Seduced by Klimt
Gustav Klimt: Painting, Design & Modern Life in Vienna 1900 (Tate Liverpool until 31 August)
‘To the Age its Art. To Art its Freedom,’ the Secessionists cried as they broke with the prevailing academic historicism. In 1900, one could be considered dangerously avant-garde in Vienna while lagging miles behind Paris’s cutting edge. Klimt was born in 1862, three years after Seurat, a much more radical artist, and 28 years after Whistler, whose Peacock Room anticipated the harmonising of art and design so beloved of Klimt and his colleagues. A hero of this show, unsung in title or subtitle, is the architect Joseph Hofmann, who worked closely with Klimt. The Secessionists (unlike your reviewer) were also drawn to Wagner’s notion of the all embracing Gestamtkunstwerk.
Furthermore, the Wiener Werkstätte, which figures prominently in the show, took its cue from the English Arts and Crafts movement. In this glimpse into a Viennese flowering of visual art, the evident influence of William Morris, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Charles Annesley Voysey and others may induce a smidgin of patriotic British pride. However, the main point to note is that Austrian taste of the time, created by artists, architects and designers, acting closely with wealthy and empathetic patrons such as the Wittgenstein family, has cooked up its own fascinating flavour.
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