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see also:
Art
Nouveau
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2 Art Nouveau II: Scotland, Austria,
and
Germany
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Art Nouveau was a major influence on design not only in England
and
France but also in other parts of Europe. In focusing on artists who
worked in
Glasgow, Vienna, and various German cities, this chapter traces a
number of artists' groups that developed a visual language that was
overall more symmetrical,
rectilinear, and abstract than that of their French and English
contemporaries. Broadly speaking it also traces a
shift from art centered on
the evocative potential of line, form, and color to one that eschews
ornamental
effects in favor of simplicity and clarity.
In addition to providing a survey of major works, this chapter will
focus on
three recurring themes. First, it explores the continuing attempts
by artists to
collapse the hierarchical relationship between the "fine arts" of
painting, sculpture,
and architecture, and the less esteemed "crafts"
- a category that included
graphic design. Second, the belief in the feasibility of artist-led
Utopias, or
perfect worlds, which served as an escapist alternative to the
alienating spaces
of the industrial age, is considered. Third, the chapter discusses
the use of
design styles as a marker of national or regional identity, which
celebrated the
accomplishments of society under the leadership of bourgeois
industrialists.
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The Four
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Four
artists—Margaret Macdonald (1864-1933), Frances
Macdonald (1873-1921), Herbert
MacNair (1868-1955), and Charles Rennie Mackintosh
(1868-1925)—together formed the larger part of the Art Nouveau
movement in Scotland. None of
these artists worked professionally as a graphic designer; however,
the limited works that they did produce were to prove influential,
and secured for Scotland a
stable niche in the history of the Art
Nouveau movement. This
partnership, called The Four, consisted of two sisters and their
respective husbands-to-be, as Frances Macdonald and Herbert
MacNair married in 1899, while
Margaret Macdonald and Mackintosh followed suit a year later.
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The Glasgow School of Art, Celtic Revival
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The city of Glasgow itself is important to an understanding of
the Art Nouveau movement
centered there. A nineteenth-century "boom town," Glasgow had
undergone startling urban growth
during
the Industrial Revolution. The rapid changes in its economy
had created a vast economic chasm between the nascent bourgeoisie
with their fortunes and the workers who toiled in the
factories. In fact, the city became rather notorious as a vulgar,
blighted industrial zone, a reputation that most likely partly
reflected English chauvinism. The decorative elegance of Scottish
Art Nouveau produced at the
Glasgow School of Art (GSA) should be understood in this
context, in which art served to
provide an alternative world, from which the difficulties of the
industrial age could be conveniently banished. At the same time, the
art produced at the school also served to reject this caricature
of the city and rejoice in
the affluence of the Glasgow bourgeoisie, a social class that
included the Macdonald sisters. In fact, the sisters'
education in the visual arts represented a typical step for
young women from the more progressive, affluent families.
Finally, the spirit of the Arts
and Crafts movement, in which the fine arts and applied arts were
equally valued, was intended to
act as a democratizing force, one
that could in some small way combat the general perception of urban
life as rife with social and
economic injustices.
The collaboration began when the Macdonald sisters enrolled
in the Glasgow School of Art in 1893. Once there, the sisters found
a supportive group of fellow students determined to engage the
newest artistic trends. "The Immortals," as these young
women called themselves, were excited by Japonisme as well as
by the "decadent" artists gathered around Aubrey Beardsley and
Oscar Wilde in England . However, the students
at the GSA sought to carve out a
unique, and specifically Celtic-inspired,
visual style and subject matter. In a parallel to French designers'
embrace of the Rococo, Scottish artists wanted to establish
their art as pan of a national tradition. The Four were
influenced by the Celtic revival
of this era, as evidenced by the continuing fascination with the
works of "Ossian," an epic poet
whose writings were filled with
Celtic symbolism as well
as supernatural adventure. ("Ossian" was in fact an invention
perpetrated by the author James MacPherson (1736-1796) in
1761 —MacPherson is credited with
sparking the search for a historically distinct Celtic identity.)
The Four were also aware of
more recent scholarship, such as
Architecture, Mysticism, and Myth
(1891), a book by W.R. Lethaby (1857-1931) that argued in
favor of the
prominence of magic, supernatural strivings, and
subjective
responses in architectural theory. A favorite of the Arts
and Crafts
Society in London, Lethaby advocated the relationship between
architecture and design crafts.
For
artists desiring to showcase new work, the importance of
publications and willing patrons cannot be underestimated.
At the GSA, a
group of progressive students organized themselves
around a
journal they called The Magazine (published 1893-6);
it was in the
November 1894 cover of that periodical that Frances
Macdonald
published one of the first works, a watercolor, that
displays the
seeds of mature style. Called A Pond, the image
combines
sinuous, organically shaped figures and water plants
with a
symmetrical organization (fig. 2.1). The attenuated grace of
the
figures is derivative of a number of other Art Nouveau designs;
however, its combination of orthogonal structure and
fluid,
curvilinear forms, especially at the bottom of the image, as
well as its
nearly perfect symmetry (the left and right are mirror images
outside of the textual elements), suggests the beginnings of a bold
new graphic style. The decorative type of the word
"November"
reverses these two elements, as it combines
rectilinear
letterforms with strong asymmetrical elements. As is
the case with
many Scottish posters from this era, the palette, featuring
a mix of green, purple, and indigo, clearly invokes a set of
colors with
strong associations to the Scottish identity movement. The subject
is evocative and ambiguous, suggestive of mystical
creatures who
embody the spirit of this watery environment.
The female forms
decisively reject the prevailing "decadent"
images of women
as seductive temptresses, as Macdonald's figures
exude mystery and ambiguity without
defining that mystery in sexual terms.
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2.1 Frances Macdonald,
A Pond,
1894. Watercolor. Glasgow School of Art Collection.
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Early Poster Design
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In 1895, the
Macdonald sisters received their first graphic design
commission, a
poster for Drooko Royal Umbrellas (fig. 2.2).
("Drooko" is
Scottish for "drench.") The owner of the company,
Joseph Wright, hired the sisters to
promote the product, which had
inspired the verse, "I walk the world a raintight
fellow/Beneath
the Joseph Wright Umbrella." The composition is made up of three
vertical bands that are for the most part disconnected from one
another. The box of organic elements on
the lower left
is separate from both the text above it, as well as
the attenuated figure in the central
space. There has been some
attempt to connect the simplified central figure with the flowers on
the far right, using the figure's hand, which becomes more
plant-like closer to the floral forms, and with the product itself,
as the umbrella spans the gap between the center and righthand
spaces. The faintly
floral-shaped umbrella frames the figure's face,
but is not situated in a way
that draws attention to the product— which, lost in the background,
is the presumed focus of the
poster's message.
The first poster by the Macdonald sisters in collaboration
with Herbert MacNair displays many of the stylistic devices seen in
A Pond, albeit in a more staunchly vertical format (fig.
2.3).
Advertising the GSA's 1895 student show, the poster superimposes
long, sinewy figures with similarly attenuated plant forms.
The most striking element of the symmetrical design is the way
the female
figure's hair and the male figure's hooded cloak both
sweep around
behind them and form part of the surrounding
abstract design. The hand-drawn
lettering of this lithograph has
a number of dramatic flairs, despite its overall blocky proportions.
For example, the arms of the "F" and "E" both extend out of
the em box (the implied
frame) in a dramatic fashion, while the arm
of the "L" in "Glasgow"
appropriates the baselines under the "as"
as it runs horizontally across
the poster. Also, the strong oblique
stress of the "S" as well as the merged characters in "the" both
create some unique visual
emphasis. The text is not directly integrated with the
image, but rather formed into a geometric block
that creates a plinth on which the figures above are perched as
if they are sculpted. The entire
composition is made up of a series of boxes that encase more organic
forms. The simple, flat forms
bounded by bold black contour
lines arc indicative of the prevailing Japanese influence.
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2.2 Frances Macdonald and Margaret Macdonald,
Drooko. 1895. Poster.
Mackintosh Collection.
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2.3 Frances Macdonald, Margaret Macdonald, and
Herbert MacNair,
The Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts, 1895. Poster.
Mackintosh
Collection.
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Celtic Manuscripts and The Four
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The art of "The Four" was strongly influenced
by Celtic art, especially
by its celebrated illuminated manuscripts.
While Celtic art can be
found across much of Europe and even farther
afield, its artistic centers
were in Ireland,
Scotland, and Northumbria in the British Isles.
Although the term
"Celtic art" can refer as far back as to the ancient works
of the La Tene culture (450 B.C.E—600 C.E), it is also used
broadly to refer
to the medieval art produced in this region between
500-1000 C.E.
A mix of pagan and Christian styles and
subject matter, Celtic art
represents one of the great examples of
cross-cultural ferment that characterized the Middle Ages.
Later, in Ireland as well as in Scottish cities
such as Glasgow during the mid-nineteenth
century, there was a resurgence
of interest in Celtic art for nationalistic reasons, and
also because
of the broader celebration of medieval
culture that lay at the heart of
the Arts and
Crafts movement.
Characteristics of Celtic art include dense
interlaced patterns,
curvilinear elements, and zoomorphic forms.
Although many of the
abstract elements were invented by
metalworkers working in three dimensions with raised linear
elements, a sophisticated knowledge of
color allowed artists working in two
dimensions to replicate the spirals
and flowing, knotted forms. Typically,
manuscript illuminators
displayed great skill in devising elaborate
initial capitals, with letters that transformed themselves
into beasts or abstract shapes while maintaining a
recognizable typography. These flourishes served as a
model for The Four.
A major center of medieval Celtic manuscript
production was in a monastery on the island of Iona off the
western coast of Scotland. When the monks of Iona fled from
marauding Vikings around 800, they settled in Kells on the
Irish coast. The resulting
Book of Kells
from the early ninth century represents the
ultimate achievement of the
manuscript
tradition. It was published in a facsimile edition in 1892,
fueling a burst of
creativity during the later stages of the Celtic revival.
In the 1890s, the
tendency of The Four to mix curvilinear elements
with strong geometric
structures would have derived from their
knowledge
of the Celtic manuscript tradition.
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see also:
Charles Rennie Mackintosh
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Charles Rennie Mackintosh
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Charles Rennie
Mackintosh was the last addition to The Four's collaborative group.
Trained as an architect, he had met MacNair
in 1889, when
they both worked at an architectural firm. Between
1889 and 1894,
MacNair and Mackintosh both took classes at the
GSA. Later,
Mackintosh worked as an architectural draftsman for
much of the
1890s in the small Glasgow architectural firm of Honeyman & Keppie.
By 1895 The Four were complete.
Mackintosh's
1896 poster advertising the Scottish Musical Review,
a periodical,
features much of the same mix of curvilinear and
rectilinear
elements visible in the earlier posters (fig. 2.4). It also
features the "Scottish" palette of purple, indigo, and green as well
as the
use of the text box as a pedestal for the centralized image
of a figure.
However, perhaps because of his architectural training,
Mackintosh's
style leans more heavily on geometric, architectonic
elements and so
appears weightier than the other works. The
Scottish
Musical Review
poster also has
a very strong phallic element
in the shaping of the figure as well as its erect bulb and
stem floral
combinations, introducing an element of sexuality that
was not
apparent in the earlier posters.
The Four exhibited their work outside Glasgow for the first
time in 1896. At the fifth exhibition
of the Arts and Crafts Society in
London, they found their works harshly criticized: one piece by
Mackintosh was called "grotesque," by both academic conservatives
and members of the society. Followers of William
Morris at this time were still
wedded to the idea of the preeminence
of historicist styles, and they rejected the fluid abstractions of
The Four. Only the journal The Studio had anything positive
to say about the group, recognizing their allegiance to Art Nouveau,
which the journal backed. In the same year, a critic at the conservative
Magazine of Art was to invent a memorable label for the
works produced at the
GSA, calling the institution the "Spook
School" because of the
preponderance of wraithlike figures in
pieces such as A Pond.
The Four, particularly, found much greater
acclaim in 1900, when the eighth
Vienna Secession exhibition
featured a Scottish Room (fig.
2.5) When Margaret Macdonald
and Mackintosh visited the show,
they were widely celebrated by
the Secession artists, who shared
many of their ideals, such as a
rejection of
the hierarchical distinction between fine and applied
art, as well as
their interest in pursuing decorative Art Nouveau
graphics.
A compelling
parallel to The Four's graphic work can be
found in
Mackintosh's interior designs for the Glasgow School of Art itself.
In 1897, the firm of Honeyman & Keppie, using a project
created by Mackintosh, won the competition for the design of
a new building
for the GSA. The resulting interior spaces, such as
the Library
(fig, 2.6), feature much of the complex mix of symmetry
and asymmetry, organic and rectilinear, that characterizes the
work of
The Four. The coffered grid of the ceiling is balanced with the
sometimes irregular curves of the beams and arches to form a
composition that has a graceful, linear feel. The library calls to
mind the words of the architect Edward Lutyens
(1864-1944), who said of another
Mackintosh work that it was "all
very elaborately simple."
Scottish
tearooms provide an excellent example of a new type of establishment
that reflected changes in social class as a result of
the industrial
revolution. Tearooms, sometimes called "Ladies' Luncheon Rooms,"
provided a new social space where women could socialize in public
while avoiding unwanted association
with the sordid reputation of the
city's pubs and nightclubs. Macdonald and Mackintosh found their
most loyal patron in the owner
of a number of successful tearooms, Catherine Cranston
(1850-1934). Cranston, a supporter of the temperance movement,
wanted her establishments to project a refined elegance, yet also to
suggest the excitement of the modern city. Macdonald and Mackintosh
eventually produced designs for four of her tearooms,
attempting to create an overall
vision that would integrate all the
different elements of each room,
from chairs to wall coverings, in
a single aesthetic. The Ingram
Street Tearoom was decorated with
Macdonald's gesso panel The
May Queen (fig. 2.7), which had
already garnered a great deal of
praise from the Secession artists when it was shown in Vienna
in 1900. Featuring a strong linear
element that would appear to
have been influenced by Beardsley,
the panel harmonizes this
curvilinear element with a blocky rectilinear composition.
Mackintosh's Argyle chair (1897), designed to
make a dramatic statement at
Cranston's Argyle Street Tearoom,
was also exhibited at the Vienna Secession. The oak chair shares the
vertical emphasis of the posters made by The Four, and translates
the graphic conventions they developed, especially in the
shaping of the large ellipse that forms the top rail and the thin
posts that support that curving shape.
An
important point concerning the historical reputation of
The Four is the manner in which
their original collaborative ideal,
which resonated with the
medieval revivalism of the Arts and
Crafts movement, was later
effaced because of the modern focus on the individual. During
their lifetimes, the sense that first the
Macdonald
sisters, and then Margaret Macdonald and
Mackintosh, had
worked synergistically, was a given, even though
they
did not receive much acclaim in their native Scotland. In
1900 in Vienna,
Macdonald and Macintosh were equally feted as
accomplished
Scottish artists. In the 1960s, when interest in the
An Nouveau was
revived, a new generation of design historians
focused on
Mackintosh to the almost total exclusion of the other artists. In
exhibitions held in Zurich, New York, Paris, and
London
during the 1960s, Mackintosh was given a progressively greater
place, celebrated as an individual genius. Today, he is a
cornerstone of
design history, while the other three of The Four have been pushed
somewhat out of the picture. In particular, Margaret Macdonald's
contribution to the couple's work is woefully
understated in many design histories.
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2.4 Charles Rennie Mackintosh,
The Scottish
Musical Review,
1896.
Lithograph.
Mackintosh Collection.
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2.5 Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret
Macdonald-Mackintosh,
Room
Designed for the Eighth Vienna Secession, 1900.
Glasgow School of Art Collection.
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2.6 Charles Rennie Mackintosh,
Library,
Glasgow School of Art, 1899
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2.7 Charles Rennie Mackintosh
and Margaret Macdonald-Mackintosh,
The May Queen
Panel. Ingram Street
Tearoom, 1900.
The Burrell Collection,
Glasgow, Glasgow City Council (Museums).
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Vienna Secession
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In Vienna,
graphic design was an integral pan of the Secession
movement, led by Gustav Klimt
(1862-1918). The artists' group
called the Vienna Secession was formed in March 1897 by an initial
group of eighteen artists who felt that the two artists'
organizations in Vienna, the
Vienna Academy of the Arts and the
Genossenschafc Bildender
Kiinstler Wiens, were out of touch with
the newer styles and artistic
theories that were spreading across
Europe. In the eyes of the
Secessionists, the Academy was an aged
institution hopelessly wedded to the academic art of the past. The
Genossenschaft, a word that
refers to its status as an artists' "cooperative,"
was founded in 1870 and devoted to contemporary art.
Sometimes referred to as the
Kunstlerhaus, or "artists' house," it
was controlled
in the 1890s by men with quite conservative taste.
Because the
Academy and the Genossenschaft controlled the
only public
exhibition spaces in Vienna, the Secession artists' first
goal was to
create an alternative organization with an exhibition venue through
which more progressive artists, from both Vienna
and abroad, could present their work to
the public. The term "secession"
means a withdrawal, and it is from the Genossenschaft
that the artists originally broke
away. Like Art Nouveau artists throughout the rest of Europe,
the Secessionists felt that the
experience of modern industrial society could be successfully
interpreted only by artists open
to new aesthetic strategies. And, in fact, the term Secessionstil
became yet another synonym
for Art Nouveau style.
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EXPLORATION:
Gustav Klimt
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Gustav Klimt
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The first item
of business for the Secession artists was to hold an
exhibition.
This first Secession show met with an indifferent
public, and its rented venue, the
headquarters of the Viennese
Horticultural Society, was unremarkable. Gustav Klimt, who had
been elected President of
the Secession group, produced a poster for the show that set
the tone for much of the art that would follow (fig. 2.8). In terms of style, Klimt adopted the vertical
format, asymmetrical
design, and empty spaces that had been a key part
of Aubrey Beardsley's designs in
England. The figure on the
righthand edge is Athena,
ancient goddess of Wisdom, whose
armor references the Secession's
struggle to free itself from conservative artistic tradition. In a band across the top of the poster the
mythical struggle of Theseus with the Minotaur is played out as
yet another allegory of
heroic artistic struggle against philistinism.
The
monochrome drawing of Theseus is contained in a horizontal band that
is balanced at the bottom of the poster by another colorless band,
this one containing the text publicizing the exhibition. The
sumptuous color of the figure of Athena
neatly ties the two elements together. In the upper left of the
image, the words "Ver Sacrum"
("Sacred Spring") appear, an
oft-repeated slogan of the
Secession that refers to yet another
mythological story, one in which
ancient citizens experience newfound abundance after a calamity.
Ver Sacrum was also the title
given to an influential journal
published by the group, and Klimt reused the image portion of
this poster for another one that
publicized the journal (see below). The fact that French Symbolist
ideas influenced Secession art works is clear in the subject matter
of this poster—mainly,
the sense that the underlying message is
mysterious, ambiguous, and gives
priority to the subjective emotional responses of the artist.
It might seem ironic that a Secession artist such as Klimt,
who valued his own novelty and avantgardist views on art and
culture highly, would choose to represent the Secessionist struggle
in seemingly archaic, mythological terms. However, in 1890s' Vienna,
Classical myths were often used to explain quite modern
situations, most notably in the work of the Viennese psychoanalyst
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), whose developing theories of
sexuality often relied on
analogies with Classical mythology as an
explanatory tool—as in the "Oedipus complex." The fin desikle
ambience of Vienna was
enhanced by a palpable sexual atmosphere
that informed much of the graphic work done there, as well as the
emerging psychoanalytic theories of Freud. It was in fact
the strong sexual undercurrent in the
poster, manifest in the exposed
genitals of Theseus, that caused the authorities to censor
it. Klimt then produced a second
version, which covered the offending organs with the trunk of a
tree.
Nuda Veritas
("Naked Truth"; 1899) is a fine example of
Klimt's
propensity for combining sumptuous decorative designs
with sexually
charged, if ambiguous, subjects (fig. 2.9). The painting
was exhibited at the fourth Secession exhibition, held in the spring
of 1899. There is a strong contrast between the visionary
abstraction of
the flat, decorative background and the realistically rendered nude
woman. This contrast creates a world of allegorical
fantasy as well
as the suggestion of contemporary sexual intimacy.
The
Symbolist-inspired figure of truth, presented Eve-like with a
serpent coiling
around her ankles (and connecting the text of the
title with the
image), seems to float ethereally in a hazy atmosphere of soft
blues. This figure had a longstanding association with alchemy and
other esoteric traditions, where she often represented the sexual
fusing of male and female as part of a spiritual
transformation.
Above the figure, text by the German Romantic
poet Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805)
reads: "If you cannot please all men by thine actions and by thine art, then please the
few; it is bad to please the
many"—a reference to the enlightened few, initiates, who appreciated
the art of the Secession.
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2.8 Gustav Klimt, Secession I, 1898. Poster.
Lithograph.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
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2.9 Gustav Klimt,
Nuda Veritas,
1899
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The Secession Building
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A key goal for
the Secessionists was to control an exhibition
space of their
own. The young architect Josef Maria Olbrich (1867-1908) was chosen
to design the building (fig.2.10), which was to be located on
the Ringstrasse, Vienna's most fashionable avenue. The Ringstrasse
had been itself constructed as recently as the 1860s, and the style
of its architecture was particularly anathema to the Secessionists.
They objected to the fact that it was made up of a series of
historicist structures that quoted from
all manner of
past styles. The Secession artists wanted to make a public statement
by locating their innovative exhibition hall and
headquarters
right in the thick of what they saw as an eclectic
mass of
tired-looking Neoclassicism. However, because of some
official
displeasure with Olbrich's design, the building was soon
moved to the
lessfashionable Karlsplatz. It is important to note
that despite
this setback, as well as the artists' antagonistic stance toward
official culture, the Secession group generally found the government
of the city of Vienna to be willing to help them reach their goals.
Additionally, Secession artists quickly found patrons
among the
wealthy bourgeoisie. These included luminaries such as Karl
Wittgenstein (1847-1913), scion of a powerful industrial
family, who
financed the construction of the Secession building.
Olbrich's
design was executed in a matter of months, and it was soon
recognized as one of the most notable manifestations of Viennese Art
Nouveau architecture. Combining geometric clarity with a garland of
gold over the main entrance, Olbrich's
creation
appeared startlingly severe with its strong axial symmetry.
The building creates an unusual
contrast between the blank spaces
on the cube-shaped walls of the exterior facade and a roof whose
elaborate decorations and skylights evoked to its
critics both a "gilded cabbage"
and a "greenhouse." More notable,
in reality, is the way the blank
spaces on the facade resonate with the comparable void used
in Klimt's poster for the first Secession exhibition. Both artists valued the startling effect of
so much emptiness in the midst
of a design that is otherwise rich with decoration.
The effort made
by Secession artists to unify different media
with a holistic
aesthetic is an important part of most Art Nouveau
movements. The underlying principle at
work is that of the Gesamtkunstwerk, or
"total work of art," a concept originated by
the German composer Richard
Wagner and made popular by
the French Symbolist movement. A
Gesamtkunstwerk is an an work that encompasses every possible
type of aesthetic expression. Wagner felt that he could
attain this goal through his operatic
compositions, which combined
elements drawn from literary, musical, and visual artistic
traditions. The French Symbolists,
most of whom
revered Wagner and his work, emphasized the
mystical and
spiritual elements of a unification of the arts. For
visual artists,
the Gesamtkunstwerkwas more of a theoretical goal
than a concrete
reality. Nonetheless, Secession artists and others
with their same
goals sought to implement the idea of a unification of the arts in
as many ways as possible.
While some of
the decorative relief panels that edge the
blocky mass of
the Secession building feature dramatic curvilinear
elements, the
organic lines are always more tightly controlled by
the
compositional scheme than they are in, for example, French
Art Nouveau. Above the lintel of the
main entrance a carving read, "To
each age its art. To art its freedom," a credo that resonates
with the spirit of revolution and embrace of the modern
that was an integral part of Art
Nouveau artistic theory. The
dome of cascading laurel leaves
above this inscription evoked the
wreath worn by Apollo,
allegorical patron of the arts. Combined with an orthogonal design
reminiscent of Egyptian temple architecture, the building was
suggestive of the spiritual attitude that the Secessionists had to
their work. Inside, the most innovative part of Olbrich's design was
immediately evident; the exhibition
space featured movable panels,
creating an "open plan" that could
be rearranged in order to allow
the space to take on new forms in short order.
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2.10 Josef Olbrich. Secession Building, 1898
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Poster and Journal Design
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In November
1898, Olbrich's building was the site of the second Secession
exhibition. For both that show and the third, a poster designed by
the architect, and featuring his building, publicized
the venue as
well as its contents (fig. 2.11). This vertical-format
lithograph
depicts the Secession building's front facade centered
at the top of
the poster, emphasizing its severe geometric scheme.
The lower half
of the image features hand-drawn text of two distinct,
and not particularly harmonious, designs. Other than the
centering of the justified text in a rectangular shape, there is no
clear relationship between
it and the image. It would seem that in this poster Olbrich relied
heavily on the "star power" of his building's
main entrance, feeling that it alone was enough to make a
striking poster.
The Secession
journal Ver Sacrum, established in 1898, was
the locus of a
great deal of experimental graphic work. The journal had been
proposed at the first general assembly of the
Secession
artists in June 1897, as an Austrian answer to the
popular Art
Nouveau periodicals in Germany, Pan and Jugend.
Koloman Moser (1868-1918), one
of the founders of the movement,
was chosen to organize the journal. The first issue
appeared early in 1898, featuring
a cover designed by Alfred Roller (1864-1935), the journal's first
editor (fig. 2.12). An introductory
essay in the first issue declared that Ver Sacrum "aims to
show other countries for
the first time that Austria is an independent artistic
entity. ... [I]t is meant to be a clarion call to the
artistic sense of the people, to
inspire, promote, and spread artistic life and artistic
independence." In this manner, the Secessionists
identified their own work as
representative of national identity. (Austria was, of course, the
dominant part of the larger Austro-Hungarian Empire under
Emperor Franz Josef.) Inspired by
the theory of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the journal was intended
to engage with both the
performing and literary arts, as well as the
visual ones.
The editors of
Ver Sacrum, especially the graphic designer
Roller, sought
to integrate typography, ornament, and image into a unified art work
on the page, again influenced by the
concept of the
Gesamtkunstwerk. The individual issues generally
each sported a
single theme (the fourth one, for example, was dedicated to Moser's
drawings and other graphics), and the implementation of a unified
visual style extended even to the
advertisements,
which were usually designed by Secession members
themselves. A striking example of the type of innovative
designs produced
for Ver Sacrum is Moser's cover for the February
1899 issue,
number 2 (fig.2.13), for which he drew an allegorical
female figure
emerging from lush tendrils that create powerful
abstract forms.
The flattened planes of her face suggest the
influence of
Japanese aesthetics, while the subject resonates with the Japanese
tradition of Bijin-ga. In fact, Japanese art also held a
special fascination for the Secession artists, who dedicated their
sixth exhibition (in 1900) to
it. The decorative lettering features
the same sense of flow as is
found in Japanese art. The curvilinear
details of individual characters,
such as the curving "v" and elongated
"s" of the title (almost touching the woman's hair), match
the overall form of the drawing. The unusual square format of
Ver Sacrum
also garnered attention, and is
suggestive of the cubic
spaces in Olbrich's building and Klimt's exhibition poster.
Koloman Moser
also contributed a poster publicizing one of
the Secession
exhibitions, this one for the thirteenth show, held in
1902 (fig.
2,14). By then, many of the Secession artists had shifted
to a decorative
scheme built on orthogonal principles. Partly
influenced by
the Scottish design principles that had made a huge
splash at the
eighth Secession exhibition in 1900, a subset of the
Secessionists
adopted not only a new style but also a new tone, in
which
subjective, Symbolist-influenced flights of fancy were
eschewed in
favor of a more straightforward subject matter. At
the same time,
geometric pattern, which does not lend itself to
the sort of
sensual atmosphere favored by Klimt, became a more
important
visual element. In this poster, Moser uses a scheme of
three figures
arranged symmetrically in a vertical format that is
clearly
reminiscent of Scottish graphics. The reductive, geometric
figures are
highly structured; the only curves in their bodies are
formed by simple
circular and teardrop shapes. The vertical bands
that make up
their bodies echo the overall shape of the poster. Moser used colors
in a similarly subdued fashion, dominated by a flat red and blue
that are outlined by hardedged contour lines. The text is used in
the Scottish manner as a plinth for the figures, yet it is better
integrated with them by passages of ornament that allow text and
image to flow together. In contrast to all of this
geometric
clarity is the fanciful lettering, which features scarcely legible
abstract forms. Some of the letters bulge, some serve as passive
foils to the more exuberant letters, while the "R"s in
"Osterreichs"
(fourth line from the bottom) look like deformed
"A"s. While
replete with curved elements, especially the stems, the
curves are not
irregular, like the French Art Nouveau, but rather seem to be
geometric in their baseline shapes. These dramatic
letters are
justified, forming a crisp block that belies their exaggerated
forms. The geometric pattern and extreme simplification of the
figures in this poster are distinctly un-sexual and un-Symbolist,
a far cry from the decorative sensuality of Klimt's
spiral floral
designs, such as the one in Nuda Veritas.
Another poster
that bridges the curvilinear style of the early Secession with the
post-1900 concern with geometry was made by Alfred Roller in 1903
for the sixteenth Secession exhibition
(fig.
2.15).
At the top of
the lithograph, the three "S"s in the word
"Secession"
display short, blunt curves that descend into long sinuous
spines, elongated and stylized like the traditional allegorical
figure. The field behind them is made up not of lavish floral ornament,
but of a reductive geometric pattern. The plinth-like block
of text at the bottom features an
incredibly dense, bold decorative type, in which the letters
expand to fit into every nook and
cranny of the box that
circumscribes them.
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2.11 Josef Olbrich, Secession, 1898. Poster.
Lithograph.
MAK-Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art,
Vienna.
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2.12 Alfred Roller and Koloman Moser, Ver
Sacrum, no. 1, 1898. Lithograph. MAK-Austrian Museum of
Applied Arts/Contemporary Art, Vienna.
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2.13 Koloman Moser,
Ver Sacrum, no. 2, 1899.
Lithograph.
MAK-Austrian Museum of Applied
Arts/Contemporary Art, Vienna.
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2.14
Koloman Moser, Poster for Secession XIII, 1902. Lithograph.
Private Collection. Museum fur
Gestaltung, Zurich. Poster Collection.
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Koloman Moser. Posters.
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2.15 Alfred Roller, Secession 16 Ausstellung,
1903.
Poster Color
lithograph. V&A Picture Library,
Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
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Wiener Werkstatte
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Around 1903,
Josef Hoffmann (1870-1956), the Viennese architect,
designer, and member of the Secession, and Koloman Moser
began to
develop a new organization that would focus its efforts on promoting
high standards of manufacture for Austrian crafts. (The term
"crafts" in the early twentieth century denotes the
decorative arts
associated with architecture such as furniture and
textile design,
metalwork, as well as bookbinding, graphic design
and even the creation of industrial
products, and should not be
confused with the uniquely American notion of "crafts" as
amateurish art projects with
ephemeral materials, such as collages
made by children.) With the
financial support of the industrialist Fritz Warndorfer, they
named their organization the Wiener
Werkstatte, translatable as the
"Viennese Workshops."
Hoffmann and
Moser, who were both professors at Vienna's Kunstgcwerbeschule, or
"School of Crafts," wrote in the 1905 manifesto of the Wiener
Werkstatte: "So long as our cities, our
houses, our
rooms, our furniture, our effects, our clothes and our jewelry, so
long as our language and feelings fail to reflect the spirit of our
times in a plain, simple and beautiful way, we shall
be infinitely
behind our ancestors." The artists of the Wiener Werkstatte,
influenced by William Morris and the principles of the Arts and
Crafts movement, as well as by the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk,
sought to create
works in a variety of media that
would beautify
modern urban society. Between 1903 and 1905, a schism gradually
deepened between artists committed to the
collapse of the
traditional arts and crafts hierarchy, and those who felt
that painting was the most exalted form of art produced at
the Secession.
(The painter Gustav Klimt was, in fact, pan of the
former group,
devoted to the ideal of the Gesamtkunstwerkj) This
led to a gradual
decline in the cohesiveness of the Secession movement and, after
1905, it was eclipsed by former Secession
artists' new commitment to the
Werkstatte. While a number of
Secession artists had earlier desired to pursue the production
of crafts, they had never
successfully formed relationships with manufacturers, and so the
Werkstatte grew out of the Secession
movement's commitment to crafts.
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Werkstatte Style
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In
terms of style, the artists associated with the Werkstatte
rejected the irregular, organic curvilinear style of
the early
Secession and focused their efforts on the geometric clarity of form
that had become a major part of Secessionstil around 1900.
All of the products of the Werkstatte were harmonized
to fit this
restrained style, a style that was in a way summarized by the two
logotypes produced to adorn its goods in 1903
(fig.2.16). In tune with the medieval spirit of collaboration
that had characterized the Arts and Crafts movement in England, it
was never revealed
whether Moser or Hoffmann had designed the logos or if they
were a communal project. The "rose" logo features the
eponymous flower depicted in a severe rectilinear design, its bloom
made up of squares within squares, each part of the flower boxed in
by a rectangle. The "Twin Ws" logo displays the superimposed letters
in a perfectly square shape, essentially an em box around the
letters. An important part of the Werkstatte ideology
was that the designers, most of whom were graduates of the
Kunstgewerbeschule, would be paid royalties from their work, and not
have to suffer the lowly status and desperate poverty of
wage laborers.
The square shape that is a distinguishing characteristic of many
Werkstatte designs was employed equally by Moser and
Hoffmann, although the latter used it so prominently that it became
known by the nickname the "Quadratl-Hoffmann." For
example, in 1905, Hoffmann designed a poster for the Werkstatte that
regularly intersperses the "Twin Ws" logo with the words "Wiener
Werkstatte" centered and justified into a square block
of text (fig. 2.17). Here, the use of
orthogonal schemes to advertise
the elegant functionalism of Werkstatte products is in resounding
contrast to the idiosyncratic designs of the Secession—designs
that had
effectively signified the Secession artists' interest in
Symbolism and
mysticism.
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2.16 Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser.
Werkstatte Logotypes, 1903.
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2.17 Josef Hoffmann, Werkstatte. 1905.
Poster.
Offset lithography.
Albertina Museum, Vienna.
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In 1904,
Hoffmann designed a set of geometrically stylized
cutlery for the
patron Fritz Warndorfer (fig. 2.18). This flatware was
monogrammed in the same manner as the Werkstatte's "Twin
Ws" logotype,
with boxes circumscribing geometrically shaped
letters that
have no stresses. The flatware itself was composed of the same type
of pure geometric shapes and formal clarity. This place setting was
featured along with other tableware at a 1906 exhibition called "The
Laid Table," which was held at the
Werkstatte's
headquarters. It will be important to be able to distinguish
between the Werkstatte's rectilinear designs, which have
a stylish
geometry to them, as evidenced by the sleek shapes and elongated
proportions of the fork in this example, and later
geometric
styles, which are often drier and less decorative in their visual
effects. The geometric linear elements in Werkstatte products are
essentially decorative, akin to the sinuous lines of Art
Nouveau. Just
as the curvilinear flourishes of Art Nouveau posters sometimes
obscured the legibility of the text, often the
stylized
geometry of Werkstatte products inhibited their functionality.
Without having sampled food with this museum-quality
flatware, it
would be hard to evaluate this example.
Hoffmann
and Moser designed the interior of the fashion house owned by Emilie
Floge (1862-1918), an important patron
and longtime companion of Klimt.
The Schwestern Floge opened
in 1904, sporting an interior
with a simple orthogonal design. Hoffman contributed the
table and chair set seen in this photograph
(fig. 2.19). The spare, rectilinear simplicity of the chairs,
with a strong vertical emphasis, is complemented by the boxy
shape of the cubic table. The
elongated chairback is reminiscent
of Mackintosh's Argyle
Chair, which had been a pan of the Scottish Room at the eighth
Secession exhibition of 1900, around the time that Hoffmann
shifted his style from one of florid
organic forms to this more
rectilinear approach. The slight curves
in the table's base are positively exuberant by the restrained standards
of the Werkstatte. Klimt, in turn, designed
a number of textiles for the
Werkstatte as well as fashion designs for Floge. Owing partly to its
financial success in designing
textiles, the Werkstatte opened
branches in Zurich, Switzerland,
and New York City as well as a
new headquarters in a fashionable
district of Vienna in 1907.
The Werkstatte artists organized two large-scale exhibitions
of their work in the summers of 1908
and 1909, which they called
simply "Kunstschau Wien" ("art show in Vienna"). The
shows were held in a temporary
building designed by Hoffmann. With fifty-four rooms coetaining the
work of over 170 artists, the exhibition presented a wide range of
Austrian art, not just that produced at the Werkstatte. However, one
of its most notable rooms was devoted to Klimt, another to
the products of the Werkstatte
itself
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2.18 Josef Hoffmann,
Wiener
Werkstatte Flatware,
1904. Silver.
MAK-Austnan Museum of Applied
Arts
/Contemporary Art, Vienna.
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2.19 Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann,
Floge Reception Room,
1904.
MAK-Austrian Museum of
Applied
Arts
/Contemporary Art, Vienna
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A poster publicizing the show by Berthold Loffler (1874-1960), a
professor at the Kunstgewerbeschulc and a member
of the Werkstatte, features the typical allegorical figure of the
arts (fig. 2.21). However, in keeping with the tenets of the
Werkstatte style, the figure is highly schematic, smooth and sleek
in appearance. Her body is punctuated by a handful of symmetrical
crosses, each with its corners filled in by black circles. It is
important to
remember the ongoing influence of Japonisme in
Europe,
specifically in the flat areas of color bounded by heavy black
contour lines in this poster. Loftier also organized a room
at the
Kunstschau that was dedicated solely to the art of the
advertising
poster. A myriad posters featuring rectilinear designs and geometric
patterns can be viewed in the photograph. Loffler's
show
represented the first formal exhibition of the poster to take
place in Vienna.
Another type of graphic design widely practiced at the Werkstatte
was the creation of postcards; more than a thousand unique postcard
designs were printed at the workshop. Because of the inexpensive
nature of their production, postcards allowed
artists to experiment with a wide range of design styles. For
example, a lithographed card designed by Rudolph Kalvach
(1883-1932) to celebrate a "name day" is awash with a vivid
juxtaposition of the complementary colors blue and orange
(fig. 2.20).
While the reductive drawing and symmetry of the card
resonate with the overall Werkstatte style, the ornamental line
around the lettering is rather whimsical and idiosyncratic in a
manner that is not typical of the workshop. Many of the stems of the
letters in the greeting wobble a bit and feature changes
in stress, a hint of the Secesswnstil that contrasts with the
firmer
geometry and even line of the "Twin Ws" in the lower left.
In book design,
the Werkstatte artists displayed a penchant
for fine
materials much like that of the Kelmscott Press in England. The
leather cover of the writing case shown here
{fig. 2.22)
features the same sort of geometric repetition that
Hoffmann had
used in the poster discussed above (see fig. 2.17).
The dense,
rhythmic pattern was designed by Mathilde Flogl
(1893-1950). As
had been the case with the Kelmscott Press and
the broader
Arts and Crafts movement in England under Morris, the espoused ideal
of making the entire world of mass-produced goods beautiful was fine
in theory, but the practice at the
Werkstatte was
dedicated almost exclusively to the creation of
handmade goods
such as this for the wealthy bourgeoisie. Other
than a few
postcards, broadsheets, and children's books, the products of the
Werkstatte were accessible only to the moneyed elite. Moser left the
Werkstatte in 1907 to pursue a career as a painter.
The iconic geometric style that had
dominated the organization since
1903 gave way around 1915 to a more eclectic variety of
design languages, united only in their continuing goal of
beautifying craft production.
Hoffmann remained a part of the organization he had
co-founded until its dissolution in 1932.
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2.20 Rudolph Kalvach, Postcard
"name day". MAK-Austrian Museum of Applied
Arts/Contemporary Art, Vienna.
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2.21 Berthold Loffler, Kunstshau, 1908.
Poster. Lithograph.
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2.22 Josef Hoffmann, Writing Case, 1927-29.
Pattern design by
Mathilde Flogl.
Manufactured by the Wiener Werkstatte. Leather,
gilt-stamped,
MAK-Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art, Vienna.
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see also:
Oskar
Kokoschka
Egon
Schiele
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Austrian Expressionism: Oskar
Kokoschka,
Egon
Schiele
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Another
trend in graphic design that grew out of the Viennese
Secession
movement was Expressionism. Expressionism is neither
a defined movement like the Werkstatte, nor is it a unitary
style. Instead, it is a mindset
whereby the artist seeks not to show what the world looks like, but
rather how it feels. Along these
lines, many Expressionist artists
sought to represent the storm and
stress of a tortured soul or a trying situation. Not all
Expressionism has a specific,
directed feeling in mind; often it
articulates a type of
generalized anxiety or unease about the
world. While Expressionist artists in Vienna were associated with
the Werkstatte, their styles
stand in stark contrast to the
Werkstatte style of geometric
clarity and compositional simplicity.
In its place, they use distortions of form, color, and space that are
designed to increase the emotional impact on the viewer. Viennese
Expressionist style has much in common with the
expressive power of French
Symbolist an as well as Art Nouveau.
The art historian Peter Selz
recognized this consonance but also elucidated an important
distinction, "Symbolism, Art Nouveau, and expressionism share above
all their emphasis on form and its evocative potentialities, ...
Frequently, where symbolism merely
suggests and understates,
Expressionism exaggerates and overstates." Furthermore,
Expressionists eschew the polished finish
and ornamental elegance of
Symbolism and Art Nouveau.
The foremost Expressionist
artists associated with the Werkstatte, Oskar Kokoschka
(1886-1980) and Egon Schiele
(1890-1918), were both proteges of Gustav Klimt. While Schiele and
Kokoschka specialized in painting, they also produced a
number of striking posters and
other graphics. As a student at the Kunstgewerbeschule, Kokoschka
had produced bookbindings and
illustrations as well as ceramics for the Werkstatte as early as
1907, some of which were
included in the 1908 Kunstschau.
Kokoschka also designed a poster,
The Cotton Picker, publicizing
the exhibition (fig. 2.23). Certain aspects of the poster show the
influence of the
Secessionstil, particularly the format of a single
woman amid an ornamental plant motif. However, nothing about the figure
or the cotton displays the decorative fluidity of Art Nouveau. The
figure looks rather awkward and disjointed, with an elongated
arm hanging at her side that is anything but
graceful; her
hair seems detached from her head and face; the
bold colors of
the figure's clothes lack a harmonious sense of balance.
Next to the figure, the linear element of the cotton plant
appears "clumsily" proportioned and lacks a firm hand. These are
all qualities that Kokoschka put
into the drawing on purpose in
order to increase its expressive
power. The chunky proportions of the scarcely legible lettering
complement the ungainly shapes in
the image portion of the poster.
All of the sensuality that Klimt and others put into this type of
image has been drained out of The
Cotton Picker.
The subject itself, a worker in a
field, is as unsexy as
they come, a far cry from the vivid sensuality of Nuda Veritas.
Kokoschka takes expressive intensity to a new level with the
self-portrait he painted in 1910, which was reproduced as a
lithographic poster for Der Sturm, a Berlin art journal
dedicated to the
Expressionist cause (fig. 2.24). Kokoschka had shaved his own
head that year and reveled in his striking appearance, while also
displaying for all to see his almost religious commitment to
Expressionist art. Of course, in the poster he has exaggerated the
shapes of his features in order to emphasize a sort of misshapen
ugliness that exudes emotional intensity, like that of a biblical
prophet. The religious motif is continued in his pose, as
Kokoschka presents himself in the guise of Jesus, poking at a
wound in his chest. He attempted to unify the image and text by
placing both his initials, "OK,"
and the words "Ncue Nummer"
"new issue") on his body itself,
like a slogan carved into his chest.
Like many
Expressionist works, this self-portrait is emotionally
raw, reveling in
the power of human feeling.
Like that of
Kokoschka, Egon Schiele's torturous emotional
life is well
represented in the art he produced. Schiele had a
traditional art education, having
studied at both the
Kunstgewerbeschule and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. When
Schiele was a child, his father degenerated into insanity as
a result of a syphilis
infection, and Schiele's difficult youth caused
him to come into almost constant
conflict with authority. Schiele
was obsessed with the depiction
of sexuality and psychosexual conflict, often mixed together with
morbid fantasies of death and decay. He was, of course, a great
devotee of Freud's work in this
area. Schiele's explicit images
of adolescents (the age of sexual
consent in Vienna at this time
was fourteen) made him notorious,
and he was briefly imprisoned in 1912 under an obscenity statute.
The
commemorative poster shown here was issued in support of a music
festival held in 1912 as a celebration of Austrian composers
(fig. 2.26). Like Kokoschka in his poster for Der Sturm,
Schiele used a self-portrait as his Expressionist vehicle. The
self-portrait was in many ways the natural subject of these two
artists,
because their
art tends to look inward, at their own minds, as opposed to
documenting the outer world. Schiele has distorted his own face into
a terrible grimace that is complemented by the blood red color.
There is no direct correlation between the
image and the traditional event that it
promotes, suggesting the
widespread
acceptance of the Expressionist idiom as signifying "culture" in its
broadest sense.
In 1915, Schiele
was granted the first solo exhibition of his
paintings and
drawings in Vienna, at the Galerie Arnot (fig. 2.27).
He designed
this poster to publicize the show. Displaying his
ongoing
propensity for narcissism as well as religious imagery,
Schiele
represented himself pierced by arrows, like the Christian
saint
Sebastian. While the elongated proportions of the figure
have their roots in the An Nouveau
style, here they form part of a
disjointed body, an assemblage of distorted parts that do not
seem to fit together. This
damaged body torn apart by arrows says
more about Schiele's internal
psychological state than about the actual condition of his corpus.
While the image depicts Schiele
himself, the viewer is not
expected to empathize with the specific facts of his suffering so
much as to feel this powerful vision of
emotional pain.
The forty-ninth exhibition of the Vienna Secession was held in 1918,
even though the organization's best years were behind it.
Schiele
contributed a number of works, including a poster (fig.
2.25)
in
which he returned again to religious imagery, which he
had so often
delved into in the past, in this case the Last Supper.
The table has a
jagged, angular shape, and the figures seem isolated
from one another, two elements that heighten the expressive-punch
of the work. The text box looks as if it was layered over the image
haphazardly, cutting off part of the scene, a compositional
technique that
suggests a chaotic element in the design. In 1918, the work that
Schiele displayed at the Secession exhibition met
with
considerable acclaim. Three years earlier, Schiele had married
Edith Harms (1894-1918), a young
woman who lived with her family
across the street from the artist, so it appeared that both
his personal and professional lives were now finally in place.
Tragically, in October 1918 Schiele and his wife, now pregnant,
both succumbed to the Spanish influenza that killed many millions of Europeans. Klimt and Moser also died that year, while
Kokoschka had long ago settled
elsewhere, and an era of Viennese
art came to an end.
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2.23 Oskar Kokoschka. The Cotton Picker,
1908
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2.24 Oskar Kokoschka, Self-Portrait,
from Der Sturm,March 1910. Poster.
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2.25 Egon Schiele, Secession 49 Ausstellung,
1918. Poster.
MAK-Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art,
Vienna.
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2.26 Egon Schtele, Musik Festival (Music
Festival), 1912 Poster.
MAK-Austnan Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art, Vienna.
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2.27
Egon Schiele, Galerie Arnot, 1915. Wien
Museum, Berlin.
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