Vienna 1900: Style and Identity
Photographer: Hulya Kolabas, 2011
Questions of identity often come to the fore in times of radical historical change. In Vienna toward the end of the nineteenth century, every aspect of daily life was subject to reevaluation and revision. This exhibition demonstrates a common thread running through the fine and decorative arts in turn-of-the-century Vienna: the redefinition of individual identity in the modern age. By exploring the debates about style and content in Viennese art and design, it charts the search for a specifically modern, Viennese sense of self.
Vienna 1900: Style and Identity
First Gallery: Unmasking the Inner Man
Photographer: Hulya Kolabas, 2011
In turn-of-the-century Vienna, there was an unusually close relationship among the areas of art, psychology, and medicine. Sigmund Freud’s groundbreaking theories about the structure of the subconscious mind and the role sexual desire played in guiding human behavior had a powerful impact on artists of the day.
First Gallery: Unmasking the Inner Man
First Gallery: Unmasking the Inner Man, View II
Photographer: Hulya Kolabas, 2011
Artists such as Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, and Richard Gerstl sought to reach the inner truth by stripping away the outer layers of the body and the mind. This approach relates not only to Freud’s theories, but also to medical practices at the Vienna School of Medicine, where surgeons performed numerous autopsies, a practice that inspired some artists. Adolf Loos and Karl Kraus, both of whom railed against the superficiality and hypocrisy of Viennese society, encouraged the Expressionists in their revelatory approach.
First Gallery: Unmasking the Inner Man, View II
Second Gallery: Representing Women in Vienna 1900
Photographer: Hulya Kolabas, 2011
For many Viennese artists and writers at the turn of the century, woman became the living symbol of the sweeping changes that characterized the birth of the modern. Some of the leading creative and intellectual personalities of the day advocated for educational reform that benefited women’s social standing. In the field of fashion, the designers of the Wiener Werkstätte conceived of stylish and comfortable dresses that allowed women new freedom of movement, liberating them from the tyranny of tightly laced corsets.
Second Gallery: Representing Women in Vienna 1900
Second Gallery: Representing Women in Vienna 1900, View II
Photographer: Hulya Kolabas, 2011
Gustav Klimt set up a fascinating dialogue in his portraits of women between artifice and nature, surface ornamentation and psychological truth. The wealthy, progressive women in Klimt’s paintings stood at the forefront of modernity in all aspects of their lives, including dress and aesthetic taste. Though they did not yet have the right to vote and were inevitably subject to social constraints, Klimt regarded them as a powerful regenerative force in modern civilization, not least as supporters and defenders of his art.
Second Gallery: Representing Women in Vienna 1900, View II
Third Gallery: Fear, Fantasy, and Dreams
Photographer: Hulya Kolabas, 2011
Works on paper by Viennese artists at the turn of the century often played an intimate, subversive, or reflective role. Gustav Klimt's tender and explicit drawings were radical in their frank depiction of female sexual pleasure. Egon Shiele’s nude self-portraits are boldly erotic, introducing a Freudian dimension of transgression and guilt. Meanwhile, with his memorable images of terrifying, dissolving faces, Arnold Schönberg formulated his idea that “art belongs to the unconscious mind.”
Third Gallery: Fear, Fantasy, and Dreams
The Search for a Modern Visual Style
Photographer: Hulya Kolabas, 2011
The third floor of the show examines applied arts and architecture of turn-of-the-century Vienna. Designers of the period grappled with difficult questions: did establishing a modern style help form the individual or did it create a new conformity? Was the concept of style inherently backward-looking and incompatible with the modern, international cosmopolite? The attempts of these artists to resolve such issues are experiments representing the efforts of creative minds to manufacture new visual solutions to the challenges of their time.
The Search for a Modern Visual Style
Fourth Gallery: Otto Wagner, Father of Viennese Modernism
Photographer: Hulya Kolabas, 2011
In the 1880s, architect Otto Wagner was the first to voice discontent with the use of historicism in a modern, democratic, and technological world. He broke important ground with his theoretical reflections, deriving style not from the form but the function of an object. With this approach, he was able to develop a modern approach to defining style, which helped establish a modern identity for everyday life. In his work, internal structure and external decoration became a logical, self-explanatory unity.
Fourth Gallery: Otto Wagner, Father of Viennese Modernism
Fifth Gallery: The Vienna Secession as a Catalyst of Modernism
Photographer: Hulya Kolabas, 2011
Otto Wagner’s battle against historicism inspired a revolutionary group of young artists and architects (including Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, Joseph Maria Olbrich, and Josef Hoffmann) to join forces in 1897 to form the Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs (Union of Fine Artists of Austria), later known as the Vienna Secession.
Fifth Gallery: The Vienna Secession as a Catalyst of Modernism
Fifth Gallery: The Vienna Secession as a Catalyst of Modernism, View II
Photographer: Hulya Kolabas, 2011
The Secessionists aspired to educate fellow artists and the public alike about the transformative spirit of modernity. Since modernism was much further advanced as a movement in other European countries than in Austria, the Secessionists mounted exhibitions of avant-garde art from France, Britain, and Italy. With the help of these radical international influences, the Secession began to promote modernism, in contrast to historicism, as an artistically unique, contemporary expression of style.
Fifth Gallery: The Vienna Secession as a Catalyst of Modernism, View II
Sixth Gallery: Two Paths to Modernism
Photographer: Hulya Kolabas, 2011
The work of Josef Hoffmann and his colleagues met from the outset with a vehement critic in the architect Adolf Loos. As a result, two wildly different strategies evolved in Vienna for integrating design into the daily lives of modern people. This gallery is divided into two areas demonstrating this divide: On one side is the colorful world of the Secessionists and the Wiener Werkstätte. It is a kaleidoscopic presentation of pieces that aim to achieve a Gesamtkunstwerk, or total work of art, of unified design.
Sixth Gallery: Two Paths to Modernism
Sixth Gallery: Two Paths to Modernism, View II
Photographer: Hulya Kolabas, 2011
The other side of the room presents the work of Adolf Loos and Oskar Kokoschka. It could not be more restrained in its visual ambitions. Whereas the Secessionists advocated a form of modernism that was artistically motivated and available for consumption, Loos was critical of consumer culture, which he felt patronized the individual. Though Loos’s aesthetic is conservative in terms of form, it is modern in content. The individual in this setting is free to explore his or her own identity as a modern, autonomous person.
Sixth Gallery: Two Paths to Modernism, View II
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