Architectural Designs

In spite of the Greek amphora behind her giving an emphatically

Summary: In spite of the Greek amphora behind her giving an emphatically classical setting this is Klimt s firstfemmefatale and respectable society took exception to her Again and in spite of the classical vocabulary and allusions to Antiquity the personifications in Sculpture see p 12 Tragedy see p 13 Music I and Music H see p 14 15 are thoroughly Viennese with their bouffant hair styles and languid demi monde air In Plato s Symposium one encounters two types of Venus the celestial and the vulgar Renoir makes the same distinction Naked woman rises either from the sea or from bed she is called Venus or Nini there is no better name for her The academic idealised nude is applauded by society particularly when a historical message can be discerned but an everyday naked woman ready for love causes a scandal Before Klimt Edouard Manet s Olympia had aroused hatred and criticism She likewise was a Nini like the courtesan on the next street corner rather than a Venus in the style of Titian s idealised mistresses disguised as mythical goddesses Neither in Manet s Paris nor in Klimt s Vienna was it permissible for such idols to be drawn from life We want to declare war on sterile routine on rigid Byzantinism on all forms of bad taste Our Secession is not a fight of modem artists against old ones but a fight for the advancement of artists as against hawkers who call themselves artists and yet have a commercial interest in hindering the flowering of art TM This declaration by Hermann Bahr the spiritual father of the Secessionists may serve as the motto for the foundation in 1897 of the Vienna Secession with Klimt as its leading spirit and president The artists of the younger generation were no longer willing to accept the tutelage imposed by Academicism they demanded to exhibit their work in a fitting place free from market forces They wanted to end the cultural isolation of Vienna to invite artists from abroad to the city and to make the works of their own members known in other countries The Secession s programme was clearly not only an aesthetic contest but also a fight for the fight to artistic creativity for art itself it was a matter of combatting the distinction between great art and subordinate genres between art for the rich and art for the poor in brief between Venus and Nini In painting and in the applied arts the Vienna Secession had a central r61e in developing and disseminating Art Nouveau as a counter force to official Academicism and bourgeois conservatism This rebellion of the young in search of liberation from the constraints imposed on art by social political and aesthetic conservatism was accomplished with such impetus as to meet with almost immediate success and resulted in a utopian project the transformation of society by art The Secession published its own journal Ver Sacrum to which Klimt contributed regularly for two years After snccessful exhibitions in other countries the desire for the Secession s own exhibition building could also be fulfilled Klimt too submitted designs for this with a Graeco Egyptian orientation but it was Joseph Maria Olbrich s plans for the temple to art that were ultimately realised His concept was of a blertdlng of geometrical shapes from cube to sphere The pediment bears the famous maxim coined by Ludwig Hevesi the art critic To every age its art to art its liberty The group s first exhibition was eagerly awaited the doors were opened in March 1898 Klimt contributed Theseus and the Minotaur a poster rich in symbolic meaning The fig leaf was deliberately missing and Klimt had to appease the prudery of the censors by importing a tree Yet the almost complete nakedness of Theseus symbolises the fight for something new he is on the side of light while the Minotaur pierced through by Theseus s sword and fleeing timidly into the shadows represents broken power Athene sprung from Zeus s forehead watches over the scene as the incarnation of the spirit springing from the brain symbolising divine wisdom There can be no art without patronage and the patrons of the Secession are to be found first and foremost among the Jewish families of the Viennese bourgeoisie Karl Wittgenstein the steel magnate Fritz W~irndorfer the textile magnate the Knips family and the Lederers promoted especially avantgarde art They were among those commissioning paintings from Klimt and he specialised in portraits of their wives The Portrait ofSonja Knips see p 17 is the first in this new gallery of wives The Knips family were connected with the metal industry and with banking Josef Hoffmann designed their house and Klimt provided paintings for it with the 1898 portrait of Sonja in the centre of the salon and of the house The portrait unites various styles It is well known that Klimt admired Makart s hyperbole and Sonja s pose shows the influence of the master s Charlotte Walter as Messalina for instance in the asymmetrical positioning of the figure and in the emphasising of the silhouette Klimt s treatment of the dress on the other hand is uncharacteristically reminiscent of Whistler s light brush The proudly distant expression that he gives to this society woman is typical of Klimt it is encountered again and again from this time on in his femmes fatales One of the great themes of thefin de sibcle was the domination of woman over man Image Search Content inclusion

Image Dimensions: 100 x 159