KLIMT : SCHIELE : HOFFMANN : LOOS

Showing at NGV International
180 St Kilda Road
Exhibition Dates: 18th June  - 9th October 2011

A little over 100 years ago in Vienna, Austria, a group of radical young creators and thinkers overturned all the rules and created a brave new world. VIENNA: Art & Design explores this extraordinary period, bringing together 300 works by the greatest Viennese artists of the early twentieth century.

Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century was the capital of a vast Austro-Hungarian Empire that stretched from Italy to Russia.

It was highly conservative but also opulent, elegant and daring. Casting aside outmoded social manners and moralities, private life became public spectacle. Cabarets, coffee-houses and nightclubs teemed with artistic abandon and radical debate.

And there was much to debate as the city was bursting with new ideas and beliefs. In 1899, Sigmund Freud published his theories on the interpretation of dreams and was developing the new discipline of psychoanalysis. In the same year, Max Planck presented his theory on quantum physics. Ernst Mach invented the philosophy of sensations. Wittgenstein developed logic and linguistic philosophy. Mahler and Schoenberg were astounding audiences with their radical innovations in music.

Science, psychology, literature, politics, music, fashion, the visual arts and architecture – in all the fields of endeavour, public debate raged in a quest to find a voice that was true for modern life.

Artists Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele and architects Josef Hoffmann and Adolf Loos were central to this artistic revolution, known as the Vienna Sucession, which transformed Vienna into a dynamic metropolis at the forefront of ground-breaking ideas.

Hoffmann’s and Loo’s lucid visions for modern liveable homes, public buildings and furniture were aligned with the artisans of the Wiener Werksatte who created chic designs for every conceivable object of daily use, laying the foundations of the modern industrial look.

This inventive new world, which embraced extreme rationality in its architecture and design, equally encompassed the irrational and dark side of human nature. Morally and artistically radical, Klimt’s allegories about the forces of life in his ‘Beethoven Frieze” used ancient symbols to present new truths about human aspiration, while Schiele reflected the uncertainties of identity in a modern world through his sexually explicit, angst-ridden drawings.

For more information about this amazing must-see exhibition visit: www.ngv.vic.gov.au

P.S. Open late on a Wednesday night makes for an extra special night out with live music and a glass of wine before or after the show…or both!