The Viennese Secession
A symbol of modernity, the Viennese Secession was defined by the rebellion of twenty artists who were against the conservative Vienna Künstlerhaus' oppressive influence over the city, the epoch, and the whole Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Influenced by Art Nouveau, this movement (created in 1897 by Gustav Klimt, Carl Moll, and Josef Hoffmann) was not an anonymous artistic revolution. Defining itself as a “total art”, without any political or commercial constraint, the Viennese Secession represented the ideological turmoil that affected craftsmen, architects, graphic artists, and designers from this period. Turning away from an established art and immersing themselves in organic, voluptuous, and decorative shapes, these artists opened themselves to an evocative, erotic aesthetic that blatantly offended the bourgeoisie of the time.
Painting, sculpture, and architecture are addressed by the authors and highlight the diversity and richness of a movement whose motto proclaimed “for each time its art, for each art its liberty” – a declaration to the innovation and originality of this revolutionary art movement.
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© Confidential Concepts, worldwide, USA
© Parkstone Press International, New York, USA
© Charles Robert Ashbee
© Charles Francis Annesley Voysey
© Ludwig von Hofmann
© Bertold Löffler
© Fritz Lang
© Eduard Josef Wimmer-Wisgrill
© Nathan Murrell
© Henry Van de Velde
© Victor Horta/Droits SOFAM – Belgique (pp. 173, 174, 175, 176)
© Hector Guimard (pp. 178, 179)
© Jürgen Schreiter (p. 189)
© Friedrich König (p. 192)
Preface
Charles Robert Ashbee, Chimneypiece, executed by Arthur Cameron for the Magpie and Stump (Pub), 37 Cheyne Walk, London, 1893.
Plain, repoussé and enamelled copper tiles, 215 × 201.5 cm.
Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
To write a text on the Viennese Secession – an art movement that, despite its short creative period of barely ten years, had an enormous impact in the development of modern art – without consulting the contemporary witnesses of that period would be a futile venture. For this reason, this book will feature the writing of two contemporaries of the Secession artists, both believable and competent columnists whose testimonies are as relevant today as they were in the early 20th century. Excerpts from their commentaries have been carefully translated from the variety of German that was used before the Second Orthographical Conference in 1902. The two experts in question are Hermann Bahr and Ludwig Hevesi.
The Austrian Hermann Bahr, born 1863 in Linz, was a poet, outstanding essayist, influential art critic, and expert of contemporary literary movements from naturalism to expressionism, as well as one of the most important comedy authors of his time. Furthermore, he was a spokesman for Jung-Wien (Young Vienna), a group of writers and literary critics, who called themselves “Viennese coffeehouse writers” and used Die Zeit, a weekly literary magazine owned and published by Hermann Bahr between 1894 and 1904, as a mouthpiece for their ideas. He lived for over twenty years in Berlin, where he mainly worked with theatre manager, director, and actor Max Reinhardt (1873–1943). After two decades in Berlin, he left Germany for Austria to work in Salzburg and Vienna. In 1922, he returned to Germany to settle down in Munich, where he died twelve years later. Beyond his collection of critical essays and his activities as playwright of comedies, he also composed several works of prose and drama. To list every of Bahr’s accomplishments would go far beyond the scope of this preface.
Ludwig Hevesi (1842–1910), born under the name Ludwig Hirsch in the Austro-Hungarian town of Heves, was a journalist and writer. He began his professional career in a Hungarian daily newspaper when he was 24-years-old and was shortly after promoted to report for the arts and culture section of the Viennese Fremdenblatt. During the reign of Franz Joseph I (1830–1916), ruler of the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire, Hevesi worked especially for the Secession as columnist and art critic. He once wrote:
[…] “Indeed, there is no guidebook to the Secession.” That was my response when a young art enthusiast, confronted with the first success of the new movement, asked me whether there was a book that he could consult to better understand the uncomfortable paradigmatic shift that he was faced with. If someone would put this question forward today, I would recommend the following book […].
The Viennese Secession was not a singular event that came from nowhere. The movement had precursors and, naturally, also successors, and soon other, younger artists from other associations started rebelling against the rigid predominance of the established and generally rather conservative artists, who confronted all these new ideas for the training and education of artists with an uncompromisingly defensive attitude. Having no chance to exhibit their works together with already recognised artists – their work didn’t usually clear the stage of pre-selection that was supervised by a jury which was evidently composed of these very artists – thus deprived them often of the opportunity to find buyers for their work.
In order to generate a holistic depiction of the Viennese Secession, a brief overview of the most important precursors of the movement is necessary.
Ditha Moser, Folding calendar, 1907.
Donation from Oswald Oberhuber, Collection and Archive, Universität für angewandte Kunst, Vienna.
Gustav Klimt, Gnawing Sorrow (detail from second panel of The Beethoven Frieze), 1902.
Casein on plaster, height: 220 cm.
Secession, Vienna.
Vienna in the Second Half of the 19th Century
Even though the Viennese upper class were passionately fond of dances, the opera, theatre, and music, they remained extremely conservative. Strict Catholicism accompanied by rigid social morals made them seem, at least in appearance, unmoving and close-lipped. While the rest of society was only too happy to embrace all sorts of pleasures then deemed sensual, for example the waltz, the so-called “good” society rejected any topic that was unaesthetic, erotic or even mildly sexual. Thus different standards were applied to different strata of society, which is telling about the dominant concept of morality in Vienna in particular, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in general, at the end of the 19th century.
