A Secessionist Sampler
via flickr; Corner detail, phault via flickr /Artwork: designslinger]
Have you ever heard of the Vienna Secessionists? You probably have heard the term
"Art Nouveau" or "Arts and Crafts," and may have heard of artist Gustav Klimt. Well, Klimt helped jump start the Secessionist movement, and the group is often associated with the Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts styles. In 1897, a young generation of artists in Vienna decided that they had had enough of the stick-in-the-mud ways of the older generation. So, they formed an organization which came to be known as the Vienna Secession. One of the members of the coalition was architect Joseph Maria Olbrich, who designed a building that would serve as an exhibition hall for a rotation of shows of the member's artwork. Painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphics, furniture, decorative arts, fashion, architecture, each discipline was represented. Eventually, even the Secessionists couldn't agree on a unified approach to art and design theory, and Klimt, along with several other cohorts, seceded from the Secessionists, joining fellow artist Josef Hoffmann at his Wiener Werkstaette (Vienna Workshop). The Secession Building was a mess after being shelled during the Second World War, but it was put back together again and is a thriving part of the Viennese, and contemporary art world, to this day.
Stoclet, 1911, Brussels, Simon Aughton via flickr /Artwork: designslinger]
Josef Hoffmann was a: furniture, fabric, jewelry, product and interior designer, as well as
an architect - the guy seemed to do it all. He left the Secession to found the Werkstaette, which produced some of the most iconic pieces of decorative art in the 20th Century. He asked his friend Gustav Klimt to provide murals for the Palais Stoclet, a house Hoffmann designed in Brussels, which is recognized as a masterpiece of the era. He was known to be a perfectionist, who never let any detail slip past his discerning eye - no matter how small or seemingly insignificant - which probably didn't make for an easy working environment. Unfortunately, being an artist and a businessman don't necessarily work hand in hand, and though he was able to keep the enterprise going for 29 years, after losing a fortune, the Werkstaette closed its doors in 1932.
Artwork: designslinger]
Now to Klimt. Of all the people associated with the Secession he probably has the most
recognizable name. His painting, Adele Bloch-Bauer I, was very much in the news a couple of years ago because of its reparation to the heirs of Mrs. Bloch-Bauer, after a messy history with the Nazis and the Austrian government. But, Klimt is so much more than that one painting. He was an amazing graphic designer and draftsman, and though known for his portraiture, he produced a large body of landscape paintings. He is renowned for applying gold leaf to canvas and pushing Christian Orthodox iconography out of the strictly religious realm into the secular. He was notorious in his day for his suggestive and sexual portraits of women, and his sketches are completely uninhibited in depicting the female nude. His life was short, he died in 1918 at the age of 55, but he left behind an amazing body of work that I find as new and refreshing as it was when it first appeared on the scene 100 years ago. Thanks e for reminding me.
Posted by designslinger at 1/9/2009 10:04 AM 
Categories: Architecture, Furniture, History, Apparel, Architects, Decorative Arts, Graphics, Art
Categories: Architecture, Furniture, History, Apparel, Architects, Decorative Arts, Graphics, Art
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