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Secessionist Symbolism and Femmes Fatales
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Gustav Klimt
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"We want to declare war on sterile routine, on rigid Byzantinism,
on all forms of bad taste... Our Secession is not a fight of modern
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."2 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 "right 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 role 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 successful
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 blending 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".
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Sonja Knips, 1911
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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 Warndorfer, 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 of Sonja Knips 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.
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Portrait of Sonja Knips
1898
The portrait of this young society lady shows the expression of aloofness
and disdain shared by all Klimt's femmes fatales from this time on.
In the photograph, taken 13 years later, the features have become heavier.
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Portrait of Marie Henneberg
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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 the fin de siecle was the
domination of woman over man. The battle of the sexes preoccupied
the salons; artists and intellectuals participated in the
discussions. Klimt's 1898 Pallas Athene is the first
archetypal "superwoman" in his gallery: with her armour and weapons
she is sure of victory and she subjugates man, or perhaps the whole
of mankind. Some elements appear in this picture which would be
decisive in Klimt's subsequent work: for instance, the use of gold
and the transformation of anatomy into ornamentation, of
ornamentation into anatomy. Klimt remains active on the surface,
unlike the younger generation of Expressionists who seek immediate
penetration of the psyche. Klimt's visual language takes its
symbols, both male and female, from Freud's dream world. The
voluptuous ornaments reflect the eroticism which represents one side of Klimt's visions of the
world as he knew it.
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Pallas Athene
1898
This is Klimt's first use of gold. The voluptuous
ornamentation underlines the essential erotic ingredient in his view of
the world.
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Transfer sketch for Philosophy, 1900-07 |
This eroticism repeatedly provoked polemics, as in the
case of the three
designs for the Great Hall of the University. These works were a
widely felt to be scandalous. In 1899 Klimt presented the definitive
version of Philosophy, the first of the three
pictures. An earlier version had been shown for the first time at the World
Exhibition in Paris. Although it was well received by many critics
in Paris, and even won a prize at the exhibition, the learned
authorities at home made it the object of such scandal that the
whole of Viennese culture was dragged through the mud. Yet it seems
that Klimt had only the best intentions. He saw Philosophy as the
synthesis of his world view, of his search for a style of his own.
In the catalogue he explains: "On the left a group of figures: the
beginning of life, fruition, decay. On the right, the globe as
mystery. Emerging below, a figure of light: knowledge."
The venerable Viennese professors protested at what they saw as
an attack on orthodoxy. They had proposed a painting which would
express the triumph of light over darkness. Instead the artist had
presented them with a portrayal of the "victory of darkness over
all". Influenced by the works of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, trying
in his own way to solve the metaphysical riddle of human existence,
to give expression to modern man's confusion, Klimt inverted the
proposition. He did not hesitate to break the taboo on such themes
as disease, physical decay, and poverty in all its ugliness; up to
this time it had been customary to sublimate reality, to present its
more favourable aspects.
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Nude study of an old man holding his head in his hands, study for
Philosophy, 1900-07
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Philosophy
1899-1907
Men and women drift as in a trance, with no control over the
direction they take. This contradicted the notions of science and
knowledge prevailing among scholars at the time, and was felt to be
a grave affront; it was the University that had commissioned these
early works from Klimt.
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Life and the erotic expression of life are always concentrated on
the struggle between Eros and Thanatos, and this is all-pervading in
Klimt. The allegory of Medicine, the second of the Faculty pictures
for the University, again provoked a scandal. Bodies torn away by
destiny are carried onwards by the stream of life, in which all the
stages of life, from birth to death, are brought together, be it in
ecstasy or in pain. This vision is bound to belittle medicine; it
emphasises the impotence of medicine as a healing force compared
with the untamable powers of destiny. Is not Hygieia,
the goddess of health, turning her back on mankind with hieratic
indifference, more enigmatic or bewitching femme fatale than symbol of scientific enlightenment? Are not the enchanting
young female bodies intermingled with skeletons a direct
illustration of Nietzsche's parable of "eternal return", in which
death is seen as the cardinal point of life? In Philosophy and in
Medicine Klimt is expressing a view which he shares
with Schopenhauer, of "the world as will, as blind force in an
eternal circle of bringing forth, loving and dying."
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Medicine (composition study), 1897-98
"Though you cannot please
all men with your deeds and with your art, yet seek to please a few.
To please the multitude is not good. "To judge by the outrage provoked
by Klimt's Medicine,
it seems that he made Schiller's maxim his own.
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Transfer sketch for Medicine, 1901-07
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Medicine
1900-07
Klimt was convinced of the powerlessness of medicine as against the
powers of destiny. The public was deeply perturbed; people were
shocked: and the artist was charged with "pornography" and
"perverted excess".
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Hygieia
(Detail from Medicine)
1900-07
Even Hygieia, goddess of
health, turns her back on mankind and is more femme fatale and sorceress
ban enlightened symbol of medical science.
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The third work for the University, Jurisprudence, was
received with equal hostility; viewers were shocked by the ugliness
and nakedness they thought they saw. Only one of the academics,
Franz von Wickhoff, Professor of the History of Art at the
University of Vienna, defended Klimt in a legendary lecture entitled
"What is ugly?" This did not prevent the scandal provoked by Klimt
from being the subject of a question in Parliament. The artist was
accused of "pornography" and of "perverted excess".
In the picture Jurisprudence, Klimt seems to be treating sexuality
in a manner suggested by Freud's research into the unconscious.
Klimt ventures - oh shame! - to present sexuality as a liberating
force, in contrast to scientific knowledge with its constricting
determinism. He had been expected to contribute to the glorification
of science, but instead he seems to have taken as his motto the
quotation from Virgil's "Aeneid" with which Freud prefaced his
"Interpretation of Dreams": "If I cannot move the gods, I will
invoke hell."
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Transfer sketch for Jurisprudence
1903-07
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Jurisprudence
1903-07
Instead of portraying the victory of light
over darkness, as was expected. Klimt gave cxpression to mankind's
sense of insecurity in the modern world.
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Goldfish
1901-02
This picture is Klimt's reply to the sharp criticism of his
Faculty paintings. Entitled at first "To my critics", the
picture shows in the foreground a wonderful laughing naiad
who is frankly turning
her beautiful bottom in the direction of the viewer.
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Klimt did not allow himself to be intimidated by the raucous
opposition, but continued on his way. His only answer to the
vehement criticism was to paint a picture, first of all called To my
critics, later exhibited as Goldfish. The public outcry
reached a tumultuous level: the lovely, frolicsome nymph in the
foreground was sticking her bottom out at all who beheld her! The
aquatic figures entice the viewer into a world of sexual evocations
and associations comparable to Freud's world of symbols. This world
had already been glimpsed in Moving Water and Nymphs
(Silver fish), and would be found again some years later
in Water Serpents I and Water Serpents II.
Art Nouveau loves the realm of water, where dark and light algae
grow on Venus molluscs, or delicate tropical coral flesh shimmers
between bivalve lamellae. The semiotics lead us back to their
incontrovertible origin: woman. In these watery dreams, algae become
hair growing from head and pubis. Klimt's "fish-women" put their
humid sensuality unashamedly on display. They follow the tide with
the curvilinear movements so characteristic of Art Nouveau. In
languid provocation, they yield to the embraces of the watery
element, just as Danae lies open to Zeus in the form of
a shower of gold.
Klimt's portraits of society wives gave him financial independence,
so that he was not obliged to fall into line with ministerial
demands or watch his painstakingly thought out and brilliantly
executed works dragged through the mud. He suggested that they
should be returned to him in exchange for the payments that had
already been made. He explained to Bertha Zuckerkandl, the Viennese
journalist: "The main reasons for my deciding to ask for the
paintings to be returned... do not lie in any annoyance that the
various attacks... might have aroused in me. All that had very
little effect on me at the time, and would not have taken away the joy I felt in this work. I am in general very insensitive to
attacks. But I am all the more sensitive if I come to feel that
somone who has commissioned my work is not satisfied with it. And
that is the case with the ceiling paintings." The ministry finally
agreed, and the industrialist August Lederer made part of the
repayment in exchange for the picture of Philosophy. In 1907,
Koloman Moser purchased Medicine and Jurisprudence. In an attempt to
save them from the dangers of World War II, they were moved to Schlob Immendorf in the south of Austria; the castle and its
contents were destroyed in a fire started by retreating SS troops on
5 May 1945. Today, some idea of the works which caused such public
outrage can be gained from black-and-white photographs and from a
good colour reproduction of Hygieia, the central figure of
Medicine.
There is also the "'colourful" commentary by Ludwig Hevesi: "Let the
gaze move to the two lateral pieces, Philosophy and
Medicine: a
mystic symphony in green, a rousing overture in red, a purely
decorative play of colours in both. In Jurisprudence, black and
gold, not actual colours, prevail; instead of colour, the line gains
significance, and form becomes a characteristic that one
must regard as monumental."
Klimt's work was created in the turbulence between Eros and
Thanatos, challenging the sacrosanct principles of a decadent
society. In Philosophy he depicted the triumph of darkness over
light, in contrast with conventional notions. In Medicine
he exposed
its inability to cure disease. Finally, in Jurisprudence, he
portrayed a condemned man in the power of three Furies: Truth,
Justice and Law. They appear as the Eumenides surrounded by
serpents; the punishment they impose is an octopod's deadly
embrace. Klimt was determined to bring down the pillars of the
temple and to wound the prudish by his portrayal of sexual
archetypes.
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Fish Blood
1898
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Moving Water
1898
Klimt's water women yield with sensuous abandon to the embraces
of the waves, their natural element.
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Nymphs
(Silver fish)
1899
These evocative aquatic forms lead the way to a labyrinth of
sexual allusions, identifiable in terms of Freud's world of symbols.
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Water Serpents I
1904
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Water Serpents II
1904-07
Kliml undoubtedly preferred to paint
women rather than men; the latter are remarkably rare in his
paintings.
He even paints an entirely feminised universe, a
narcissistic world of lesbians loving one another in flowing
water
dreams, their hair entangled with algae.
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