Vienna SeccessionGermany and Austria

In 1897 a group of Artists, such as Otto Wagner and his gifted students, Josef Hoffmann and Josef Olbrich, with Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser and others aspired to the renaissance of the arts and crafts and to bring more abstract and purer forms to the designs of buildings and furniture, glass

and metalwork, following the concept of total work of art and to do so they tried to bring together Symbolists, Naturalists, Modernists, and Stylists.

• They gave birth to another form of modernism in the visual arts and they named their own new movement: Secession (Wiener Secession). As the name indicates, this movement represented a protest, of the younger generation against the traditional art of their forebears, a "separation" from the past towards the future. The first chairman was Gustav Klimt.

• To pursue their goal they created their own exhibition space: the Secession building just off Vienna's Ringstrasse and the architect would be Josef Maria Olbrich.

• But the Vienna Secession promoted their design aesthetic with exhibition posters and its own journal, Ver Sacrum (Sacred Spring). The journal housed reproductions, poetry illustrations, graphic art, decorative borders, object design, and cutting-edge conceptions for layout.

• Starting with the first exhibition in November 1898, the Vienna Secession Building presented works of the most important artists of the time as:

• Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, Josef Maria Olbrich, Max Klinger, Walter Crane, Eugene Grasset, Signac, Charles Robert Ashbee, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Degas, Arnold Bocklin, Giovanni Segantini, Auguste Rodin, Edvard Munch, van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Vuillard, Bonnard, Redon, Gauguin, Otto Wagner, ...

• and also a good proportion of Belgian Artists as: • Fernand Khnopff, Constantin Meunier, Felicien Rops, Theo van

Rysselberghe, George Minne,

• On 19th May, 1903 another association, the Wiener Werkstätte (German for The "Vienna Workshop") was registered in Vienna . The founders, Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser, both members of the Vienna Secession, wanted to provide an outlet for graduates from the Kunstgewerbeschule.

• In 1905, the ongoing conflict between the naturalists, who had clung to many of the Kunstlerhaus tenets from the beginning of the Secession Movement, and the stylists finally proved irreconcilable.

• At that time Klimt, Auchentaller, Boehm, Hoffmann, Moser and Roller, seceded from the Secession on the grounds that they could no longer be associated with the more realistic naturalists who refused to commit themselves to the "total work of art", a fundamental premise of the Secessionist Movement.

• The "Klimt Group" held their exhibitions in 1908 in the Kunstschau, a temporary pavilion built by Josef Hoffmann, and the year represents the high-point in the decorative phase of late Art Nouveau.

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• Take a stroll along the Ringstrasse today; the former location of Vienna’s city walls, and one finds a pastiche of neo-classical architecture built in the late 18th century built mostly as a showcase for the grandeur of the Habsburg Empire. Labeleled as a ‘Potemkin City’ in the Secession magazine ‘Ver Sacrum’, the Ringstrasse came to symbolize the stifling attitude towards the arts that predominated in a society content with recycling classical styles rather than embracing the new modernist styles that were budding in the rest of Europe. There was a neo-greek parliament, a gothic City Hall, neo-baroque apartment buildings and most importantly only two exhibition bodies favouring classical-style art. It is in this environment that the first seeds of the Secession movement began to germinate, led by a group of artists who searched for a synthesis of the arts and a place where their new works could be exhibited. Eventually a new building unlike anything ever seen would appear just off the Ringstrasse signalling a rejection of historicism. It would be the new exhibiton hall for the Vienna Secession built by Joseph Olbrich and above it’s door a motto for the age: “To every age its art, to every art its freedom” .

• Art historians have somewhat neglected the topic of the Vienna Secession because of its apparent lack of a specific program.Yet it was precisely its pluralist approach to the arts which made the group unique. From the onset, the Vienna Secession brought together Naturalists, Modernists, Impressionists and cross-pollinated among all disciplines forming a total work of art; a Gesamkunstwerk. In this respect, the Secession drew inspiration from William Morris and the English Arts and Crafts movement which sought to re-unite fine and applied arts. Like Morris, the Secessionists spurned 19th century manufacturing techniques and favored quality handmade objects, believing that a return to handwork could rescue society from the moral decay caused by industrialization.

In spite of their critique of industrialization, they did not completely reject the classicism which had stifled it’s artists in the previous decades. Klimt turned to classic symbols a metaphor for the struggle against historicism and repression of the instinctual nature of man. In the first secession poster, he uses the myth of Theseus and his slaying of the minotaur in order to liberate the youth of Athens, though here Athena is not a protector of the polis as Klimt had depicted her nine years earlier in his panel paintings of the Kunsthistoriches museum. Now Klimt presents her as liberator of the arts, overseeing the conquest of historicism and inherited culture by the new generation of artists. In another drawing for Ver Sacrum titled ‘Nuda Veritas’, Athena holds an empty mirror to modern man, signifying a call for introspection. In both cases, Klimt subversibly distorts the myth of Athena using it as a bridge between the past and the present.

• The influence of Japanese design cannot be understated in relation to the Secession. ‘Japonism’ had swept through europe at the end of the eighteenth century and french artists like Cezanne and Van Gogh; both of whom were avid collectors of woodblock prints were quick to incorporate elements in their work. When Japonism arrived in Austria, The Viennese were also not immune to its influence. The Vienna International Exposition of 1873 featured a Japanese display complete with a shinto shrine and Japanese garden and hundreds of art objects. Japanese design was quickly incorporated by the Secessionists for its restrained use of decoration, it’s preference for natural materials over artifice, the preference for handwork over machine-made, and its balance of negative and positive space. In a way, the secessionists saw in Japanese design their ideals of a ‘Gesamkunstwerk’, whereby design was seamlessly incorporated into everyday life. So strong were these ties that they devoted the Secession exhibit of 1903 to Japanese art.

BURKHARD MANGOLD (1873-1950) EIDG SÄNGERFEST. 1905

Ver Sacrum April 1899

Bertold Löffler 1907

1908

Alfred_Roller poster

Fromme’s Kalender, 1912-13

VER SACRUM• Ver Sacrum (‘Sacred Spring’ in Latin) was the official magazine of the Vienna

Secession from 1898 to 1903. It pioneered new techniques in graphic design such as the use of modular grid system and custom designed typography. This and its unique square format would be a great influence on the Dutch graphic design in the 1920 s, in particular the publication ′ Wendingen. In the first two years, the magazine was published monthly in a run of approximately 500 with the intention of only being circulated among the members of the association. From third year onwards, the magazine was published twice a year instead of once a month, and in a shorter run. From the onset, Ver Sacrum upheld the Vienna Secession’s idea of a ‘Gesamkunstwerk’ (a total work of art) whereby all fields of the the arts were covered. The magazine included contributions by artists as well as prominent writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Maurice Maeterlinck, Knut Hamsun, Otto Julius Bierbaum, Richard Dehmel, Ricarda Huch, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Josef Maria Auchentaller and Arno Holz. Each issue featured the the work of a particular artist; the Koloman Moser issue of 1899 being the most sought after by collectors.

1898- Heft 1. Cover by Alfred Roller.

1898- Heft 2. Cover by Koloman Moser

1898, Heft 3. Cover by Gustav Klimt

1898, heft 7 . Cover by Alfred Roller.

1898- Heft 11. Cover by Alphonse Mucha

1899- Heft 4. Cover by Koloman Moser

1899- heft 5. Cover by Alfred Roller.

1899- Heft 7. Cover by Josef Hoffmann

Monograms for artists of the Vienna Secession. Published in the XIV catalogue for the group, 1902

• VIENNA SECESSION: (SECESSIONSTIL) 3/04/1897 marks the stormy protest at the Kunstlerhaus where younger artists wanted to break from the traditions. Designer-Artists Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) / Kolmon Moser (1868-1918) and architects J.M Olbrich (1867-1908) & Josef Hoffmann (1870-1956) were key proponents of the movement.

• • Although a counter-movement, secession’s connection with French Nouveau has the centralized idealized

female figure, swooping floral forms, but they abstracted their subject in their own manner, moving towards geometricism. Their geometry was not mechanical but rather subtly organic.

• • Secession was all about clean, simple, sans serif lettering ranging from flat blocky slabs to fluid calligraphic

forms. Later on designers moved away from the French floral style to flat shapes and greater simplicity. • • • Ver Sacrum (Sacred Springs) 1898-1903 was a design lab more than a magazine to popularize the Secession

agenda. Sold 300 magazines every month with a total print run 600 only. • • Ads were specially designed so as not to upset the magazine’s overall look. (Target marketing starts here).

Ver Sacrum combined high production standards, with great emphasis on negative space, having a square format, and experimented with image, text, and ornament.