his word. Nowadays the Seces- and executed for theatres, opera-houses and
can appear and be judged with the best sion is usually credited with the introduction public-buildings. These were in a style which
Europeans'. of modernism into Austria, is usually seen as could be understood and appreciated by the
In the light of the exhibition catalogue Bahr's the decisive break with the past after which Viennese public and, apart from a highly
praise seems a little uncritical. Among the 534 everything was possible and almost everything unusual facility for drawing, there was little to
pieces on view at the first Secession exhibition, was achieved. But the Secession should not be suggest, in 1898, that Klimt's talent was in
held at 12 Parkring between May and June credited with too much. It is true that it any way different from that of painters like
1898, were works by such best Europeans as broadened the horizons of the Viennese public Makart and Romako whose work the Seces-
Frank Brangwyn, John Singer Sargent, by exposing it to art quite different from the sion claimed to abhor.
Arnold Boecklin and Max Liebermann. It is highly traditional styles to which it had been It is perhaps unusual that the Secession chose
true that Purvis de Chavannes and Khnopff accustomed, and it is also true that the Seces- a painter as its first President, for the group
were also represented, but it cannot be said sion stimulated the kind of debate and argu- was not primarily concerned with the future
that the Secession had succeeded in compiling ment about art which were of enormous of painting at all. Its members were above all
a resume of all modern painting. benefit to artists and cleared the way for the dedicated to reform in architecture and the
Indeed, it would be amazing if the group had more truly radical work which was to come. applied arts. Influenced by the Viennese
succeeded in this, for the Viennese public had But the group did not include a Monet or a architect Otto Wagner who was appalled by
not been exposed to much contemporary Cezanne and it broke little new ground. It the pompous way in which the city had been
foreign art before, let alone foreign art of any would be better to see it not so much as a extended during the nineteenth century, and
advanced kind. It had been content with the beginning, but as an end. particularly by the design of the Ringstrasse,
home product and this, although extravagant, One of the Secession's major talents and most the Secession's members, most of whom were
colourful and superficially impressive, con- forceful personalities was Gustav Klimt, its architects or designers, formulated theories of