Vienna 1900 : 1900, art, architecture & design : the Museum of Modern Art, New York, July 3-October 21, 1986 : [brochure Written by Gertje Utley, Emily Bardack Kies, and Kirk Varnedoe]

Author Utley, Gertje

Date 1986

Publisher The Museum of Modern Art

Exhibition URL www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1729

The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition history— from our founding in 1929 to the present—is available online. It includes exhibition catalogues, primary documents, installation views, and an index of participating artists.

MoMA © 2017 The Museum of Modern Art Vienna1900: Art, Architecture & Design TheMuseum of Modern Art, New York The Museumis gratefulfor generoussup July3-October 21,1986 port of this exhibitionfrom Mr. and Mrs. RonaldS. Lauderand the Lauderfamily, wm : i: m and for additionalsupport from TheInter Thispublication was set in type nationalCouncil of TheMuseum of Modern and printedby Art. An indemnityfor the exhibitionhas TheStar-Ledger, Newark, New Jersey beenprovided by the FederalCouncil on the Artsand the Humanities.

0 H At the End of an Ancient Monarchy, Birth of a New Culture

Rising from a flood plain near the ing decades the prerogativesof the river Danube,the walls of the city of Austrian throne would be circum Viennalong stood as the last ramparts scribedon the westby Bismarck's new k;oniglkhe of WesternEurope, looking toward the GermanEmpire, on the east by Buda Orient. At these walls the Turkish pest's desires for autonomousrule invasionfinally foundered in 1683- a over its minority lands, and from victory that established the ruling withinby the energeticrise of a new Hapsburgmonarchy as the defender liberalpolitics. of Christianity,and initiateda grand Nowherewas the newsecular, bur epochof CatholicBaroque culture in gher ascendancymore evident than in CentralEurope. Under Maria There- the capital, Vienna,which began to Elisabeth,Empress of (1837-1898) sia (ruled1740-80) and her sonJoseph expanddramatically with the increas to the Empress Elisabeth, in 1879. II (i 780-90),the governmentalstruc ing influx of immigrants from the These celebrations,with their confi ture of the Austrianempire was estab provinces;and nothing so clearly sym dent pomp, seem in retrospect the lished: a strong Catholic monarchy bolizesthe shifting interplay in the high-watermark of an era of boom joinedto an all-pervasiveand efficient new Austria, between the forces of and bust, of aggressive,often risky administrativebureaucracy. But al traditionand those of change,as Vien- expansion(as signaledby the stock- ready,in the resistanceof Hungarians na's major boulevard, the Ring marketcrash of 1873),and of a certain and Slovaksto Joseph'sefforts to im strasse.The architecture of this broad liberal dream of secular, "progres pose German as the languageof the newthoroughfare, girding the metrop- sive"consensus. empire, the intractable problemsof this vast.complex realm wereevident. Discontents First the victories of Napoleon, then the combinationof the powerof Whateverthe achievementsof the Prince Metternichand the weakness Ringstrasseera, by the late 1800sits of the Hapsburgheirs, shaped Aus failuresand hypocrisieswere becom trian life in the first half of the nine ing more widelycriticized. Its "cos tume" style of facades was increas KolomanMoser. Commemorative Postage Stamp for Emperor Franz JoseFs'jubi- teenthcentury — a periodof neoclas lee.1908. Oesterreichisches Museum fuer angewandte Kunst, Vienna sicalstyle and burgherpiety known as ingly seen as symptomaticof an un the "Biedermeier" epoch, which tenablecompromise between a more would later be seen as a privileged thoroughgoingcommitment to the modernon the one hand, and a more INSIDE momentof pre-industrialcalm. That era closed with the revolutions of tenaciousrespect for traditionon the other. Leaders such as Victor Adler Cultural Background 1848,which wound up usheringonto the stage two newforces, in problem and Karl Lueger,and their newpoliti H 'Young Vienna' and Modern Literature 2 atic collaboration and contention: cal parties (the new-leftSocial Demo first, an aggressivenew middle class, crats and the new-rightChristian So Vienna's Critical Intellects 4 emboldenedby the profitsof industri cialists),fashioned around 1890what S Supporters and Opponents alization and impatient with the the historianCarl Schorskehas called power held by the church and the "politics in a new key" — a more of the New Art 6 shrill,confrontational, and demagogic throne; and second,a new emperor, styleof appealto the masses. the youngFranz Josef I. Onlyeighteen HansMakart(1840-1884) The Aesthetics of Nationalism 8 The new politics brought to the whenhe tookthe throne,he wasto rule olisalong the site of the oldcity walls, S3Dreams and Sexuality 10 the empire for nearly sevendecades, fore a panoplyof problems.The di yokeda pragmaticand even ruthless verse nationalities and language Music and the Visual Arts 12 presidingover a period of immense drivefor modernizationto the affecta conflictand sweepingchange — the groupsin Austria-Hungarywere buf S The Ringstrasse 14 tionsof imitativehistorical style. (For feted by opposingurges —some seek finalepoch of the age-olddynastic rule more on the Ringstrasse,see p. 14.) he hadinherited. ing localself-determination (especial The new-moneyspirit of the Ring, ly in the Slovak lands) and others In the Exhibition TheRingstrasse Era progressive and expansive but also (especiallyamong the Vienneseedu often apparently crass and uncrea- cated elite) dreaming of cultural, if The 3 In 1860,the principleof a constitu tive, seemedthe essenceof the epoch not political,fusion with the German S3Klimt's 'Golden' Style 5 tional monarchywas established,al — a period dominatedby forces of Empire.Racial and ethnic tensions, as lowingrepresentative government — liberalpolitics that beganto losetheir wellas distastefor newcosmopolitan The Wiener Werkstaette and and the newly prosperous middle elanonly in the 1880s. valuesand doubtsabout new business Geometric Style 7 classes —a share of power.The em The dominantartist of the epoch structures, founddisturbing voice in peror'sauthority was further compro — a "prince" of taste who even go the explicit anti-Semitismof Lueger S3Kunstschau and the Kabarett Fledermaus 9 mised followingAustria's defeat by verned ladies' fashion — was Hans and others. Especiallyamong work Drawing \\ Prussia at Koeniggraetzin 1866.A Makart,a painter of fleshyallegories ers, artisans, and small-business dual Austro-Hungarianempire was and Rubensian historical tableaux. owners threatened by economic 53Later Painting 13 established, with semi-independent Makart'sgrandest moment, and a su change,this "newkey" drew a power Architecture 15 legislaturesat Viennaand Budapest preme instance of life as theater in ful response. overseeingthe elevennational groups Vienna,came in his scenographicor Thecontinuity of the Hapsburgdy of the realm, scattered among the S Floor Plan of the Exhibition 16 chestration of the vast, costumed nasty,and the viabilityof the constitu many territories that stretched from paradeshonoring the twenty-fifthan tional monarchy, were meanwhile the Venetoto Russia.Over the follow- niversary of Franz Josef's marriage bothbrought into doubt. Franz Josef's Continuedon back page '\oung Vienna' and Modern Literature

In the 1890s,as the arts of Vien moment,a reaction against natural name "CafeMegalomania." When the tomatic, he felt, of the moral slack na embraced the Germanicver ism in favorof a self-consciously"de placewas torn downin the urbanreno ness of the day. Kraus's positionis sionof Art Nouveauknown as Ju- cadent,"inward-turning cultivation of vationsof the later 1890s,the critic telling, for he was no friend of the gendstil ("youth-style," after the neurasthenic sensibility. Their in made it the symbolof a Secession,while the Secessionfound Munichmagazine Jugend), its writers spirations— consonant with the air of whole movement,in his essay "The manyof its early defendersin the aes were equally concernedto find the exoticrefinement and muskysensual DemolishedLiterature." Favorite theticorbit of Jung-Wien. voiceof youth.The leadingViennese ity we findin someSecessionist art — cafe readingwas the feuilleton,a brief Theurbane writings of Jung-Wien, poets and writers of the new move stemmedmore from the worldof Bau essayof impressionsand opinion,fre often tinged with the savor of the ment were, like the painter Gustav delairethan from that of Monet. quently by one of the city's leading erotic, were displacedby a new tone Klimt,men in their thirties, with the mj after 1900. Hofmannsthal passed exception of the precociousadoles througha crisisregarding the adequa cent . The Their 'impressionism' entailed an inward-turning cy of languageto expressprivate ex groupwas known collectively as Jung- cultivation of neurasthenic sensibility. perience;new voiceslike that of Ro Wien(Young Vienna). ml I 1 m bert Musil explored a subjectivity Thesewriters pursued an "impres Like the artists' clubs that were writers, that was an essentialpart of more darkly complexin its media sionism"that had little to do with the the breedingground of the Secession's the daily newspaper.It was this kind tion betweenthe libidoand the larger naturalistvisions of sunlitlandscapes revolt, the writers' group found its of light essay that Kraus railed world; and, as in other areas such we might associate with this term. home in the Viennese cafes. Their againstas the baneof modernwriting, as the Secession'sBeethoven exhibi Their "impressionism"entailed a de heated debatesgave to their favorite a product of indulgent subjectivity tion, epic themes assumeda greater votionto the ephemeralfeelings of the spot, the Cafe Griensteidl,the nick- and impreciselanguage all too symp appeal. ARTHUR SCHNITZLER 1862-1931 HUGO VON HOFMANNSTHAL cate deeperexperience. conventionled Hofmannsthalto give Hofmannsthal then turned to new form to the art of pantomime. 1874-1929 larger dramatic forms. Anticipating Workingtogether with the dancer Arthur Schnitzler'splays and novels LudwigWittgenstein's conviction that Grete Wiesenthal,he wrotescenarios probe the psychologicalmakeup of At the age of sixteen,writing under facts alonecan be expressedlinguisti for, and produced, several panto turn-of-the-centuryViennese bour the pseudonym "Loris," Hugo von cally,while ethics can onlybe enacted, mimes.In his 1911essay "Ueberdie geois society. Freud, who used Hofmannsthalstunned literary circles Hofmannsthalsaw the theater as the Pantomime"("On Pantomime"), Hof Schnitzler'sbrilliantly characterized with the lyrical beauty of his poetry. best mediumfor promotingthe ethi mannsthalexalted the expressiveness protagonistsas examplesof types of The contrivedelegance of the short cal concernsthat had becomecentral of the human body.Gestures, in his psychological behavior, told him: verse dramas he wrote between1891 to hisart. For Elektra(1903) and Oedi opinion,could express man's total ex "Youknow through intuition—or rath and 1899is considereda highlightof pus and the Sphinx(1906), he foundin istence,his true personalityand expe er throughdetailed self-observation— "decadent"aestheticism and German spiration in the theater of ancient rience,far better thanwords. everythingthat I have discoveredby literary Jugendstil. Yet in 1892in Greece — even if he saw antiquity Hofmannsthalis probablybest re laboriouswork on otherpeople." Such Der Toddes Tizian(The Death of Ti throughthe eyes of one whoadmired memberedas librettistfor the operas insightwas, however,not pure intui tian) and in 1893in Der Tor und der the theoriesof Freud.For hisallegori of Richard Strauss. Der Rosenkava- tion,since Schnitzler had himself stud Tod(Death and the Fool),Hofmanns cal plays,such as Jedermann(Every 7;er(1911)and DieFrau ohneSchatten ied medicineand had shownparticu thal hadalready begun to see the limi man, 1911),he was influencedby the (1919)are the better-knownexamples lar interestin psychology. tationsof aestheticism.This eventual Catholictradition, medieval mystery of this fruitful collaboration.After As a playwrightSchnitzler was an ly led to a crisis, culminatingin his Chandos,to Francis Bacon.In it, Hof plays, and the theater of the Spanish WorldWar I, Hofmannsthal,the pro innovatorin dramatic form, building famous "Chandos-Brief"("Letter of mannsthal renouncedhis cultivated Baroque. ducer Max Reinhardt,and the stage his plays from kaleidoscopic se LordChandos") of 1902,written in the aestheticismand sharply questioned His disillusionmentwith the ade designer Alfred Roller foundedthe quencesof images.And in his novella personaof an imaginaryPhilipp, Lord the adequacyof languageto communi- quacy of words and with linguistic SalzburgFestival. Leutnant Gustl (1901, known in English as None But the Brave), I Schnitzlerexperimented with the lit erary formknown as the interiormon ROBERT MUSIL ologue— the first to do so in the Ger 1859-1919 1880-1942 manlanguage. Schnitzlerwas a master at reveal ing the Vienneseproclivity for social Peter Altenberg'swork as poet,essay While his advocates tend to speak role-playingand for self-deception. ist, and critic appearedin some fifty of RobertMusil in the same breath as Hesaw in themthe rootsof the failure periodicalsthroughout the German- Proust, Mann,and Joyce,the authors of humancommunication, a failure as speaking world. His sketches were he himself preferred were Tolstoy, disastrousfor the individualas for so presented at the Kabarett Fleder- Dostoyevsky,and Balzac. ciety at large. Schnitzler shared maus(see p. 9),and the texts he wrote Musilturned to writingonly after Freud's fascinationwith the powerof for his postcardsinspired songs by the rejectinga military life and a career instinctual drives. In his plays he composerAlban Berg. in civil engineering,and after studies treated erotic encounters as arche Part jester, part philosopher,Al- in philosophyand in experimentalpsy types of human relations,convinced tenberg was a true bohemian who chology,culminating with a thesison that sexual love alone was strong lived in a tiny, memorabilia-filled Ernst Mach's theory of knowledge. enoughto break downsocial hierar room in the Grabenhotel,and spent Musil had keen descriptive powers, workedfreelance, writing essays, dra chies. His most famousplay, Reigen most of his daily life in coffeehouses, yet his acute observationof appear maticcriticism, and several plays. His (Merry-Go-Round,written 1897,pri bars, and cabarets,where he gathered ances only served his approachto a major work, Der Mann ohne Eigen- vately published1900), is built on ten material for his vignettesof Viennese deeper truth. "I see sometimeswith schaften(The Man WithoutQualities), dialoguesbetween lovers of unequal life. Life and work were inextricably the eyes of reason, and sometimes a three-volumeopus of over twothou stationwhose chain of affairsinvolves linked for Altenberg.Although asso with those other eyes," says the pro sandpages on which he workedduring many levels of society. In his later ciated with the literary circle Jung- tagonistof his first novel,Die Verwir- the last twenty years of his life, re life and work he wouldreturn to the Wien,Altenberg did not share their in the form of quickprose sketches, in rungendes Zoeglings Toerless (Young mainedunfinished at hisdeath in 1942. more traditionalmorality of his up aestheticizing,"decadent" tendencies. the "telegram-styleof the soul." Toerless,1906). This partially autobio In it Musilproved himself an unrelent bringing. Fascinatedby the paceand transitori- Peter Altenberg'scomplete hon graphicalwork created a scandalwith ing analyst of Austrian society and Unlike many other Jews of the ness of urban life, Altenberg's"im esty andthe total consonancebetween its frank descriptionof youthfulbru culture on the eve of WorldWar I; Viennese intelligentsia, Schnitzler pressionism"lay in depictingreality hislife, his personality, and his writing tality and homosexualityin a military "Kakania,"the place of the novel's never abandonedhis Jewishfaith. In as fleetinglyperceived by the senses. attracted the friendshipand admira academy.Yet the real theme of this action,is the fictionalcounterpart of his highlyautobiographical novel Der His were not the universalthemes of tion of two of the sharpestopponents novel, as of his other works, is the the collapsingHapsburg empire. Wegins Freie (TheRoad to the Open, life anddeath, but rather fragmentsof of aestheticism:the critic Karl Kraus polaritybetween the rational and the Theannexation of Austriaby Ger 1908)and in the play ProfessorBern- existence—"extracts of life," in his and the architect Adolf Loos (who mystical. manyin 1938drove Musil into exile in hardi (1912),he dealt with the dilem words—seenwith a tendereye for the wrotea touchingeulogy at Altenberg's After WorldWar I, except for a Switzerland,where he spent the last mas of beingJewish in contemporary lovabletrivia of dailylife, and written death). short time in the civil service, Musil yearsof hislife. Austria. IN THE EXHIBITION 3 The Secession

important innovation of Olbrich's more a measure of Vienna'sartistic plan.The windowless solemnity of the conservatismthan of Klimt's daring. facade,however, evoked, as he intend His visionof untemperednudity and ed,a "templeof art." psychicanxiety, minglingmorbidity VerSacrum witheroticism, touched a raw nerve. Klimtabandoned his fight to have The regenerativepurpose of the the panels accepted, and in 1905 Secessionwas expressed in the title of bought back the commission.These its official publication,Ver Sacrum events marked a split between the (SacredSpring). The name refers to a Vienneseavant-garde and official pat Roman ritual of consecration, in ronage, and a defeat for the young whichthe elders,in times of national generation'sideals of a grand new danger,pledged their childrento the publicart. divine missionof saving society. In Thethree hugepaintings were des Vienna,it was the younggeneration troyed in a fire at the close of World themselveswho pledgedto save cul WarII. Preparatorystudies for twoof ture from whatthey saw as the philis- themare includedin the exhibition. tinismof their elders. Ver Sacrum appeared once a Pallas Athene monthfrom 1898to 1900and thereaf ter bimonthlyuntil 1903.On its lavish It was in the smaller paintingsof ly illustratedpages there werediscus the late 1890sthat Klimt began to sions of art, samples of music, and develop his rich ornamental style and combineimages from many dif literary contributionsby Rilke, Hof- ferent sources. In Pallas Athene mannsthal,and Maeterlinck;empha sis wasplaced on the harmoniousinte (1898)Klimt drew upon ancient, ex gration of picture and text. Gustav otic, and sacred material to find a new means for expressingthe uncer Klimt,Josef Hoffmann,,, the designer tainties and anxieties inherent in modern life. Like Freud, whosedis Alfred Roller—all collaborated to embellishthe magazine.The vignettes coverieswere linkedto a passionfor and pagedecorations drew on stylized archaic culture and archaeological neo-Greekmotifs, on Jugendstil,with excavation,Klimt employedsymbols its emphasis on curvilinear natural from antiquityto reveal instinctual, forms,and on the abstract rhythmsof and most especiallyerotic, forces— Japanese design. VerSacrum exem as Hugo von Hofmannsthalalso did plifies the high importancethe Vien in Elektra (1903).The virgin goddess Athene,protector of the people(and neseavant-garde placed upon decora JosephMaria Olbrich. Building. 1897-98 tive design—not only in posters and books,but in all the appliedarts. the fourteenthSecession exhibition, in KolomanMoser 1902,organized around the monumen tal statueof Beethovenby the German AlfredRoller. Poster for SecessionXVI. At first an illustrator and later a 1903.Lithograph, 6'2%" x 25"(188.9 x 63.5 sculptor . Josef Hoff cm).Private collection, courtesy Serge Sa- painter,Koloman Moser was perhaps mann transformed the exhibition barskyGallery, New York the most originalgraphic designer of space into a temple-likesetting, and the ViennaSecession. Besides his ex Klimt painted a great allegorical tensivework for VerSacrum, he also frieze, inspiredby Beethoven'sNinth At the end of the nineteenth century, art exhibitions in Vienna were controlled by the Kuenstlerhaus,a private, conser vative exhibitingsociety that exer cisedconsiderable influence on public taste and governmentpolicy. In May 1897,a groupof nineteenartists, who hadpreviously been trying to workfor changefrom within,broke away from the Kuenstlerhausand formeda new organization, called the Secession, with GustavKlimt as president(and the aged watercoloristRudolf von Alt as honorary president). Amongthe other youngdefectors were the archi tects Josef Hoffmann and Joseph KolomanMoser. "Vogel Buelow" Fabric AlfredRoller. Cover of VerSacrum. 1898. Sample(detail). 1899. Fabric, 50% x 37" Lithograph,11% x 11"(29.6 x 28 cm). Maria Olbrichand the graphicartist (128x 94cm) overall. Oesterreichisches TheMuseum of ModernArt, New York and designerKoloman Moser. The Se Museumfuer angewandte Kunst, Vienna cessionists' goals were twofold: to showthe most advancedwork of Aus createdaround 1900 an extraordinary GustavKlimt. Pallas Athene. 1898. Oil on canvas,29% x 29%"(75 x 75 cm).His- Symphony,on the upper walls. Pre torischesMuseum der Stadt Wien trian and foreign artists in regular seriesof fabricand wallpaper designs, paratory drawingsfor the mural are exhibitions; and to achieve unity in which the repetitive patterns an onview in thisexhibition. amongthe arts, to realizethe ideal of nouncea newlyrigid orderingof the Klimt's greatest challenge as a conservativestyle that satisfied the the Gesamtkunstwerk,or total work patron of the Secession,as well as viscous curvilinearityof Jugendstil. painter of large-scale allegorical taste of his institutionalclients. the Austrian parliament), appears of art, throughcollaborative efforts. The effects of figure-groundreversal subjects was his commission for Emblazonedon the facade of the By the time he undertookthe uni before us in iconic frontality, shim in these patterns anticipate by dec three works for the ceiling of the versitypaintings, Klimt was no longer mering in gold. Behindher are the Secession'snew exhibitionhall, de adesthe popularizationof similarper Great Hall of the Universityof Vien signed by Olbrich, were the words the dutifuldecorator but a progressive lightlydrawn figures of a Greekvase ceptualconundrums by M.C.Escher. na: Philosophy,Medicine, and Juris artist commenting darkly on the painting.The metal frame, executed "Der Zeit ihre Kunst,der Kunstihre prudence. Klimt was well qualified Freiheit ("Tothe Age,Its Art; to Art, Klimt'sAllegorical Paintings human condition. The complicated by Klimt's brother Georg,is worked for the task; earlier, as an architec canvasesfor the ceiling,exhibited one Its Freedom"). The open interior in spiral patterns inspiredby designs Theideal of the Gesamtkunstwerk tural decorator, he had painted the byone at Secessionshows from 1900to spacewith movable partitions was an of the ancient Mycenaeantreasures was realizedon the grandestscale at ceilingsof Ringstrassebuildings in a 1903,aroused violent controversy, recentlydiscovered. 4 Vienna'sCritical Intellects

Throughout Europein the later that called for art, too, to abandon tribution was a sharp skepticism FRITZ ALOIS RIEGL nineteenthcentury, there was prosaicnaturalism. about the truths transmitted by lan 1858-1905 a widespread revulsion In Vienna,thinkers such as Alois guage. The most powerfulViennese MAUTHNER againstthe limitationsof a worldview Riegl— who rejected the imitationof thinkers,rather than retreat into her 1849-1923 basedon materialist,positivist values nature as a criterion for rankingart, metic mysticism as an antidote to —aworldview that seemedassociated banal"rational" confidence, sought to not onlywith the successof a certain construct more rigorous systems of kindof inductivemodern science, but Here the discriminationbetween fact and illu withthe dominationof industrialcapi Enlightenment sion, and to draw more stringent talism. In several key instances,sci limits for dependablestructures of ence itself seemedto raise the chal tradition seems to meaning— sometimes to the pointof lenge.Discoveries such as Roentgen's declaringabstinence from speechsu identificationof X ray, in 1895,for meet an almost perior to a corrupt and falliblecom example,suggested that faith in the munication. solidityof the material world was a Oriental will to In this schoolof thought,as in so treacherousillusion. Diverse and con muchof Vienneseart, we are remind tradictorythinkers seemed to offer a refine and ed of Vienna'sspecial place on the similar lesson:Ernst Mach,who held transcend the frontierbetween West and East. Here ephemeralsensation as the onlyreali the Enlightenmenttraditions of sys Aroundthe turn of the century,a disil Alois Riegl and his contemporary ty; ArthurSchopenhauer, whose early mundane. tematic critique and logical analy lusionmentwith languageand its ex Franz Wickhoffare considered the nineteenth-century espousal of a sis seem to meet an almost Oriental pressivelimits affected a broadrange foundersof the ViennaSchool of art world-denyingfatalism found a newly and valuedminor ornament as highly will to refine and transcendthe mun of Viennesewriters, including Robert history.Through his writings,and in receptiveaudience; and the occultists, as grand representationsin estimat dane. An urge to asceticismwas the Musil,Arthur Schnitzler, and Hugo particularhis books Problems of Style who suggestedgrand spiritual truths ing the mentalityof a society— were other, complementary side of the von Hofmannsthal.Fritz Mauthner, (1893)and Late RomanArt Manufac beyondappearances. All these notions at the forefront of this change in morefamiliar coin of Vienna'slove of however,was the first to shape the ture, Based on Finds in Austria-Hun conflatedto supportthe newrebellion values.The particular Viennesecon semi-Byzantinesplendor. systematicinvestigation of language gary (1901),Riegl opened up the field into a philosophy.Influenced, like of art historyto new areas of investi Ernst Mach,by the empiricismof the gationand to a new interdisciplinary British skeptics Francis Bacon and approach. with the nature and limits of lan Ethics, in brief, could not be ex DavidHume, Mauthner shared Mach's At a time whenscholarship in art LUDWIG guage as it relates to reality. With pressed in words but only through aversionto metaphysicalbeliefs. He was basedalmost exclusively on con WITTGENSTEIN his so-called"picture theory" Witt deeds.Consistent with this conclusion felt that, in a world of changing siderationsof style,and when the clas 1889-1951 gensteinargued that, whilefacts can and with his understandingof Tol values, concepts such as truth and sical was the only acceptedcanon of indeed be communicatedby "delib stoy'smoral repugnanceagainst idle knowledgewere subjectiveand could beauty, Riegl did away with the su erately constructedverbal represen ness and individualwealth, Wittgen haveno validity as absolutes. premacy of Greco-Romanart. For LudwigWittgenstein, widely regard tations,"the most crucial meaningof stein gave away his inherited Mauthner recognized that lan Riegleach manifestation of art wasto ed as one of the foremost philoso the world—its ethical value—cannot fortune, abandonedphilosophy, and guage,based on culturalconventions, be judged, not according to some phers of his time, also excelledin the be articulated through language. committedhimself to "humanlyuse was an adequatetool for day-to-day canon of perfection,but on its own fields of music,architecture, and en (This dichotomybetween outer fact ful" activities.For ten years follow communication,and as such indis merits and in the contextof "the lead gineering. Educated by private and inner value parallels the critic ing the war he workedas a school pensablefor survival.But he foundit ing intellectual tendencies of its tutors, he grew up in the refinedcli teacher in provincial villages, as a unsuited to the definition of either time." He revivedinterest in hitherto mate of Vienna'scultural elite. His gardener, and as architect for the thoughtor sensoryimpressions in all neglectedareas of artistic creativity, father, Karl Wittgenstein,was one of Viennaresidence of his sister Mar their authenticity.In his Contributions suchas the pre-classicalart ofGreece, the wealthiest industrialists of the garet (built1926-28). to a Critiqueof Language(1901-03), late Romanpainting, Baroque art, and empire and one of the earliest and By the time of his return to Cam Mauthnerconcluded that silencewas early nineteenth-centuryBiedermeier most faithful patrons of the Seces bridge in 1929,Wittgenstein's philo the only solution;he termed this the design—all of which had previously sion. His sister Margaret Ston- sophical beliefs had fundamentally "suicideof language."(A parallel may beenconsidered to be onlyincomplete borough-Wittgensteinintroduced the changed.Turning from a logical in be seen in Hugovon Hofmannsthal, or decadentversions of noblerforms young Ludwig to the works of the vestigationof languageand reality, whosesimilar despair over language of classicism. philosophersthat most influencedhis he concentratedinstead on the actual culminatedin an artistic crisis,which Together with the artists of the intellectual development:Schopen practice of language and its rele led to his renunciationof the lyrical Secession,Riegl was instrumentalin hauer, Kant, and Kierkegaard.Witt vance in the human context.He be forms;see p. 2.) breaking down the distinction be genstein then studied at Cambridge came professor of philosophy at As a novelist,satirist, and as the tween "high"and "low" art. His pio under Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Cambridgein 1939. ater critic for the Berliner Tage- neeringwork in the history of orna Russell,whose investigations into the Karl Kraus's rigorousdistinction be The logicalrigor of the Tractatus blatt, Mauthner'sweapons were irony ment was consonantwith the promi mathematical basis of logic en tween the factual and poetic uses of had great impact on the philosophers and satire, in his mindthe mosteffec nenceof ornamentationin Jugendstil couragedhis own approachto philo language; see p. 6. Kraus's strong of the Vienna Circle before World tive tools of language.He employed designand architecture—and with the sophical problems through the logi ethical stance had, in fact, been an War II, and Wittgenstein'slater work them to debunkwhat he called "word abstractpatterns of ornamentin some cal analysisof language. important influenceon Wittgenstein, has been—through his students at superstition"—the use of precon of Klimt's paintings,which virtually Wittgenstein'sfirst book, Tracta- who was an avid reader of Kraus's Cambridgeand the posthumouspub ceivedmetaphysical concepts, such as take over the visual field, and help tus logico-philosophicus,was written journalDie Fackel and likedto write lication of his second book, Philo "race" and Volk— and to denounce breakdown naturalism. For Rieglthe during WorldWar I (in which Witt in Krausianaphorisms.) The Tracta- sophical Investigations (1953)—ex the danger of such vague,yet potent need for decorationwas "one pf the genstein served as a volunteer)and tus concludes:"Whereof one cannot tremely influentialin the secondhalf ideas as vehiclesfor dogmatismand most elementaryneeds of man." He publishedin 1921.The treatise deals speak thereof one must be silent." of the twentiethcentury. intolerance. opposedthe earlier Germantheoreti cian and architectGottfried Semper's (VimaiBHMaammmBaaBMraBMM a influentialpremise that the form of a A doctor of mathematics, Mach self in perpetual change, forever work of art is determinedby the de ERNST MACH taught widelyin the sciences(first in adaptingto a worldwithout absolutes. mandsof its material,and refutedthe 1838-1916 Graz, then Prague, and finally Vien Mach'srejection of the conceptof notionthat the imitationof naturewas na), and his approach to philosophy the absolutein time and spaceaffect the motivatingforce behindthe crea Ernst Mach is most widely known was aboveall that of a physicist.In ed the modern study of aeronautics tive process.Riegl argued instead that todayas the man whosename is used fluencedby DavidHume's empiricist and influencedAlbert Einsteinin his developmentsof style growout of an to designateunits of supersonicspeed. philosophy,Mach mistrusted hypo speculations on relativity. It was, inherent energy within the forms Yet at the turn of the centuryMach's theticaltheory and rigorously opposed however,among the philosophersof themselves,evoked by whathe identi ideaswere influential on philosophers, metaphysics.He believedthat knowl the Ernst Mach Society that his fied in a famousterm as Kunstwollen writers, and artists, as well as scien edge could be acquiredonly through theories had their strongest impact, —literally,a "will to art"—whichhe tists. His stress on immediatesensa personalexperience. In his influential culminatingin the 1920sin the philos saw as the product of powerful, if tion provided,for example,the intel bookContributions to the Analysisof ophy of logical positivismupheld by often not whollyconscious, cultural lectual foundationfor "impression Sensations(1886), Mach articulated the ViennaCircle of science-oriented forcesspecial to eachage. ism"in Vienneseliterature (see p. 2). his idea of the "irrevocableego," the thinkers. IN THE EXHIBITION 5 Klimt's 'Golden Style

Gustav Klimt's father was a acutesense of sophisticatedsexual en goldsmith,and the tradition ergies, both languorous and tautly of artisanship in precious strung, could not be satisfied by the metals remainedstrong in his family. earthier physicalaffirmations of vi- Some of his early works (such as talist thought,so influentialin his day. Pallas Athene;see p. 3) featured not Theworld of dream,and of ambiguity, only goldenelements in the images, was his preferreddomain, even —or but also prominenthammered-metal especially— in the gleamingsurfaces frames. But it was apparently only of these elaborately materialist after his experienceof the sixth-cen works. tury Byzantinemosaics in Ravenna, on trips in 1903and 1904,that Klimt began to see the grander expressive possibilitieshe exploredin his "gold en" worksof about1907-10. The hard, glittering surface of theseworks assertively rejects the at mosphericambiguities of lin-de-siecle Symbolistart. But the rich patterning creates newkinds of confusionfor the eye,and the moodof the "golden"pic tures involves a complex alchemy. Drawingon a tradition that included everything from Mycenaeanmetal- work to Renaissancealtarpieces and Japanese screen paintings, Klimt evokeda particularlyworldly kind of otherworldliness,an alloy of barba rism and decadencein whichlust for materials,high spiritualism, and chic elegancewere all commingled. In Salome (Judith II) of 1909, Klimt used metallic accents to give concreteimmediacy to legendaryex oticism— complementingthe seduc tively exposed flesh of the fatal woman,and lendinga perverseglam or to the gory motif,with its severed GustavKlimt. The Kiss. 1907-08. Oil and gold on canvas, 70% x 70%"(180 x 180cm). OesterreichischeGalerie, Vienna head at lower right. (Judith,like Sa lome, is the protagonistin a biblical story of decapitation;she beheaded the Babyloniangeneral Holofernes, while Salomerequested from Herod the headof John the Baptist.) However hard-edged, this be- jeweledstyle was attached to the fem ininespirit in Klimt'swork, and some of its moststunning manifestations lie notin the domainof fantasy,but in the exceptionalportraits he made of ele gant Vienneseladies. The supreme ex ample is his portrait of AdeleBloch- Bauerof 1907.Here Klimt combines a subtlepsychological characterization, in the oddlyill-at-ease twining of the GustavKlimt. Salome (Judith II). hands and the specifically unglam- 1909.Oil on canvas,69% x 17%" orous slacknessof the physiognomy, (175.9x 45.5 cm). Galleria d'Arte Mo- with a bristlingopulence. Never was dernaCa' Pesaro, Venice morebrilliant form givento the Vien nese dream of an Eastern splendor Thusin the most celebratedof all that surpassed the rational. In the Klimt's works, The Kiss of 1907-08, shadowlessgolden light that emanates the loversfloat abovethe worldin an from the picture,the floatingvariety enclosing nimbus of light, and the of forms— checks, spirals, eye-forms, meldingof oppositesis conjuredin the chevrons,meanders, and lozenges— comingtogether of the darker rectan lookbackward to the primalauthority gles of the man's robe with the clus of prehistoricglyphs and forward to tered ovals of the woman's— a pri the delicate fantasy world of Paul mordiallanguage for basicprinciples Klee. of constructivereason and biological Klimt'sinterest in Easternart, his fertility,suspended within the overall attempt to meld artisanal decoration patterned energies.A sweetened,on with high art, and his desire to find eiric intensity that might be called a modernstyle that fusedsensual and psychedelicpermeates this lyricalvi spiritualappeals, all suggestparallels sion,in whichelements of high natu with other artists, such as Matisse, ralism and abstract ornament,flow in the sameperiod. But Klimt's special ered softness and metallic gleam, feel for eye-befuddlingbrilliance and seething coiled energy and floating patterned complexity rejected the weightlessness,come together to sug search for syntheticsimplicity found gest the transports of love as fusion GustavKlimt. AdeleBlocb-Bauer 1.1907. Oil and gold on canvas, 54V* x 54V*"(138 x 138cm). Oesterreichi scheGalerie,Vienna elsewherein early modernart; andhis anddissolution. Supporters and Opponents of the New Art

Especially in the early years of exclusion or truncated opportunity to themon other fronts. Klimt — they also attracted a loyal the Secession,the forcesof in beginto mark the outlookof the major The young rich redirected their coterie of writers and intellectuals novationin Vienneseart found Vienneseartists. energies from the public sphere to whovoiced support and were helpful remarkably little resistance. The Thenew art of the turn of the cen the cultivationof private sensibility. in obtaining clients. Vienna's most HftH prime land accordedthe rebel group tury seems to have found its most This shift is perhapsbest seen in the acerbic critical voice,however, Karl for its building,and the appointments crucial support among the sons and very different careers of the archi Kraus,was set againstthe decorative of major Secessionfigures to teaching daughtersof the businessmenand in tects Otto Wagner — who most aesthetics of the Secessionand the PATRONAGE positionsin state schools,are onlythe dustrialists of the Ringstrasse era. frequentlyfound commissions in pub Werkstaette. Kraus belonged to a most evidentinstances of encourage Their inherited money was used to lic-worksprojects and built primari- separate wingof the Vienneseintelli ment from highplaces. Moreover, the j |D gentsia — a circle of professionals [g> antagonism we associate with the The Austrian capital has not been and scholarsthat came more to the [0 eruption of modernismelsewhere in fore in the "secondwave" of early P Europe— an antagonismbetween the known as an easy environment for genius modernart in Vienna,with the pat 19lififil avant-gardeand an establishedbour ronageof more disquietingwork pro geoisie— was at first largely absent 1 13 ducedby OskarKokoschka and Egon The variety of social backgrounds in Vienna.The Austriancapital has banishthe taint of historicistvulgarity ly in the city—and Josef Hoffmann— Schiele(see pp. 11and 13).These new amongthe supportersof Vienneseart not been traditionallyknown as an that markedthe first decadesof indus who worked exclusivelyon private patrons rejected the emphasis on is suggestedby the contrast between easy environmentfor genius,as the trial wealth.Many of these new for commissions,often for grand villas tastefulorchestration that had united the cool eleganceof Margaret Ston- sufferingsof musiciansfrom Beetho tunes belonged to Jewish families, outsidethe urban center. the fine and appliedarts in the early borough-Wittgensteinin the portrait ven to Mahlerattest. Yet onlywith a whofound in patronageof the visual Thoughthe early modern artists years of the century and sought an by Klimt and the disheveled bohe- conservative turn in governmental arts an avenueof assimilationinto a of Vienna were targets of critical art that challenged,rather than com mianismof Peter Altenberg,as paint policy,after about1903, did a senseof Vienneseculture traditionallyclosed abuse — especially in the case of forted,their sensibilities. ed by Kokoschka(p. 13).While Klimt became the painter of the moneyed elite, Schieleand Kokoschkawere pa tronizedmainly by a differentstratum brought the same passionto his de al as well as societal depravity—a of society, which includedmen like KARL KRAUS fenseof the underdogsof societyas to moral sicknesswhich he thoughthad 1874-1936 Altenberg, the composer Arnold the praise of the neglectedworks of led to the disasters of WorldWar I. Schoenberg,and the architect Adolf his favorite authors, standing up as This at least was the basic thrust of Loos.Schiele's favorite collectorwas Writer, poet, journalist, would-be stronglyfor prostitutesand homosex Dieletzten Tageder Menschheit(The HeinrichBenesch, whose modest sala actor, and polemicist,Karl Krauswas uals as for Offenbach'soperettas, the Last Daysof Mankind)of 1919-22,his ry as a civil servant allowedhim to a mordantadversary of GustavKlimt writingof the earlier Austriansatirist epic, collage-form satire on World acquire only those paintings that and the Secession,the artists of the JohannNestroy, and the late worksof War I, in whichhe indictedthe mur Schielehad planned to destroy. WienerWerkstaette, and the writers Goethe. derousalliance of ink,death, and tech Collectorsof paintingsalso func of Jung-Wien. His 1896 polemical Kraus's most virulent attacks nology("Tinte, Tod, und Technik"). tioned as promotersof their avant- essay "Die Demolierte Literatur" were aimedat the press,in particular AlthoughJewish by birth, Kraus, gardeartists. EgonSchiele, for exam ("The DemolishedLiterature") de the writersof feuilletons(brief essays like Otto Weininger, whom he ad ple,met mostof his clientsthrough his nouncedas Kaffeehaus-Dekadenz-Mo- of opinion;see p. 2). He argued that mired, convertedto Christianityand patron,the art critic ArthurRoessler. dernetheir tendencyto disguisereali their dishonestand narcissisticmin adopteda sharplycritical attitudeto And private art collections further ty behindthe aestheticizingscreen of gling of fact and personal opinion ward everythingJewish. Some saw providedViennese artists withimpor art. That made him an ally of the wouldlead inexorably to the distortion thereinthe reasonfor his unrelenting tant exposureto recent artistic devel architect AdolfLoos, who—a staunch of truth anddisruption of creativefan oppositionto the so-calledgout Juifoi opmentsoutside Austria. Thus Schiele moralistlike Kraus—had rejected the tasy. Kraus saw himself as the de the Secessionand its patronsand sup was introducedto FerdinandHodler's fake historicizingstyles of the Ring fender of integrity. In its name he porters. workat the houseof his patron, Carl strasse. Bothridiculed what they saw came Kraus's pulpit from which he foughtfor a strict separationbetween Kraus remained publicly silent Reininghausen,while the collectionof as the tyranny of taste. Although relentlessly denouncedthe hypocri imaginativeprose and factual report aboutHitler's rise to power.However, Oskar Reichel gave Schieleand Ko Kraus was at odds with many of the sies of Viennesesociety. Police and ing. in his final work,Die dritte Walpur- koschka the opportunity to study first generationof turn-of-the-century militarycorruption, the superficiality Kraus did not share his genera gisnacht(The Third Walpurgis Night), worksby Manet,Gauguin, van Gogh, Viennese artists, he maintained a of the operettas of Franz Lehar, tion's skepticism concerning the completedbefore his death in 1936but Toulouse-Lautrec,and Munch. strong followingamong such younger Herzl'sZionism, Freud's psychoanaly power of words to convey personal not publisheduntil 1952,he saw the Of all the arts, architectureis by artists as Oskar Kokoschkaand Ar sis, and the poetic aestheticism of experience(see p. 2).On the contrary horrors of the rising Third Reich, its very nature the most dependenton nold Schoenberg. His journal Die Hugo von Hofmannsthal,as well as Kraus stronglybelieved in the corre whichhe treated elliptically—by ref patronage.Joseph Maria Olbrich's Se Fackel (TheTorch), which he founded just about everythingby and about spondencebetween language and ethi erenceto Goethe'sFaust, and through cessionbuilding was largely the result in 1899,and wrote single-handedly , were the repeated cal thought.He saw in the abuse of an analysisof languageand speechin of the financial assistance of Karl from 1911until his death in 1936,be- targets of Kraus's scathing wit. He languagea clear indicationof person- politicalpropaganda. Wittgenstein,father of the philosopher and founderof a steel combine—and oneof the earliestand mostpersistent also to the criticism that he lacked (The Overcomingof Naturalism)of sponsorsof the newart movement.In HERMANN character. As a young student in 1891. 1903Victor Zuckerkandl,brother-in- BAHR Vienna, Bahr revolted against the Alreadya pivotal member of the law of the influentialart critic Berta 1863-1934 liberal beliefs of his family by his Jung-Wienliterary group (see p. 2), Zuckerkandl, fulfilled Josef Hoff »«Pan-Germanic, anti-Semitic, and Bahrjoined the Secessionat its incep mann'sdream of beingable to create pro-Bismarckiansentiments. In 1884, tion in 1897and became a literary the Gesamtkunstwerkwith the com Hermann Bahr, the apostle of the while studyingeconomics in Berlin, advisorof its journal VerSacrum. A missionfor the PurkersdorfSanatori modernmovement in Vienna,was the he turned to socialism,in which he loyalsupporter of Klimt,he published um. Twoyears later, the Belgianfin author of forty plays,ten novels,and saw the "central scienceof life." GegenKlimt (Against Klimt, 1903) as ancier Adolphe Stoclet entrusted several dozenvolumes of prose, and VisitingParis in 1888,he became a testimonyto the polemicsthat sur Hoffmannwith the designand build the most knowledgeableGoethe com fascinated by Symbolismand sub roundedKlimt's work.From 1897to ingof his mansion in Brussels. mentator of his time. Yet Bahr is jectivity,the artificial and the mysti 1900Bahr wrote innumerable articles The WienerWerkstaette virtually mainlyremembered today as a critic cal, as he foundthem in the worksof on the Secession,after whichhe con owedits existenceto the wholehearted of his contemporaryculture. As an Joris-Karl Huysmansand Maurice sideredthe movementestablished and supportof Fritz Waerndorfer,heir to early championof the Secession,he Barres.Bahr celebratedthe decadent nolonger in needof defense. one of the largest textile concernsof was an important mediator between movement as "nervous romanti Bahrlater cameto believethat the the empire. His generous financial the artists and their public,as well as cism," a "mysticismof the nerves." cultural energyhe had seen as youth supportoffset the effectsof the Werk- betweenthe Vienneseand the interna His new gods — Ibsen, Strindberg, ful and promisingin Vienneseart and staette's chronic mismanagement, tionalart scene. olutionary"— an ambitionthat won Nietzsche, Stendhal, Verlaine, and literature of the turn of the century until he was driven into bankruptcy. Bahr was enthusiasticfor every him the nickname "der Mann von Wilde — were the models for "die had in fact provedto be onlythe last After that, the major clients of the thing new. For him being modern Uebermorgen"("the Man from the Moderne," the modern movement gaspof a dyingculture. Seeking a title Werkstaettejoined as shareholdersin meant being two steps ahead of his Day After Tomorrow").However, his that Bahr promotedin his bookDie for his collectedworks, he suggested the concern,thus keepingit afloat by time and being"at every time a rev- constant changes of allegiance led Ueberwindung des Naturalismus "Alt-Oesterreich"("Old Austria"). their doublesupport until 1932. IN THE EXHIBITION 7 The WienerWerkstaette and Geometric Style

In 1903,Josef Hoffmannand Kolo- manMoser founded the collabora tive designenterprise the Wiener Werkstaette (Viennese Workshop). i.i. nm.iiiinm.nl. Unitingthe bestcraftsmen under opti mum workingconditions, the aims of the Werkstaette were clearly ex pressed by Hoffmann in an article writtenin 1904:"We want to establish illllllllllllllli an intimate connectionbetween pub lic, designer,and craftsman,to create goodsimple articles of householduse. Ourpoint of departureis purpose,util ity is our prime consideration, our strengthmust lie in goodproportions and use of materials.... The workof craftsmenmust be mea suredby the same standardas that of the painterand the sculptor...." The Werkstaetteprogram clearly reflected the Secession's intent to strive for unity in the arts. But even more essentialto the workshopidea wasthe EnglishArts and Crafts move ment that had developedin the mid- nineteenthcentury. The writings of JosefHoffmann. "Purkersdorf" Side Chair, KolomanMoser. Writing Desk. 1902. Inlaid wood and metal, 43% x 47x 23%"(110 x 119.2x Josef Hoffmann."Seven-Ball" Side Chair. the EnglishmenJohn Ruskinand Wil c. 1904.Wood and leather, 39Vsx 17% x 60.6cm). Private collection, New York 1906.Wood, 44 x 16%x 16"(111.8 x 41.9x liam Morris had stressed the social 16%"(100 x 45 x 43 cm).The Museumof 40.7cm). Collection Tim Chu responsibilityof art and the moralna ModernArt, New York ture of handicrafts.Their ideas had the simpleclarity of the unpretentious been amplified around 1900 by topsand right-angled handles. Typical mass-produced work of Thonet. In of manyWerkstaette pieces, the spare Charles Robert Ashbee,who estab turn, they designed furniture very lishedthe Guildof Handicraftsin Lon geometryof this designis enrichedby muchin this spirit for specificclients the finematerials crafted scrupulous don,and CharlesRennie Mackintosh, and also for general production by workingin Glasgow.Both designers ly byhand. Thonetand the rival bentwoodmanu In principle,the rigorouspurity of had participatedin the eighthSeces facturerJ. &J. Kohn. sion exhibition,in 1900,where their design is appropriate for useful ob Thecharacteristic products of the jects whichwould be distributedto a furniture and interior designsdeeply first fewyears of WienerWerkstaette impressedthe Viennesepublic, and broad public. In practice, however, designwere punched-metaland ham- their lavishmaterials and costly hand Hoffmanncontinued to correspond mered-metalobjects. The challenge withMackintosh. The link between the workmake them availableonly to an for the designerswas to elicitrichness elite. As the Werkstaettegrew and British and Austrian design move from reduction.Koloman Moser's ele ments was further reinforcedby the expanded,it becamean international gant cruets and stand (1904)exem purveyorof fine silks, fashions,and Anglophiletastes of the Werkstaette's plifysuch an ideal.The silver stand is patron, Fritz Waerndorfer. It was decorativeceramics and silver,often punchedinto a crispdesign of squares, highlyornate. Its promiseof reform Waerndorferwho underwrote the ini preciselymeasured so that eachopen tial expenses for establishing the ing life for the commonman through ingis twicethe widthof the supporting better designwas never fulfilled.But Werkstaette,enabling Hoffmann and strip. A double "ribbon" of squares Moserto includebookbinding, work in in the best productionsof the Wiener acts as the handlefor the lowrectan Werkstaette'searly years, simplicity goldand silver, and leather,as wellas gular base. Set against the burnished furniture. and luxury become complementary silver are the two cruets—smooth, JosefHoffmann. "Mushrooms" Fabric Sample. 1902. Fabric, 36 x 46%"(91.5 x 118.2cm). principlesthat definea modernsense Most frequently, Wiener Werk conicalsweeps of glasswith spherical CollectionBackhausen & Soehne, Vienna. © Backhausen & Soehne staette furnitureis notedfor its severe of materialpleasure. rectilinearityand elegant detail. De signsoften featured decorative inlay, iPi which accentuated the lines of the piece withoutdisrupting its contours. The inlaid desk by KolomanMoser whenclosed forms a solidrectangular block; it opens to provide drawers, compartments,and writing space. A dazzlingall-over geometric pattern enlivensthe flat surface planes and camouflages the points where the hinged pieces fit together. On the front, Moserinset ebony,mother-of- pearl, ivory,and goldleaf to compose ji ift an "antique"-inspiredtableau of two »« n figuresand dolphins. , — %m TheWerkstaette furniture designs |tl I * ® * * coincidedwith a new appreciationin Viennafor the simplicityof Bieder- If £ « ! t mJ J J J J Z * mH * m meier—the neoclassicalstyle of Aus trian furniture and architecture of 1:5 ma « ® 4 * Z Z about 1810-45.Respect for the plain ..2 m* » m* « *. * nessof Biedermeiermay be sensedin % & m & m m the bentwoodfurniture made by the firm of Thonet Brothers in Vienna. KolomanMoser. Cruets and Stand, c. 1904.Silver and glass, 6%" (17.2 JosefHoffmann. Cutlery for Lillyand Fritz Waerndorfer.c. 1906.Silver; middle group: spoon, 8%" (21.8 cm) long; Wagner,Moser, and Loosall admired cm)high. Private collection fork, 8%" (21.6cm) long; knife, 8% (21.5cm) long. OesterreichischesMuseum fuer angewandteKunst, Vienna 8 The Aestheticsof Nationalism

The inflectionsof "folk-style" ed than the "universal"legal and ra ern times. The eclectic historicism nance)was amongthe most sinister of children'sart by the youngOskar apparentin Vienneseart and tionalvalues previously touted by lib that markedthe Ringstrasseera, and aspects of this new, anti-socialist, Kokoschkaand others in his circle — designaround 1908 signaled a eral politics.(Ironically, it was just the multifacetedAnglomania that was anti-universalistHeimatkunst (liter all thesewere signs of a radical reval complexpattern of reactionsagainst suchparticularism, on the part of the apparent in the avant-gardearound ally, "homeland-art,"known as Pro- uation of untutoredart as the direct the metropolisand its values.On one empire'sself-assertive ethnic minori 1900,thus gave way to a more assert vinzkunstin Austria),with its venera expression of primal imagination. level, these stylizationsspoke with a ties, that threatened Austria-Hun ive Pan-Germanism— a sentiment tionfor Germanichome and hearth. These tendencies connected to the strongly conservative voice — ex gary'sstability.) that reachedits heightin the years of Folk-stylein Vienneseart could, broaderclimate of interestin "primi pressinga venerationfor the greater Stress on ethnic costumeand rus tive" stylethat hadbeen announced by continuityand solidityof rural life as tic decorativestyle in Austria(a force Paul Gauguinin France,and that was a reaction against the rapid ascen that revived popular forms of the Conservatism stressed the state as an particularly evident in expressionist dancyof urban,secular, industrial so country's Baroque age as well) at organic collective, determined by bonds circles in Munich.Such attention to ciety. As such, they were part of a tached itself to the broader wave of the "low"styles of popularprints and quasi-officialstyle, reflected most ob militant nationalism that swept of blood and tradition. rural devotionalimagery was the op viouslyin the picturesquepeasant bri NorthernEurope beginning ip the late posite of conservativelocal chauvin gadesin the paradesfor the emperor's nineteenth century. This movement WorldWar I. A strongstreak of anti- however,have quite differentimpli ism, as it disruptedhierarchies and jubilee in 1908.This conservatism lookedto the sagas and traditionsof Semitism(based in part on the stereo cations. 's interest in cultural boundaries— meldingEast stressedthe state as an organiccollec the North as sourcesof a rude vigor, typedimage of the Jew as exemplarof "barbaric"ornament, Emilie Floege's and West,old and new,in an effort to tive, determined by local bonds of imperviousto what was seen as the modernityby virtue of rootlessness attraction to peasantlacework of the find unconventionalsigns of the basic bloodand tradition — more deep-seat corrupt and effete decadenceof mod and engagement with capitalist fi- Slovakprovinces, the highestimation energiesof creativity.

THEODOR HERZL PROVINZKUNST 1860-1904

"Zionismaspires to create a publicly masseto Catholicism,in exchangefor In the Secessiontwo tendencieswere anda "purer"past providedan escape as an avariciouswhore. The periodical guaranteedhomeland for the Jewish a Papal pledgeof protection. evidentfrom the very beginning:the into the Utopiaof an idealized,pre- DerKyffhaeuser (the name of a moun peoplein the landof Israel";thus read Gradually,however, Herzl recog "stylists"around the central figureof industrialsociety. tain in the nationalisticmyth of Bar- the programfor the first Zionistcon nized that assimilationcould not be Gustav Klimt, and the "naturalists" Polemicsbetween the countryand barossa)was founded with the specific gress,in Baselin 1897.Just over fifty the solutionfor an increasinglyrace- around the painter Josef Engelhart. the cities were virulent in innumer aim of advancingthe premisesof the yearslater (onMay 14,1948), the State related anti-Semitism.(Ironically, the After the departure of Klimt and the ableperiodicals of the time.Published extreme right-wingpolitician Georg of Israel was proclaimed.Behind the other "stylists"in 1905,the "natural von Schoenerer'sGerman nationalist idea, and instrumentalin buildingthe ists" increasinglyextolled the simple movement.On the cover of its first Kf»5£fHUSKflE movementthat achievedit, was the formsof Germanicfolk art in contrast unsHuuwouws issue, in 1899,this magazinecalled Utopiandreamer and man of action to the "effeminate"influences from FE5!ZU(5=MS8 itselfthe "battlefieldfor Germanpoli TheodorHerzl, the founderof political abroad, be they Impressionism or tics,culture and art." Zionism. . In literature and poetry the same Born in Budapest, Herzl was In stark contrastto the cosmopoli battles were waged. Whetherin the broughtup in the liberaltradition. But tan aestheticculture of the artists as GermanJulius Langbehn'swidely in as an ardent Germanophile,he wor sociatedwith Klimtor the writers of fluential anti-modern tract Rem shipped Bismarck and Richard Jung-Wien,such Provinzkunst was ri brandt as Educator (1890)or in the Wagner,and as a student of law in gorouslyanti-urban and anti-modern. architecturalarticles of AlfredLicht- Viennahe evenjoined a Pan-German HermannBahr, the championof Jung- wark,the messagewas the same:only ic fraternity. It was there that Herzl Wienwho in the eightiesand nineties a return to the spirit of peasant art suffered his first major anti-Semitic had advocatedthe psychologicalap could provide the vital energy nec humiliation, when his name was proachof aestheticism(see p. 6), be essary for the revival of a healthy erased from the fraternity'smember came —with his 1899essay "Die Ent- national art. Lichtwark'spraise for shiplist. Likemany Viennese Jews of deckung der Provinz" ("The the nobly unpolished forms of the the upper bourgeoisie,Herzl was con Discoveryof the Provinces")— one of housesmade by fishermenand farm vinced that assimilation— total ab the propagatorsof Provinzkunst.In ers gave rise to two very different sorptionof the local intellectual,cul literature, theater, and art, this new SRUFPeiQ-DRoa interpretations.A modernistsuch as LER-lftNDSrURml^SPi tural, and evengentile religious back outlookoffered heroes of earthy peas B23rW-ZlUKKLdg ft gat Josef Hoffmann(who had provided ground — would be the Jewish ant stock instead of sensitiveurban- the architecturalrenderings for an ar ites. True defendersof the nativecul ticle by Lichtwark)could draw on the people'sonly viable strategy against Hubertvon Zwickle. Postcard for Emperor anti-Semitism.Very much the fash ture of the fatherland,ready to fight FranzJosef's Jubilee. 1908. Lithograph, 5¥2 spirit of simplicityfor a purifiedmon- ionable dandy, dreaming of aristo anddie for BlutundBoden ("blood and x iVz"(13.4 x 8.9cm). Collection Leonard A. umentality,while others saw in Licht cratic or ambassadorial rank, he soil"),these heroic peasants became Lauder wark'swriting the licensefor a profu shared many of his society's preju the new ideal; and the Provinz- sion of picturesque detail. But the dicesagainst Jews. kuenstler("artist of the provinces")— mannered artificiality of Provinz Herzl's stay in Paris in the early inspiredby the ethicallessons of fairy under the telling titles of Heimat kunst was its least noxious aspect; 1890s,as correspondentof the Neue tales and Northernlegends and sagas (Homeland),Das Land,Heimatschutz its more consequentialimpact lay in Freie Presse (the voice of Austrian idea for a Jewish state came to him —was seen as the sole interpreter of (Protection of the Homeland),Der the virulent attacks on the intellec liberalism and the most influential during a performance of Wagner's the folk soul. For the lower middle Gral (The Grail), and Neue Bahnen tual, cultural,and ethicalfoundations newspaperin Vienna),provided the Tannhaeuser.)In his bookThe Jewish class,uncomfortable in the newurban (NewPaths), their constantobjective of liberalism — forebodings of a backgroundfor his conversionfrom State {1896),Herzl wrote that the Jew culture, such venerationof rural life seemedto have beento assail the city darkerfuture. cosmopolitanaesthete to dedicated ish problemwas political— and not, Zionist.Expecting to visit the land of as generallybelieved, religious or eco egalite and fraternite, Herzl was nomic — and that the solutioncould the Neue Freie Presse (delighting is wherewe carry it," Herzlwas even holdpowerfully in the ghettosof East shockedto findFrance in the throesof only be foundon the level of interna Viennesesociety with the wit and in preparedto accept England'soffer of ern Europe.It was not until his funer growinganti-Semitism — which came tionalpolitics. His idea of a return to a telligenceof his writing)and as the Ugandaas a homelandfor the Jews. al, whenthousands of Jewscame from to a head during the Dreyfus trial Jewish homeland rekindled a long charismatic ambassadorof Zionism Theland he envisionedwas to be built all over Europeto mourntheir leader, (1893-95).The experience awoke in standinghope of OrthodoxJews and — Herzl relentlessly pursued his onmodels of the liberaltradition; in it, that many of Herzl'scontemporaries him aspirationsof leadership,and he broughtback to life an idea, consid dream. He organizedthe WorldCon every languagewould be spoken — fully understood how powerful the decidedto becomethe defenderof the ered even by Napoleonas early as gress of Zionists,founded a Zionist except Yiddish,which for him was movementhad becomein only eight Jews. Rejecting rational solutions, 1799,of a Jewishstate in Palestine. periodical,and traveled extensively to stigmatizedby its usein the ghettos. years. Andsome may have realized, Herzldreamed (according to hisdiary) Herzl broughtto these dreams a gain support for his idea (visiting, Herzl'ssecular approach, opposed withStefan Zweig, "how much passion of defending Jewish honor in duels newsystematic approach and an irre among others, Emperor WilhelmII, by manyOrthodox Jews andby assim- and hopethis loneand lonesomeman with major anti-Semiticfigures —or sistiblepersonal drive. Livinga dou SultanAbdul Hamid II, and PopePius ilationistsreluctant to acceptthe idea had borne into the worldthrough the of converting Jewish children en ble life — as the feuilletoneditor for X).Convinced that the "promisedland of Jewishstatehood, nonetheless took powerof a singlethought." IN THE EXHIBITION 9 Kunstschauand the Kabarett Fledermaus

Thecabaret featured a mixedpro such clothescould be made more ap In 1905Gustav Klimt led a group pealingif the plain, straight lines of of artists in defecting from the gram of experimentaldance, theater, and poetry readingsas well as more the Reform dress were redefinedby Secession, further fragmenting the style of the Napoleonicempire or Viennese artistic life. The "Klimt popular entertainments. Duringthe second week of performances, the the more"antique" look. The resulting Group" decidedto hold an indepen Rationaldress of Floegeand Gustav dent exhibitionin 1908,to coincide twenty-one-year-oldOskar Kokosch- ka attemptedto projecta sequenceof Klimt was promotedby the fashion with the celebrationof the sixty-year department of the Wiener Werk anniversary of Emperor Franz Jo images in a shadowdrama entitled TheSpeckled Egg {a kind of cinemato staette. sef's reign. Stagedon rented land in The major talent shaping Werk temporary pavilions designed by graphicallegory). Josef Hoffmanndesigned the inte staette fashion was Eduard Josef Josef Hoffmann,Kunstschau Wien Wimmer-Wisgrill,Vienna's answer to 1908(Vienna Art Show1908) marked rior of the Fledermausas well as its furniture and silver. In the theater the star of Paris couture,Paul Poiret. the most completeexpression of the Wimmer-Wisgrill'sdesigns and those desire to extendart into every realm room,he usedgray and whitemarble, prefiguring the deluxe feel of the of his Werkstaettecolleagues show a of life. The WienerWerkstaette and constant dialoguewith French fash the Kunstgewerbeschuleparticipated Palais Stocletinterior (see p. 15).But coveringthe bar-roomwall were over ion. Poiret in turn admired Hoff alongwith the Klimt Group.Besides seventhousand randomly sized tiles of mann's work,visited Vienna in 1912, the rooms devoted to painting and and purchased quantities of fabric design, there was also an outdoor everycolor, arranged like a large mo saicin a crazy-quiltdesign. The tiles of fromthe Werkstaette. theater, and even a completehouse The fabric workshops,and even prototypeby Josef Hoffmann,ready riotouscolor and comiccontent were madeby BertoldLoeffler and Michael tually the specialWerkstaette stores to sell. Powolnyof the WienerKeramik. dedicatedto fashion,were amongthe The displays at the Kunstschau most prominent and profitable as announceddramatic shifts in Vien The rambunctious humor of the bar's decoris duein part to the Fleder pectsof the enterprise.The success of nese aesthetics. Instead of the se Wimmer-Wisgrilland the Werkstaette vere, impersonalgeometry that had maus club spirit. But it reflects, too, the wider turning away from classi fashionsamong German and Austrian dominatedthe first years of Wiener patronswas due not only to the quality Werkstaettedesign (see p. 7),a more cizingdignity toward styles more pic turesqueand varied,from the earlier of designbut alsoto the socialneed to eclectic, often Romantic sensibility beat Paris at its owngame. And when nowdominated, in the form of elabo Secessionistclarity towarda newem phasison figural fantasy. the war came, the Werkstaettewas rate, brightly colored designs that expectedto take the leadin redefining lookedto folk art and children'sart Fashion a properly Germanic mode; in the for their inspiration. The subject of women'sclothing folioof approveddesigns for 1914-15, Styles that were held to be spe the slim elegance of the previous cially characteristic of Northern involvesthe larger issuesof feminism and ultimatelyeven nationalism.The years switchesto a suitably sturdy lands(as opposedto the classicalher look. itage of the Mediterranean),or par fashionablesilhouette of the tightly ticular to Austria, were taken as corseted ladies of the 1880swas re Jewelry modelsfrom the past. Thussuch dis garded in progressivecircles as an parate modes as a flowery neo-Ba- unhealthyand constrictingdeforma Josef Hoffmann,Koloman Moser, BertoldLoeffler. Poster for Kabarett Fledermaus. 1908. Lithograph, 24% x 17%"(63 x 43.5 tion of the body.Whalebone and laces and other Vienneseartists appliedto roque and a self-consciousarchaism cm).Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien could appear side by side, united in broochesand braceletsthe same prin their rejectionof any "rational," re on this book, which was part of an ciples that governed their larger ductive plainness. Where architec ambitiousseries of illustrated tales projects.One of the key principlesof ture had seemedto dominatedesign for young readers, typifies the new the WienerWerkstaette was that good from around 1902to 1905,a more interest not onlyin Northernlegends craftsmanshipand designwere more fanciful emphasis on complex sur and sagas but also in art by or for important,and ultimatelymore valu face pattern now emerged,drawing children.Drawing on the patterns of able, than expensivematerials. Thus on spirals and filigreepatterns found peasant embroideryand on a style the Werkstaettestressed well-worked more oftenin embroideryand metal- of medievalmanuscript illumination, jewelry of originaldesign, fashioned work. On the one hand this suggests Czeschkastressed a "barbaric" con from silver more often than goldand trivialization, pandering to a taste gestionof patterns,and soughtnobili using beautifulsemi-precious stones for the merely cute and picturesque; ty in a certain willedstiffness of line rather than valuablegems. Intricate but on the other hand, these designs and pose. structures and a special attention to the coloredpatterning of variegated also often containedthe marks of a KabarettFledermaus new energy that would give rise to stonesmake Hoffmann's brooches dis expressionism. In 1907,the WienerWerkstaette tinctly Viennesein their appeal, and In Carl Otto Czeschka'sillustra built for itself a theater/restaurant, remind us that — as in the case of tions for Die Nibelungen,several of the KabarettFledermaus. Inspired by fashion— elegant glamor was central the new directions in Vienneseart the artists' cabaretsin Paris, the Fle to the aestheticaims of much of the were implicit.The attentionlavished dermaus was intendedto extend the early modernart in Vienna.

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Bar-roomof theKabarett Fledermaus, c. 1907 group'scultural missioninto the per were to be discarded, and dresses formingarts. In its twoactive seasons, were to fall away from the body to the Fledermausbecame the haunt of allow for free movement.This new JoseiHoffmann. Brooch. 1908. Silver, par the Vienneseavant-garde. Discarding "Reform"dress was at first the cos tiallygilded, with lapis lazuli, coral, opal, CarlOtto Czeschka. Two-Page Illustration from Die Nibelungen (Vienna: Gerlach & Wie- the cultishsolemnity of the VerSac tumeof resolutelyunfashionable fem almandine,turquoise, chrysoprase, agate, dling,1920; original ed., 1908). Lithographs; each, 5% x 5%"(14.8 x 13.5cm). Collection rum years, the cabaret set a more inists. But the dress designerEmilie moonstone,and kameol, 2% x 2%'(5.5 x 5.5 Ronaldand Hilde Zacks, Hamden, Connecticut playfultone. Floege among others realized that cm).Private collection Dreams and Sexuality

Dreamy eroticism seems in gardingthe ambiguouspower of un in a form of casualprostitution, while a SB somerespects the key to the conscioussexuality in humanaffairs. upper-and middle-classwomen were OTTO WEININGER fluid lightness of much of Freud'sstudies of casesof hysteria expected to remain innocent until 1880-1903 Vienneseart, fantasyblurring the line led him to the specificrecognition of marriage. The interest in adolescent betweenthe desired and the actual. the repressedsexuality of womenof girls that we find in such Viennese But eros and the unconsciouswere the Viennese upper and middle figures as Adolf Loos, Peter Alten- At twenty-four,Otto Weiningerwas equallynear the heart of the mostdis classes.The disparity between the so berg, and Egon Schielethus suggests ruptingand disturbinginnovations of cial facadeand inner trauma of these convincedthat he had identifiedthe not only the new awareness of the key to humannature. He argued the early modern Vienneseculture. The womenin turn pointedto the painfully onsetof sexuality,but alsoan ongoing realm of the dream,evoked by Gustav pointin his contentiousfirst book,Sex fascinationwith the stimulationsof and Character (1903),an expanded Klimt in the fluid lines of pliant lan innocenceand with unequalrelation guor, took on an unsettlingconcrete- Fantasy versionof Eros and Psyche,his 1902 shipsoutside social convention. dissertation in philosophyand psy ness in the more grotesquevisions of commingled Klimt'sportraits (see p. 5) record AlfredKubin; and the meldingof nar chologyfor the Universityof Vienna. with nightmare; one aspect of this world, its elite of Thebook included a highlycontrover cissismwith sensualitythat gave fin- financially and intellectually privi de-siecle art its allure was trans sensuality was sial compendiumof philosophicaland legedwomen. Schiele's drawings dis para-scientificideas from Plato, Ar formed by Egon Schieleinto a more never far removed play anotherside, the available,raw- extreme form of corporalself-obses istotle, Kant, and Schopenhauer—as bonedmodels from the fringesof so well as a restatementof Freud's con sion. In all these cases, the taste for from pain. ciety;and Kokoschka's cruel fantasies fantasycommingled with nightmarish cepts on bisexualityand the "castra of primal male/femaleconfrontation tion complex,"ideas whichhad been apprehension,the savor of sensuality evidenthypocrisies to whichsexuality give full vent to the darker energies was never far removed from the gave rise in the culture of the day. brought to Weininger's attention Freud found.It is not onlythe general through the indiscretion of one of threat of pain,and the role of art was Celebratedin verse and image, the minglingof dream and eros, but the seen in terms of both confrontation Freud'sclients. erotic was givenlittle if any expres specificmixture withinthis imagery Weininger'stheories are based on and consolation.Such art has often sion in "proper" Viennesesociety. — of desire and danger,glamor and beenheld to showthat Viennawas the the assumptionthat the "feminine" Youngmen exploitedthe lower-class unease,the chic and the shocking— and the "masculine"are independent appropriate,if not the necessary,set workingwomen known generically as that seems attuned to the Viennese ting for SigmundFreud's ideas re principles which, mixed in varying suesseMaedel ("sweet young things") temper. proportions,determine the genderand character of living organisms. The masculine,in his view, is guidedby rationalityand creativity and the fem SIGMUND FREUD inine by irrational and destructive 1856-1939 forces. Womanexists for and by her sexualityalone. This concept of the fatal womancoincides with turn-of- Freud's approach relied on several AlthoughFreud's theories were the-century Symbolist views, ex newtechniques which together consti sharplycriticized, his fascination with pressed in such paintingsby Gustav tutedthe essenceof the psychoanalyti the life of the psychewas sharedby a Klimtas JudithI andSalome (see p. 5). cal process:the interpretationof "free generationof thinkers.This growing Whereas Klimt couches the deadly association," the elucidation of the sensitivity to psychological states danger of his femmes fatales in the hidden content of dream imagery was, according to Carl Schorske,a allure of erotic attraction, the pu (which he saw as fulfilling, in dis central aspect of the late nineteenth- ritanical Weiningeronly sees doom guised form, the desires of waking centuryreaction against the rational for a societyin the fatal grip of de life), and the investigationof early ist beliefsof Austrianliberal culture. structivefeminine values. childhoodmemories. In particular The writers RobertMusil and Arthur In one chapterof Sexand Charac Freudrevealed that the manycases of Schnitzler,to name just two figures ter, Weininger—a born Jew whohad hysteria among womenof the Vien amongmany in the arts, were clearly converted to Protestantism—devel neseupper bourgeoisie were rootedin involved in uncovering the deeper opeda bitterlyanti-Semitic thesis. He frustrationover unavowedsexual de layers of human consciousness;and identified"the Aryan race" with the sire. Freud was convincedthat a neu they shared with the painter Gustav masculineprinciple and "the Jewish rosis wouldbe healedonce its deeper Klimtan interest,parallel to Freud's, race" and culture with the despised reasonswere understood,and that a in intertwinedobsessions with death feminine principle. Weiningerused trauma could be mastered by reex- andsex. Freud'sconcept of the castrationcom periencingits cause—throughthe psy Notwithstandingthose currents of plexas the basisfor hiscontention that choanalytic process of "transfer interest,only three hundredand fifty Jews, like women,lack ego and thus ence," in whichthe patient shifts the copies of The Interpretation of self-esteem. focusof the originalemotion onto the Dreamshad beensold two years after Weiningercommitted suicide at representativefigure of the therapist. it was published.Freud foundrefuge the age of twenty-four.More the Ro Freud came to psychoanalysisrel from disappointmentin his fascina mantic "decadent"than he wantedto ativelylate in life. Underthe spell of tion with archaeology(which attract admit, he chose for his final act the Darwinianevolutionary theory and ed himbecause of its obviousparallels housewhere Beethoven had died. Goethe'snature philosophyhe chose with the process of psychoanalysis). A scathingcontroversy arose over scienceover law and began medical More important, in order to escape the virulentanti-feminist and anti-Se studiesin Viennaat age seventeen.He what he felt to be intellectualisola mitic ideasin Sexand Character(and preferredresearch, but tookup medi tion,Freud started in 1902a series of over questionsof authorshipand pla Almosta centuryhas passedsince Sig standingof subconsciousmotivation. cal practicebecause of financialneed. informalgatherings with like-minded giarism).Far more widelycirculated mundFreud openedhis private medi He recognizedthat somephysical dis In 1885,in Paris, Freud witnessed psychologists: the Psychological than Freud'sbooks, Weininger's led to cal practice. Living and workingat orders were of psychic origin, and Jean-MartinCharcot's treatment of WednesdaySociety, which grew in misconceptionsabout psychoanalysis Berggasse19 in Vienna,he developed were due to a process of resistance hysteria through hypnosis.Back in 1908into the ViennaPsychoanalytic in general.Karl Kraus's defenseand the techniquesin the treatmentof neu and repression in the subconscious Viennahe and Joseph Breuer devel Societyand thenin 1910into the Inter interpretation in Die Fackel helped roseswhich he wasto call psychoanal strata of the mind. opedtheir owntreatments, which they national PsychoanalyticAssociation. Weininger'sideas gain special curren ysis. By his own admissionpsycho The birth of psychoanalysisoc published in Studies on Hysteria The latter was beset from the begin cy amongViennese intellectuals and analysisdid not "drop from the skies curred, according to Freud, in the (1895).Five years after TheInterpre ningby dissent and defection. artists. The philosopherLudwig Witt readymade"; psychology and psychia years 1895-1900,when he wrote what tation of DreamsFreud publishedhis Despitehis lifelonglove-hate rela genstein, the composer Arnold try havetheir rootsin the shamanistic he consideredhis major work,The In most explosiveideas in ThreeEssays tionshipwith Viennesesociety, Freud Schoenberg,and even Freud himself dawnof time, and the conceptof the terpretation of Dreams (published on the Theoryof Sexuality(1905), fur left the city onlyunwillingly, after the acknowledgedthe austere rigor of subconscioushad come down in philos 1900).He was convincedthat the in ther developinghis insightsinto the Nazis took over Austria in 1938.He Weininger's argument. Later, his ophy from Plato, via Leibniz and vestigationof dreams had openedup sexualityof children,and their obsess diedone year later, in England,of the ideas fell on more dangerousground, Schopenhauer.Freud contributed a the "royal road to a knowledgeof the ion with their parents in what he cancer that had plaguedhim for the as they were adapted to serve Nazi systematic approach to the under unconsciousactivities of the mind." calledthe Oedipuscomplex. last sixteenyears of hislife. racial ideology. IN THE EXHIBITION 11

Drawing

Line played a dominantrole in grappling,dissatisfied human gesture the development,of early mod is set againstthe hollowunresponsive ern art in Vienna,from the sin ness of the puppet—a sign perhaps uoustendrils of GustavKlimt's organ- that Schiele,inheritor of the full-bod icismto the moretortured contours of ied sensual emphasisof Klimt, was EgonSchiele's and Oskar Kokoschka's also attunedto modernmetaphors of figures.Draftsmanship was thus a key the depersonalizedand vacant spirit. talent for the Vienneseartists. It often AlfredKubin's extraordinary fan served as a major, independentform tasy drawings,first appearingaround of expression,and it yieldedsome of 1900,when he was still a teenager, the mostarresting work of the period. directly reflect the fascinationwith Asa privateand intimate mode, it was dreams and the unconscious that also a primaryvehicle for the realiza marked CentralEuropean thought in tion of the Vienneseconcerns with the the late nineteenthcentury. Though worldsof eros and of the dream. they containechoes of other graphic Carl Otto Czeschka'sNude with artists from Hieronymus Bosch to Drapery (1909)shows a version of OdilonRedon, Kubin's early works the spare,shadowless linear style that have a unique,hallucinatory strange dominated the figure drawings of ness, much admired by the German Klimt and others in the early twen Expressionistpainters in Kandinsky's tieth century. Czeschka's love for circle and premonitoryof aspects of elaborate arabesquecomes through, Surrealism. however,in the complexlypatterned In Kubin's twilight world, the fabric, and givesthe drawinga deco moodof reverie is oftenjolted by cruel rative energy quite different from or violentnotes. An eerie light, as in that foundin the soft,interwoven out Self-Consideration(1902), may also linesof Klimt'sinsistently erotic nude lenda calm,lyric glowto imagesbuilt studies. from impossibleincongruities. The Oskar Kokoschka'sink drawings EgonSchiele. Two Girls Lying Entwined (Two Models). 1915. Pencil and gouache, 12% x 19"(31.9 x 48.2cm). Graphische Sammlung huge head on the horizonat the left for his play Moerder Hoffnungder Albertina,Vienna Frauen (Murderer,Hope of Women) are among the most extraordinary turned them out in quantity.Yet, far Two Girls Lying Entwined(Two imagesof early modernVienna. The from being"potboilers," these draw Models)typifies Schiele's exceptional savagery of their near-abstract vo ings are consistentlyinventive, and ability to commandarrangements of cabulary of spiked, scar-like lines markedby a specialenergy that is in bodies in the most complex, inter looksyears ahead, anticipating in sur someways fresher and more authori locked,and foreshortenedposes. His prisingways Picasso'sdrawings con tative than that of his moreambitious senseof the papershape, as bothcom nected with his Guernica(1937). The paintings. pressingvolume of spaceand graphic

<9 \vT.- - a*- " *5- f- , ' -s AlfredKubin. Self-Consideration. 1902. Pen and ink, wash, and spray, 8% x 9"(22.5 x 22.7 cm).Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna Carl OttoCzeschka. Nude with Drapery. 1909.Pencil, 24% x 18%"(61.2 x 46cm). surface,yields an imagethat is power stares back at a perfectly attentive, GraphischeSammlung Albertina, Vienna ful not onlyin sculpturalterms but as but headless, body—its own? The a colorful, rhythmically decorative sense of a psychedivided against it play in question was performed at design.His line is, moreover,specific self, and of disproportion between the secondKunstschau exhibition, in in its attentionto the particularitiesof mindand body in self-confrontation,is 1909.Its ritualized drama of desire tousledhair, crumpledpetticoats, and broughthome with disturbingimme and bloodlust served noticethat the bonyanatomy, yet rich in its abstract diacy in the smoothchiaroscuro han dream-likefantasies of Kokoschka's qualities,and virtually unparalleled in dlingof the ink washes,lending to this first workshad suddenlyturned to an its combinationof swift spontaneity impossible vision the implacable, explicitlynightmarish expressionism. anddecisive economy of means. seamlessquality of a photograph. Similarly,these drawings,and other Not onlyin the exacerbatedinten Like the youngerdraftsman Kle- contemporarystudies of raw-boned sity of Schiele'snumerous drawings mensBrosch, Kubin subscribed to the street urchins,showed his departure of himself,but in all his renderings ideaadvanced by the Germansculptor from a brightlycolored, fairy-tale il of the nude, a distinctivesensibility MaxKlinger in an essayof 1893:that lustrationstyle towarda more harsh emerges,mingling a raw, often pain the graphic mediums in black and andaggressive manner. ful erotic energywith a specialsense whiteoffered the best wayto commu EgonSchiele was an extraordinar of hard-edgedglamor. Often, as in the nicate a fantasy vision of another ily prolificdraftsman. His numerous OskarKokoschka. Drawing for MoerderHoffnung der Frauea(Murderer, Hope of drawing at hand, live figures seem world,or a deeplysubjective and criti erotic drawingssold quickly,and he Women)I.c. 1908.India ink, 10% x 7%"(25.5 x 20cm). Private collection pairedwith doll-like dummies, and the cal viewof ourown. Idealsof Unity: Music and the Visual Arts

Vienna's venerable status as wouldenthrall the total sensory re instrumentsand by conducting its per the cultural hub of Central sponse of the viewer. This was the formancein the exhibitionhall. Writ ARNOLD Europe dependedfar more ideal of the Gesamtkunstwerk,the ers suchas Carl Schorskehave more SCHOENBERG on its contributionsto musicand the total work of art, that so captured over shown how the imagery of 1874-1951 ater than on the historyof its visual artists' imaginations. In one of the Mahler'swork, and his receptionby a arts. The livelinessin the visual arts most ambitiousattempts by Viennese hostile Vienneseestablishment, have ArnoldSchoenberg twice openedup announcedby the formationof the Se parallels in the paintingsof Gustav newpossibilities for composition:first cession reflected in part the self- J L Klimt and in the scandals that they by breakingaway from conventional assertionof a newclass of supporters In both domains provoked. harmony — a step he called "the of culture, excludedfrom the more Suggestive parallels continue emancipationof dissonance"— and establishedand limited world of musi a search for grand when we compare the shift in Vien then by developingthe twelve-tone cal andtheatrical patronage (see p. 6). nese musical generations, from system. Thecreative forces in musicwere harmonies gave Mahlerto ArnoldSchoenberg, with the His first compositionsshow the composerwas promptedto found,in nonethelessoften closelyintertwined way to a more shift in painting,from Klimt to the largely self-trainedSchoenberg still 1918,the Societyfor Private Musical with those in painting and architec youngerEgon Schieleand OskarKo- under the spell of . Performances;applause was forbid ture, at the turn of the century.Vir dissonant art. koschka.In bothdomains a searchfor Aftera periodin Berlin,during which denand onlysympathetic critics were tually every Viennesecreator of the grand harmoniesgave way to a more he workedon the tone poem Pelleas admitted.Under its auspices,over one time was affected by the music and \ r dissonantart. Andin bothinstances a und Melisandewhile supporting him hundredfifty new works by contempo writings of the composer Richard artists to realize this ideal — the master/student relationship, and self by conductinga cabaret orches rary composerswere presenteddur Wagner,and one of Wagner'scentral 1902Secession exhibition built around bondsof affection,bridged the shock tra, Schoenbergreturned to Viennain ingthe followingthree years. tenetswas that modernart shouldcall MaxKlinger's sculpture of Beethoven ing transformationfrom an aesthetic 1903.There he taught compositionto After World War I, Schoenberg on creative talents of every kind — (seep. 3) — participat still markedby fin-de-siecleromanti students such as Antonvon Webern found,in the twelve-tonesystem, the musicians,painters, designers, and so ed by creating an arrangement of cismto a radicallyconfrontational ex and AlbanBerg. Reacting against his newkind of orderhe hadsought for his on — to collaborate in works that Beethoven'sNinth Symphony for wind pressionism. Romantic beginnings, Schoenberg atonal compositions.Although he did now aimed at greater simplicityand not invent the system, Schoenberg I economy,and increasinglypurged his broughtit to prominence,using it first work to the theme of resurrection, musicof subjectivityand self-expres in Five Piecesfor Piano,Op. 23 (1923) GUSTAV MAHLER sion.In 1908,in the final movementof 1860-1911 while his SymphonyNo. 8 (1907)ex and workingwith it in most of his presses his belief in the redemptive his String Quartet No. 2, Schoenberg subsequentcompositions. powerof love. ventured for the first time into the The rise of Nazism revived The musical achievementof Gustav Amonghis contemporaries Mahler sphere of atonality — a techniqueof Schoenberg'sallegiance to his Jewish Mahlerhas to be assessedunder the foundlittle understandingfor hiscom musical compositionthat does away background;he chose an Old Testa aspects of his two careers: the one positions.It was in his capacity as with traditional harmony.He intro mentsubject for histwelve-tone opera creative,as composer,the otherinter conductor,and in particularas artistic ducedSprechstimme, a type of vocal Mosesund Aron (1932).In the early pretive,as one of the leadingconduc director of the ViennaCourt Opera utterance midway between speech 1930s he emigrated to the United tors ofhis time. (1897-1907),that he achievedworld andsong, with instrumental accompa States, teachingat the Universityof His compositions combined the wide recognition.He made the Court niment,in his songcycle Pierrot Lu- SouthernCalifornia and UCLA.There final flowering of German musical Operathe premier opera housein the naire(l9l2, premieredthat sameyear his musicgradually became less her Romanticism with premonitions of worldthrough its completeoverhaul: in Berlin),and it becameyet another metic and more emotional,admitting later twentieth-century develop reshaping the repertoire, redefining trademarkof the Schoenbergschool. again the feelings he had banished ments,foreshadowing such major in Prague. Thoseinfluences were to af the stagingof opera productions,and Performances of Schoenberg's from his compositionssince about novationsas the dissolutionof tonali fect his compositionsas strongly as hiringand firingsingers to establisha musicprovoked such scandals that the 1907. ty. Idolizedby the youngmusicians of the musical legacy of Richard distinguishedensemble. the Schoenbergschool for his empha Wagner.Among the first to incorpo 1907was the year of "the three ANTON style:the piecesrange in lengthfrom sis on spontaneouscreativity, Mahler rate undisguisedelements of popular blowsof fate," whichMahler believed aboutfourteen seconds to a little less in turn was oneof their strongestsup songs into symphonies(such as the he had foretoldin his SymphonyNo. 6 VON WEBERN thantwo minutes. porters. French song "Frere Jacques" in his in 1905:the death of his child, his 1883-1945 In 1924Webern was quick to follow Mahler'sentire musicaloeuvre is Symphony No. 1 of 1888),Mahler forcedresignation from the opera,and Schoenberg'slead into the twelve-tone couchedessentially in the symphonic wantedhis musicto capturethe mun the first signsof the heart diseasethat In his departure from the tonal sys system,applying it for the first time in form.This is true evenof hissongs and dane experiencesof life as well as its was to kill him four years later. Al tem, Antonvon Webern was the most his Kinderstueckfor piano solo. His song cycles.Intensely rhetorical and metaphysical aspects. A client of thoughMahler spent the last years of radical of ArnoldSchoenberg's stu subsequentcompositions were entire autobiographical,his work resonates Freud and devoteeof Schopenhauer his life in New York,conducting the dents. His formativeyears had been ly set withinhis ownmodified version with recollections of the children's and Nietzsche,Mahler was intensely New York Philharmonic Orchestra colored by the Romanticismof Ri of the twelve-tone(or "serial") sys songs,folk music, military marches, preoccupiedwith philosophical,even andperformances at the Metropolitan chard Wagner,but his contact with tem. Yet withinthat formalrigor We- andsounds of natureof hisearly youth mysticalnotions and withquestions of Opera,he nevercut his ties to Vienna. Schoenbergmade him explore the new bern's music always remained ex in the small bohemianvillage of Ka- life anddeath. As early as hisSympho He returnedthere fatally ill, and died possibilitieswhich atonality offered. tremelysensitive, reflecting personal list, halfway between Vienna and ny No. 2 (1894)he devoteda major onMay 18,1911. Deeplycommitted to the pursuit of experienceand his deep, pantheistic newforms of musicalexpression, We feelingfor nature. bern aimed at the highestdensity of Webern'swholehearted pursuit of expression in the shortest possible the serialsystem made him a heroto a ALFRED ROLLER (framingthe stage on either side and form. His Five Pieces for Orchestra, later avant-garde,an inspirationto 1864-1935 easily adaptableto every production Op. 10 (1913)are most characteristic composerssuch as Pierre Boulezand requirement), allowed faster scene of what he called his "aphoristic" KarlheinzStockhausen. changesto preservethe dramaticflow Thedesigner Alfred Roller was one of of action and music.The major ele spiredthem (see p. 2),the worksaston the foundingmembers of the Vienna ment in his creationswas the sensa ALBAN BERG ish throughtheir exceptionallycom Secession.He was editorof their jour tion of space itself, manipulated 1885-1935 plexorchestration. nal Ver Sacrum and taught at the through his pioneeringuse of stage Berg is best knownfor his two Kunstgewerbeschule. lightingand color. Alban Berg is often called the "Ro operas: Wozzeck,the first full-length In collaborationwith Mahler,dur When Mahler left the opera in manticist" of the Schoenbergschool. atonal opera (1917-22,after Georg ing four extremely fruitful years at 1907,Roller departed too. He enjoyed Even after he joined this group in Buechner'splay Woyzeck)and Lulu the CourtOpera (1903-07), Roller rev a world-widereputation workingat 1904,Berg was more hesitant than (1929-35,after two plays by Frank olutionized opera production. By self the laws of its production." the MetropolitanOpera in NewYork Antonvon Webernin renouncingthe Wedekind)—written entirely in the clearing the stage of the clutter of Operatingthrough suggestion rather and with MaxReinhardt in Berlin,as traditionaltonal system. His composi twelve-tone system. (Unfinishedat naturalist and historical detail that thanillusion, he intendedhis stage sets wellas in productionsof the operasof tions during those years still owe Berg's death,the last act of Lulu has encumberedlate nineteenth-century not to create a realityof their own,but RichardStrauss in Dresdenand Vien muchto Wagnerand Mahler.By 1912, been, since 1979,performed on the productions,Roller wanted to leadthe to serve the poetry and music of the na. Togetherwith Reinhardt and Hugo however, in Five Orchestral Songs, basisof hisample sketches and notes.) public'sattention back to the essence work. Roller's simplifieddecors and vonHofmannsthal, at the endof World Op. 4, Berg had taken the step into Both are powerful psychological of the play. Roller'sguiding principle useof permanentelements in hisstage War I Roller helpedestablish the an atonality.Short and conciselike the dramas for whichBerg himselfpre was that "each play carries withinit- sets,such as the famousRoller towers nualSalzburg Festival. postcardsby Peter Altenbergthat in- paredthe librettos. IN THE EXHIBITION 13

Later Painting

With the performance at ing formsof lusciouscolor—a fantasy guises,and the projectionof himselfas the 1909Kunstschau ex free of the morbidityand sexualten actor in violentdramas of frustrated hibition of Oskar Ko- sionsseen in his earlier allegories,yet communication.In the broadlymim koschka's cruelly violent drama fullof an indulgederoticism so vividly ing gesturallanguage of the portraits, MoerderHoffnung der Frauen (Mur sweetas to be disquietingin a differ as in this senseof self,Kokoschka and derer, Hopeof Women;see p. 11),it ent way. Schielemake evident a Vienneseself- was clear that a new kind of art Schieleand Kokoschkawere deep consciousnessabout communication was on the rise in Vienna.Kokoschka ly concerned, as Klimt never was, and inner truth (see p. 4);they trans had worked for the Wiener Werk- with self-portraiture. Schiele's nu form into something modern and staette, and his first illustratedbook merous self-portraits,both in draw problematicthe notions of the cos was dedicatedto Klimt; but he soon ingsand in paintings,point up the par tume and of the facade that had for quit the Werkstaette,and wasbrought ticular sense of the theatrical asso merlyseemed only the outmodedcon intothe circleof its opponents,includ ciated with expressionismin Vienna cerns of the Ringstrassegeneration ing the architectAdolf Loos (see p. 15) —theartist's assumingof allegorical (seep.14). and the critic Karl Kraus (see p. 6). Eventuallyhe went on to Berlin,in a movethat was symptomaticnot only of the livelierart marketthen expand ingin Germany,but alsoof the greater receptivityof the Germancities to the harsh newenergies of expressionism. f 't The wealthyelite of Viennaclung to the sense of eleganceand goodtaste that had been implicit in the Seces sion and the Werkstaette, and self consciouslystressed by many of the Kunstschauartists. Expressionismfirst appeared in Viennain the brief career of Richard Gerstl, a youngpainter strongly af OskarKokoschka. Peter Altenherg. 1909. Oil on canvas, 29% x 28"(76 x 71cm). Private fectedby localexhibitions of the work collection of Vincent van Gogh and Edvard Munch.Gerstl was an intimateof the composerArnold Schoenberg and his family (a failed affair with Schoen- berg's wife precipitatedGerstl's sui cide in 1908),and he inspiredSchoen berg himself to draw and paint. Schoenberghad no formal trainingin art, but his self-portraits,caricatural fantasies,and visionary"gazes" (ab stracted faces)were treasuredby ar GustavKlimt. The Maiden. 1912-13. Oil on canvas, 6' 2%"x 6' 6%"(190 x 200cm). The tists suchas WassilyKandinsky as art NationalGallery, Prague born from necessityrather than tu toredability. Amongthe earliest and greatest worksof expressionismin Viennaare the portraits done by Kokoschkaand Schielein the years 1909-11.Strongly differentin conception,the worksof the twoemerging artists wereequally radical in their renunciationof dec orated elegancefor a more strident and psychicallycharged approach to theirsitters. Kokoschka'sportrait of Peter Al- tenbergof 1909is by legendthe record of this bohemianwriter and poet (see p. 2) respondingto a provocationthat haddisturbed him at a cafe.The figure emergesdramatically from a voidde finedonly by the slashing,scratching life of Kokoschka'sbrush, and his ve nousflesh seems shaken to near disso lutionby a quiveringinternal energy. The lunginggesture and bulgingeyes EgonSchiele. Dr. Erwin von Graff. 1910. Oil on canvas, 39% x35%"(100x90cm). Private are conjuredwith a disregardfor ei collection ther flattery or decorativefinish that is characteristicof all the early Ko centrationon characterand psycholo of the luxuriantlyfull spaces of Klimt koschka portraits —a series that gytook the formof a radicalemptying (seep. 5). projects the disturbedpsychic ener out of the pictorialspace that left his Klimtcontinued to paintlovely so gies of an extraordinary world of subjectsalone in a whitenedvacuum. ciety portraits, but the special inten scholars, creators, and dissipated In early portraits like that of Dr. sity of the "golden"works was not aristocrats. Erwin vonGraff, the constrictedges maintained, and his most personal WhileKokoschka divorced these tures of bony anatomy and outsized worksof the periodafter about 1910 sitters from their mundanesurround hands communicate a semaphoric are the imaginedscenes he painted, ings by setting them in a turbulent messageof crampedalienation from such as TheMaiden of 1912-13.Here atmosphere that seemed to bristle within a denudedenvironment, the the soft fullnessof an all-consuming RichardGerstl. Two Sisters (Karoline and Pauline Fey). 1905. Oil on canvas, 68% x 59%" with ambient energy, Schiele'scon- aestheticand psychologicalantithesis dreamstate is conjuredin loose,float- (175x 150cm). Oesterreichische Galerie, Vienna The Ringstrasse,Problematic Symbol of an Age

Old Vienna was a tightly apartmenthouses in imitationRenais packed network of small sanceand Baroque palazzo styles flat streets, bound in by encir tered the self-imageof thosewith new clingmilitary fortifications. When the industrialwealth. youngEmperor Franz Josef came to Thoughthe major part of the Ring the throneafter the revolutionarytu was builtin the 1860sand 1870s,addi mult of 1848,he became persuaded tions continued piecemeal into the that these walls were anachronistic 1890sand evenbeyond. By then,how andthat the time hadcome to modern ever, the political forces that had ize Vienna.In 1857he orderedthe old shapedthe project— a looseand often wallstorn down.On the openmilitary contentiouscombination of imperial glacis they had overlooked,a huge and liberal bourgeoisinterests —had new boulevard,the Ringstrasse,was beensupplanted. The major urbanre laidout around the city'sedge. forms of the nineties and the first The boulevardproject was doubt years of the new century were insti less influencedby the similar work gated by a new populistpolitics, less then beingdone in Paris by Napoleon focusedon the inner-city,well-to-do III and his architect Baron Hauss- world definedby the Ring and more mann,and it involveda similar com concernedwith the vast workingsub minglingof strategic with economic urbs then beingassimilated into mu concerns,and governmentalwith pri nicipalgovernment. vate finance.But whereHaussmann's For all the improvementsit had boulevardswere notablefor their ho brought,including better water ser mogeneity, the Ringstrasse's hall vicesand circulation,the urbanismof mark was the eclecticdiversity of its the liberal era was criticizedby the architecture.Each of the major insti newpoliticians as the self-servingand tutional structures along the street short-sighted scheme of a parvenu was built in a modethought appropri class. For those in the arts, too, the ate: the Parliamentin a Greekstyle to imposingedifices came to be regarded Viewof the Ringstrasse; left to right: Parliament, Rathaus (City Hall), University ofVienna, and Burgtheater. c. 1888 recall Atheniandemocracy, the Rat- as monumentsto philistinehypocrisy, journal VerSacrum). Loos compared An oppressive inheritance for major artery of circulation in the haus(City Hall) in Gothicguise to sug whichsought to dissemblemodernity the decorated facades of the Ring Loos'sgeneration of youngmodern innercity, and as the site of suchinsti gest the medievalepoch of burgher in the false "costume" facades of buildingsto the fake buildingfronts ists, the Ringstrasse ensemble has tutionsas the great Art and Natural civic rule, the Universityof Vienna noblehistorical styles. One of the most that a Russian minister, Potemkin, nonethelesssurvived, and prospered. HistoryMuseums, the StateOpera and buildingsin the Renaissancemold to trenchant attacks came in Adolf had once ordered erected along the Like Haussmann's boulevards, this the City Theater (not to mentionthe honorthe humanistpursuit of knowl Loos's article "Die Potemkinsche travel routeof Catherinethe Great,to broad, tree-linedavenue seemed al ubiquitouscafes), the Ringstrassere edge,and so on. Rich residentialdis Stadt" ("Potemkin'sCity," published conveythe illusionof prosperouspro most predestinedfor the demandsof mainstoday Vienna's most distinctive tricts were also developed, where in the July 1898issue of the Secession vincialvillages. the age of the automobile. As the publicspace.

CAMILLO SITTE 1843-1903

Before the criticisms of the Ring strasse at the turn of the century,Ca- millo Sitte, a professor at Vienna's Kunstgewerbeschule(School of Ap pliedArts), had rebuked the failingsof this effort at modernization,in his bookCity PlanningAccording to Ar tistic Principlesof 1889.Sitte's ideal urbanforms were the protectivelyen closingspaces of oldertowns. He felt ARCHITECTURE that the wide, long-viewvectors of Haussmann-styleboulevards — like AND REFORM the Ringstrasse— elicitedonly anx iety (specifically,Platzangst, or ago JosefHoffmann. Palais Stoclet, Brussels. Garden facade, preliminary design, c. 1905-06.Pen and ink, 4% x 8%"(11.2 x 22.2cm). Museum raphobia,the fear ofopen spaces). modemerKunst, Vienna Nostalgicfor what he felt was the nurturingcollective solidarity of tra No other art form seemed so im Wagner and his younger admirers other originalmembers of the Seces anonymousrustic styles was to be ditionalsmall-town society, Sitte felt mediatelylinked to Viennesecreators' Josef Hoffmann and Adolf Loos sion dreamed of findingsupport for broughtinto harmony with the author that avenueslike the Ring wouldin dreamsof modernreform as architec shapedtheir workin waysthat simul large-scalepublic projects in which, ity of hightraditions, and a spare deni tensify the sense of alienation and ture. Otto Wagner'swritings, which taneouslyreinterpreted the classical as in medievalcathedrals, architec al of vulgarity was to be balanced fragmentation that modern life en espouseda new "honesty"in building, traditionand foundnew forms —ex ture woulddraw back underits aegis againstthe demandsfor luxuryof an tailed.As the historianCarl Schorske based on rational principlesof func pressive and even theatrical, rather all the arts of painting,sculpture, and elite clientele. The issues raised in has shown,Sitte's communitarian cri tionalefficiency, were key texts in the than straightforwardly "honest" — so on —arts that had been relegated these attempts, of the tensions be tique of the Ring differed sharply imagination of a generation that for modernity.In Vienna,the reduc by the modernmarket to small-scale tweencountry and city values,or be from the objectionsof more self-con lookedto art as the agentof an all-em tive elimination of ornament was private expression.This was a dream tweensocial consciousness and interi sciously modern architects such as bracing transformation of life. The oftenonly a preludeto the inventionof that (with the exceptionperhaps of or life, are perhapseven more reveal Otto Wagner and Adolf Loos, who moredirect relationship of exteriorto newornamental motifs, and the purg Wagner'sSteinhof Church) went unre ing than the less ambiguousand more foundthe street and its buildingstoo interior, the abolition of imitative ing of historicismset the stage for a alized; only the collaborativeSeces confident rhetoric of the would-be indebtedto—rather than too removed styles and superfluousornament — more complexmanner of quotingand sionexhibitions or exceptionalprivate modern reformers. And the disjunc from—tradition. These opposedcri thesewere principles of the newarchi subsuminghistorical references. The commissionslike the Palais Stoclet tionsand disparities— notably in the tiqueswere moreover symptomatic of tectureas wellas metaphorsfor a new decorative,eclectic ways of the Ring suggested what these artists envi self-consciousseparation between fa the broaderturn-of-the-century rejec attitudetoward man and society. strasse, loudlydeplored around 1900, sionedon a largerscale. cade and interior — are perhapsthe tion of the liberal era the Ringrepre Thetexts of Viennesearchitecture might be said to haunt the Viennese ModernViennese architecture set most fascinatingaspects of Vienna's sented, a rejection that came from are not, however,always in line with searchfor a modernarchitecture. out to reconcile several conflicting role in an emergingmodern architec conservativesand progressives,the the buildings. Architects such as GustavKlimt, Hoffmann, and the needs and desires. The simplicityof tural movement. politicalright and left simultaneously. IN THE EXHIBITION 15 Architecture

The four major architects the artifice of the stonefacade on this first in Viennabefore any pieceswere working in Vienna around vast masonrystructure. Emphasizing shippedto Brussels.As one commen 1900were Otto Wagner,Jo the array of metal boltheads that held tator observedin 1909,"This is the seph MariaOlbrich, Josef Hoffmann, the stone claddingpanels, he made new Vienneseart —an art whichex and AdolfLoos. Wagner, the oldest,is from basic technologya new kind of portswhole houses." considered the "father" of modern decorative element. For the glass- AdolfLoos Viennesearchitecture. His buildings roofedmain hall, he adaptedthe look werethe first outstandingexamples of of the great train stations.Among the Opposedto Hoffmann'sopulent or the modernstyle in Viennaand earned moststriking features of thisroom are chestration, Adolf Loos argued him an internationalreputation. Ol the aluminumhot-air blowerswhose againstthe tyrannyof the total-design brich, the designerof the Secession's unconventionalappearance and auda architect and the imposition of exhibitionhall (see p. 3),was Wagner's ciousexposure seem a premonitionof "style.""We already possess the style youngprotege, with whomhe colla the "high-tech"future. of our time," he wrote; "It may be borated on urbanizationprojects in foundwherever the artist hasn't yet JosephMaria Olbrich the 1890s. stuck his nosein." Best knownfor his Anotherprize pupil of Wagner's AlthoughOlbrich worked closely scathingcriticism of the use of orna was Josef Hoffmann,who became a withWagner, the youngerman's taste ment (especiallyhis essay"Ornament professorat the Kunstgewerbeschuleleaned to the dreamier decorationof and Crime"of 1908),Loos was in fact in 1899and a favorite of Secession Jugendstil,evident in the illustrations notagainst all ornament.Like Wagner supporters. Hoffmann enjoyed a he contributedto the Secessionpubli (and Louis Sullivanin America),he steady flow of commissions from cation VerSacrum. He also designed disapprovedof decorationthat was wealthyclients; under his leadership, the Secessionbuilding, with its tem meaninglessor unnecessaryor which the WienerWerkstaette determined ple-likefacade and movableinterior confusedour understandingof a build whatwas tasteful for Viennesesociety walls, and while it was under con ing'sfunction. (see p. 7). AdolfLoos, an exact con struction in 1898became involved Looshad designedseveral interi temporaryof Hoffmann's,was an ar withdomestic architectural projects. ors around1900 and receivedhis first chitect whoseearly reputationrested For the VillaFriedmann at Hinter- commissionfor a completebuilding in mostly on his biting cultural criti bruehl, near Vienna, Olbrich was 1908from the English-styletailoring cism.A dedicatedenemy of the Seces broughtin to replace the originalar firm he himselffavored, Goldman & sion'saestheticism, Loos later cham chitect.(The owner wanted to havehis Salatsch. The building he devised pionedthe more raw and aggressive homecompleted in "Secession-style.") looks directly across the Michaeler- workof the painter OskarKokoschka Olbrichsimplified the structure and platztoward the Hofburg,the Imperi (seep. 13). carefullytended to detailsof decor.In al Palace. Many critics at the time considered the radical bareness of OttoWagner the children'sroom, for example,Ol brich called for furniture,woodwork, Loos'supper stories an insult to the Wagnerinfluenced an entire gen wall paintings,and windowsto blend JosefHoffmann. Palais Stoclet, Brussels. Music room. 1905-11 traditionsof historicVienna, as repre erationthrough his teachingand writ sentedby the ornate Baroquestyle of ings. In his 1895book Modern Archi turn to Brussels,and he commissioned coordinated with special textiles, the Hofburg.Loos defended his plain tecture he insistedthat the primary Hoffmannto build a house for him wallpapers, and furnishings by the walls and windowsas being true to focus of the architect should be on there. The Palais Stoclet(1905-11) is Werkstaette. The dining room fea venerable,if not prestigious,styles of satisfyingthe practical functionsof the most stunningrealization of the tures a three-part mosaic frieze by Viennese architecture. "I kept the a building,that choice of materials Vienneseideal of Gesamtkunstwerk, Gustav Klimt (executedby Leopold plaster surfacesas simpleas possible shouldbe determinedby their costand the total workof art. Stocletimposed Forstner) in marble, semi-precious becausethe burghersof Viennaalso ease of maintenance,and that struc nobudgetary restrictions so that Hoff stones, and coloredglass. Hoffmann builtin a simplestyle." Characteristic ture shouldbe simpleand economical. mannand his WienerWerkstaette col planned all the furniture and silver of Loosis his combinationof this bur His competition design for the leagues were free to indulge their and designedthe gardenas well —its gher strictness with the classicizing Postal SavingsBank (built in 1904-06 imaginationsand talents on a lavish terraces and pergolas,summerhouse, arcadeand lavishly veined stone of the and 1910-12)combined the nobilityof scale. tennis courts, garden chairs, and lower stories. Like Hoffmann and traditionalmaterials with details that The Stocletexterior is composed tables. othersof this generation,Loos sought suggestthe energiesof modernindus of sweeping flat planes of marble, Every aspectof the Palais Stoclet not just simplicity, but also a new try. Wagnermade a pointof declaring crisplybound by gildedmoldings. For was intendedto harmonizewith the senseof purifiedelegance, free from the splendidinterior, different mar architecturalconcept. To test the ef what he saw as the vulgarityof bour JosephMaria Olbrich. Villa Friedmann, bles and marquetry woodworkwere fect, each entire roomwas assembled geoishistoricism. Hinterbruehl.Perspective ofa child'sroom. 1898.Ink and pencil, 6V2 x 5%"(16.5 x 14.7 cm).Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kul- turbesitzmit Museumfuer Architektur, Modebildund Grafik-Design, Berlin

togetherin cozyharmony; an earnest messageon the landscape-likewalls exhortedthe youngto be loyal,honest, andindustrious. Olbrichhad beenplanning a series of villas to be built in the fashionable woodedarea aboveVienna called the Hohe Warte. However, when the Grand Dukeof Hesseinvited him to helpcreate an artists' colonyat Darm stadt, he left Viennain 1899and relin quishedto Hoffmannthe projectson the HoheWarte. JosefHoffmann One of the villas that Hoffmann completedon the HoheWarte attract OttoWagner. Warm-Air Blower from Main ed the attentionof AdolpheStoclet, a Hall,Postal Savings Bank. c. 1906.Alumi wealthy Belgian who was living in num,8'2Vz" (250 cm) high. Oesterreichische Viennaduring 1903-04.Upon his fa Postsparkasse,Vienna ther's death,Stoclet was forcedto re- AdolfLoos. Haus am Michaelerplatz (Goldman &Sala tschBuilding). 1909-11 Ancient Monarchy, New Culture Continuedfrom front page

only son,Crown Prince Rudolf,com ble finalityin the arts as well,as the mittedsuicide with his lover,a young architect Otto Wagner,the designer ACKNOWLEDGMENTS societylady, at the royalhunting lodge KolomanMoser, and the paintersGus Vienna1900: Art, Architecture& De to the Republicof Austria(Dr. Heinz at Mayerlingin 1889.The Empress tav Klimt and Egon Schieleall died sign was organizedby Kirk Varne- Fischer, Bundesminister fuer Wis- Elisabeth,always a troubledand dis beforethe newAustrian republic had doe, AdjunctCurator in the Depart senschaft und Forschung)for their tant consort,was assassinatedby an establisheditself. A great epochhad ment of Painting and Sculptureand generoushelp with this project,which anarchistin 1898.The aging emperor, ended, and the diaspora of Vienna's Professorof Fine Arts at the Institute hadits originsin the exhibitionTraum ever more psychologicallyisolated, moderngenius had begun — only to be of Fine Arts, New York University. und Wirklichkeit:Wien, 1870-1930, or foundit difficulteither to resist the finalizedby the wave of emigration Mr. Varnedoewas assistedby Diane ganizedby Hofrat Dr. Robert Wais- pressurefor greater democracy(uni withfascism's rise in the 1930s. Farynyk,Curatorial Assistant, Paint senbergerand Prof. HansHollein and versalsuffrage was finallygranted in Retrospect ing and Sculpture, and by Gertje presentedin Viennain 1985.We thank 1907)or to contendwith a faction-torn Utley,doctoral candidate at the Insti as wellJohn Sailer, who has servedas parliament. These internal tensions Onlysince the 1960shas the con tute of Fine Arts. The exhibitionin Austria'sCommissioner for the exhi wereonly magnified by the ever more vergenceof studieson the great Vien stallation was designed by Jerome bitionat The Museumof ModernArt. bellicoseinternational climate of the nese figures — TheodorHerzl, Lud Neuner,Production Manager, Exhibi Agreat debtof gratitudeis owedto the early twentiethcentury, as Austria- wig Wittgenstein, Karl Kraus, and tion Program.Lynne Addison, Assis lendersto the exhibition,whose par Hungary'sunique geographical posi others,as wellas artists suchas Klimt tant Registrar, directed the shipping ticipationwas essential;their names tion — openingonto the Orient, the and Schiele— pieced back together andreceiving of worksof art. are listed,and the invaluablepartici RussianEmpire, and WesternEurope the scatteredelements, to bringto full TheMuseum is gratefulto the City pationof manyother friends acknow as well —made it a key, if no longer KarlLueger (1844-1910) publicawareness the rich heritagebe of Vienna(Dr. HelmutZilk, Landes- ledged,in the book publishedto ac militarilydominant, player on the Eu queathedby turn-of-the-centuryVien hauptmannund Buergermeister)and companythe exhibition. ropeanstage. tions of Sigmund Freud, Gustav na. The diverse and often contradic FinalGlitter, FinalDarkness Mahler,Alois Riegl, Ludwig Wittgen tory implicationsof this legacy risk LECTURES stein, and the other thinkers and beingoverwhelmed, however, by the Threetimes in the 1890sthe dema artists cited in this publication— Carl E. Schorske, Dayton-Stockton Theselectures are made possible very power of our new fascination Professorof HistoryEmeritus, Prince throughthe generosityof the Austrian gogicChristian Socialist Karl Lueger seem in retrospect to have been set with this specialtime and place. Our (knownas "HandsomeKarl") received withina larger tableau of impending ton University, will speak on Sep Institute,New York. Related lectures, retrospectivesense of the combined tember25 at the Museum.James She- films, concerts, and exhibitionsare the votes sufficient to make him doom.Intimations of decadenceand glamorand doomof the last years of mayor of Vienna;three times Franz despair are not hard to find interwo del, AssociateProfessor of History, being offered by the Austrian Insti Hapsburgrule can create a romantic GeorgetownUniversity, will speak on tute, 11 East 52 Street. For further Josef refusedto approvethe appoint ven withthe goldenfabric of Vienna's aura, a seamless"spirit of the time," ment, in significantpart becauseof brilliance,not least in the suicidesthat October 2. For further information, information,call (212)759-5165. and findthe marks of fate in its every inquireat the LobbyDesk. Lueger'soutspoken anti-Semitism. In recurrentlypunctuate the chronicleof aspect — leading to the myth of a 1897the emperorfinally ceded, and a its notables.Indeed, one of the dia societyso fraught with the ambivalent PUBLICATIONS CONCERTS new era of populistpolitics came to loguesapparent within all the Vien energiesof modernitythat it virtually the enlargedmunicipality of Vienna. nesearts of the periodis that between requiredan apocalypticend as its only Vienna1900: Art, Architecture& De The Museumand the 92ndStreet Y In the sameyear a parliamentarycri the elaborationof seductivesurface appropriateconsummation. sign, by Kirk Varnedoe.240 black- will collaboratein presentinga festi sis, over the long-standingproblem of ornamentand the probingof darker, The works of the Viennesecrea and-whiteand 114color illustrations. val of concertsin Septemberand Octo the Germanlanguage's dominance as more anguishedand alienatinginade tors, in their complexityand specific 264pages. Clothbound, $50 (Members, ber in the Museum.Distinguished mu the officialand legal tongue,caused quaciesof modernlife. These poles, of ity, resist suchsimplifications. No all- $37.50);paperbound, $19.50(Mem sicians will participate in this series the emperorto dissolvethe legislature eros andneurosis, of the indulgentand embracingromance of the lost em bers, $14.63).Published by The Muse devotedto turn-of-the-centuryVien andrule bydecree. From thispoint on, the intransigent, became the hall pire,nor any simplelabel such as "the um of ModernArt. nese music,generously underwritten an evenmore marked gulf divided the marks — opposedyet entwined— of cradle of modernity,"is adequateto by Mr. and Mrs. MiltonPetrie. For symbolic theater of the emperor's the legacythat survivedthe eventual the challengingvariety of experiences Posters: further information, inquire at the venerable, paternal authority from destructionof Vienna's"golden age." providedby these worksof art. Simi GustavKlimt LobbyDesk. the volatile realities of a rapidly WhenFranz Josef's nephewand larly, the brief backgroundprovided EmilieFloege,1902 changingVienna, Austria's fractious heir, the ArchdukeFranz Ferdinand, here is not intendedto "explain"Vien Farm Gardenwith Sunflowers (The FILMS internal dissensionand its entangle was assassinatedat Sarajevoin 1914 na, or to level achievementsin very Sunflowers),c. 1905-06 mentin Europeanpolitics. by a youngSerbian nationalist, Aus different fields to a vague common For informationon film programsin HopeII, 1907-08 the Museumrelated to the exhibition, Yet it was in the same year, 1897, tria's intransigentposition drew along denominator,but only to point to the Salome(Judith II), 1909 that the formationof the ViennaSe its ally Germany,and eventuallyun stunning,often paradoxical constella inquireat the LobbyDesk. cession announced a period of un leashed the great war which many tion of achievements that trans OttoWagner paralleledcreativity in Viennesecul (witheagerness as wellas foreboding) formedVienna's place in the Western SteinhofChurch, perspective drawing, CAFE tural and intellectuallife. All of the had longanticipated. Franz Josef died imagination — from a capital of 1902 A Vienna1900 Cafe, sponsored by the brilliantachievements wrought with in the depthsof the war, in 1916,and waltz-likeOld Worldcharm to a key PostalSavings Bank, competition AustrianFederal Economic Chamber, in the next twentyyears by Vienna's the empireitself was dissolvedin the site of origin for the culture of our design,1903 is open in The AbbyAldrich Rocke cosmopolitancitizenry — the innova- defeatsof 1918.That year had a terri times. $10each (Members, $7.50) fellerSculpture Garden. FLOORPLAN OF THE EXHIBITION

The International Council Galleries Pim Golden' The Secession 9 O 01 Style Architecture LL Writtenby Gertje Utley (all articles on pp. Later 2, 4, 6, 8,10,and 12 except lead article on Painting eachpage), Emily Bardack Kies (pp. 3,7, 9, Wiener Werkstaette and15), and Kirk Varnedoe (pp. 1, 5,11,13, and GeometricStyle 14,and lead articles on pp. 2,4,6,8,10, and « w ^ o 12).Special thanks to Prof.Dale Harris for Jk The Abby Aldrich RockefellerSculpture Garden J editorialadvice. Kunstschau Later Painting ^ and the Kabarett O. x Designedby Steven Schoenfelder " Fledermaus — n 4- pn-r|' t f Photographresearch by Susan Forster Documentaryphotographs from the Drawing OesterreichischeNationalbibliothek, n*"""Ml courtesyof the Austrian Institute, NewYork

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