This overarching stylistic principle pertained to the design of interiors and everything they contained, their architectural shells as much as their surrounding landscapes, not to mention the residents’ outfits from head to toe. From the wall decorations and the light fixtures to the coat hangers and the individual inkstand, everything had to be specially designed and custom-made for its intended location. ![]() The term, used earlier by the composer Richard Wagner to describe his all-encompassing approach to musical drama, means a concerted and thus elevated performance within and across the fine and decorative arts, architecture, landscape gardening, fashion, and jewelry design. The Secession building in 1901 © Österreichische Nationalbibliothekįor in their practice, the Secessionists desired to produce a Gesamtkunstwerk, or total work of art. Rather than confirming the traditional view of painting and sculpture as superior art forms, the new movement aimed to promote all the arts as equal-and equally important in achieving creative union. These words by art critic Ludwig Hevesi served the Vienna Secession’s central demand for artistic liberty. Golden letters on the architrave above the entrance read: “To the age its art, to art its freedom.” Reminiscent of Ancient Egyptian temples, the exhibition hall brought painting and sculpture to a measured use in the delicate decoration on its brilliantly white façade and was topped off by nothing less than a glistening, gold-leaf dome. The architect Josef Maria Olbrich’s Secession building in the heart of Vienna demonstrates this turn with great self-confidence-and perhaps just as ostentatiously as the neighboring Ringstraße. Soon, however, the creative avant-garde embraced a more restrained, geometric style, as practiced by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Glasgow and Frank Lloyd Wright in the U.S. At first, organic twists and naturalistic twirls so characteristic of German Jugendstil and French and Belgian Art Nouveau also prospered in the Habsburg city. The reform movement created a forum to question tradition through the display and debate of modern aesthetics, and within its first two years-thanks to financial backing from steel magnate Karl Wittgenstein (the father of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein)-had established an exhibition building and the journal Ver Sacrum (“holy spring”). In response, in 1897, a group of artists bent on artistic renewal-including such illustrious figures as Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, and Josef Hoffmann-founded the Vienna Secession. Progressive artists and architects, in particular, felt a deep dissatisfaction with historicist solutions to the aesthetic problems that were so strikingly manifested in grand Ringstraßen architecture and on the lush canvases of academic painters like Hans Makart-but also present in the decoration of private apartments and the production of everyday consumer goods. Today, the impact of this unique cultural outburst can still be experienced far beyond Austrian borders.ĭue to a comparatively late introduction to industrialization and modern consumerism, at the Fin de siècle (“end of century”), Vienna was only just beginning to grapple with the full impact of modernity in all its facets. The cultural struggle between tradition and modernity fought on Viennese soil left no artistic stage untouched, least of all the fine and decorative arts. ![]() In addition to its recognized political role during the period, the Danube capital of the early 1900s has long been celebrated for playing an instrumental part in the birth of modernism. ![]() ![]() The center of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy-where fateful decisions of war and peace were made in 1914-was a bustling multicultural metropolis at the time, and, at two million inhabitants, one of the five largest cities in the world. This year, as the centennial of the First World War draws near, Vienna at the turn of the 20th century stands squarely in the historical spotlight.
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