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Gustav Klimt
Reconstruction of the Klimt room, from plans drawn up in the
studio of Professor
Hans Hollein; right side wall.
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The Hymn to Joy and the Beethoven Frieze
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For Gustav Klimt, philosophy, medicine and jurisprudence did not
seem to guarantee a happy or fulfilled life for any man, as was made
clear in his Faculty paintings for the University. He and his fellow
Utopians saw art, and art alone, as having the power to bring
salvation, which explains the particular importance that the
Secessionists attached to the total work of art.
In this spirit they determined to make their fourteenth exhibition a
special event and experience - a total work of art. The exhibition
was mounted in 1902, in honour of Max Klinger, whose Beethoven
sculpture formed the centrepiece. The whole exhibition became a
Beethoven celebration. The composer was something of a cult figure
at the time, public enthusiasm having been fired by Franz Liszt's
and Richard Wagner's reverential admiration of him. At the same
time, in France, Bourdelle was making his great Beethoven mask and
Romain Rolland writing his "Life of Beethoven". Klimt and his
friends saw in Beethoven the incarnation of genius, and in his work
the glorification of love and of the sacrifice that can bring
redemption to mankind.
Klinger's statue is of a heroic Beethoven. There is a sacral quality
in it, reminiscent of Phidias' "Zeus". The heroically naked stance
of the martyr and redeemer, with clenched fist and upward-turning
gaze, gives a perfect indication of the Secessionists' intentions.
Josef Hoffmann was responsible for the interior decoration of the
Secession House for the exhibition. He used bare concrete in order
to create as neutral a setting as possible. Furthermore, a total
synaesthetic experience was planned, which included music: the
fourth movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was performed, in a
new orchestration for woodwind and brass conducted by the Vienna
Opera's then musical director, Gustav Mahler.
Finally, Klimt created his Beethoven Frieze for this exhibition. He
intended that it should last only for the duration of the exhibition
and therefore applied it directly to the walls, using light
materials so that it could easily be taken down again. Fortunately
it was preserved, although for decades it was not on show to the
public; not until 1986 did it become possible to view it once more.
The frieze has therefore remained the least known, and the most
mythologised, of Klimt's works. He himself clearly saw it as a
symbolic transposition of Beethoven's last symphony.
The exhibition catalogue is informative in this respect: "The
paintings which extend like a frieze along the upper half of three walls in
this room are by Gustav Klimt. Materials: casein paint, stucco,
gilt. Decorative principle: consideration of the layout of the room,
ornamented plaster surfaces. The three painted walls form a
sequence. First long wall, opposite the entrance: the yearning for
happiness; the sufferings of weak mankind; their petition to the
well-armed strong one, to take up the struggle for happiness,
impelled by motives of compassion and ambition. End wall: the
hostile forces; Typhoeus the giant, against whom even gods fought in
vain; his daughters, the three Gorgons, who symbolise lust and
lechery, intemperance and gnawing care. The longings and wishes of
mankind fly over their heads. Second long wall: the yearning for
happiness is assuaged in poetry. The arts lead us to the ideal realm
in which we all can find pure joy, pure happiness, pure love. Choir
of angels from Paradise. 'Joy, lovely spark of heaven's fire, this
embrace for all the world."
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Beethoven Frieze, 1902
A tribute to the genius whose music is to be the salvation of the
soul of mankind, Klimt's frieze is based on Beethoven's Ninth
Symphony.
It comprises three parts: "Yearning for Happiness"
encounters "Hostile Forces", but finally triumphs with the "Hymn to
Joy".
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Beethoven Frieze (detail) |
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Beethoven Frieze: Hymn to Joy (detail), 1902
Wagner's commentary
on Beethoven's Ninth Symphony seems to prefigure Klimt's approach to
the work: it is "a combat of the soul struggling to attain joy
against the pressure of those hostile forces that intervene between
ourselves and earthly happiness".
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Beethoven Frieze (detail) |
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Beethoven Frieze (detail) |
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Beethoven Frieze: Yearning for Happiness (detail), 1902
Group of the Well-Armed Strong One, with Ambition and Compassion.
Prayers are the extrinsic forces brought to bear on the well-armed
strong one by weak, suffering humanity, whereas compassion and
ambition are the intrinsic forces which impel him to take upon
himself the struggle for happiness.
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For a long time, Klimt had been seeking an answer to the ultimate
questions of human existence. In the three University paintings, a
negative answer had emerged: philosophy, medicine and jurisprudence
were found wanting; resignation and melancholy were expressed in
consequence. Now, however, Klimt had found the way to a Utopian
vision on a grand scale, which was shared by the other
Secessionists: the salvation of mankind through the unique power of
art and of love.
Yet his frieze met with embattled rejection. He was criticised for
being bloodless and rigid. The figures were considered repellent.
The three Gorgons, allegorising a lack of chastity, purity and
temperance, caused a particularly vehement outcry, since this part
of the frieze was strewn with male and female genitalia, spermatozoa
and ovules. Most visitors were repelled by this, though a few were
drawn to it; financially, the exhibition was a disaster.
One possible explanation for public reaction to the frieze may lie
in the enhanced independence of form, line and ornamentation; in
achieving this, Klimt was taking a decisive step towards Modernism.
This sovereignty means that form is no longer subordinate to
content; rather, it develops a life of its own. with its own
content. It was difficult for the public to grasp the optimistic,
Utopian import of the frieze, in which the final embrace signifies
the redemption of man by woman. Instead, people tended to see only
what was immediately obvious, such as the ugliness of some of the
female figures.
In his study of Klimt's "Beethoven", Jean-Paul Bouillon argued that
there was no real liberation in the sexuality thus unveiled. "On the
contrary, the goal he reaches is a double nightmare: that of the
castrating woman, whose sword is no longer the symbolic one of
Judith I (1901) but her own sex; and that of the lechery of woman,
whose arousal of pleasure, being self-directed, threatens man. The first appears in the
central panel in the shape of three Gorgons..; the same
three figures appear in Jurisprudence, with their
victim, where they show very clearly what lies in store for the
voyeur disguised as viewer. The second forms part of the symmetrical
group beside Typhea and further on, somewhat more fully, in Gnawing
Care, which includes an allusion to the syphilis which Klimt is
known to have particularly feared... The child-woman with her
perverse, polymorphic sexuality, whose portrait Freud drew in his
'Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality' (1905), is all the more
disquieting because of her self-sufficiency: there is no place for
man in this central panel."
Man is singularly absent in most of Klimt's work, his rare
appearances serving only to heighten the impact of woman. In
turn-of-the-century Vienna, man was evidently threatened from all
sides, and was more or less excluded from what was a woman's world
dominated by woman.
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Beethoven Frieze (detail) |
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Beethoven Frieze: Hymn to Joy (detail), 1902
This embrace for all the world.
Poetry: Yearning for happiness is assuaged in poetry.
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Beethoven Frieze (detail) |
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Beethoven Frieze: Hostile Forces (detail), 1902
From the panel
dedicated to "Hostile Forces'": the three Gorgons - Disease, Madness
and Death.
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Beethoven Frieze: Hostile Forces (detail), 1902
The giant Typhoeus, a hideous ape with serpent's tail and wings, terrifying
antagonist of the gods.
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Aubrey Beardsley
Cover for
"Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves"
1897
Beardsley and Klimt share a taste for the most extravagantly
elaborate and super-refined ornamentation. |
Beethoven Frieze: Hostile Forces (detail), 1902
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