Vienna Sex and Sensibility: The Allure of Art Nouveau

As the 19th century drew to a close,

a radical new style swept across Europe.

Victorian rectitude was washed away

as bohemian artists unleashed a wave of curling, sexual, sensuous art.

Smog-filled cities were splashed with colour and vitality

as idealistic architects put nature at the heart of the metropolis.

And nymph-like women were adored, adorned

and finally allowed to let their hair down.

This revolutionary new style was called Art Nouveau.

It blossomed when ideas met artists,

in Paris, London, Brussels and Glasgow.

But it was the idealistic artists of Vienna

who had the most intense and passionate affair

with the new style.

This city was home to an amazing combination of art,

ambition and intellectualism.

Its cafes and salons were a ferment of radical politics,

sexual deviancy and blasphemous ideas,

and in this hothouse bloomed some of the most beautiful works

of Art Nouveau the world has ever seen.

This story of Viennese Art Nouveau

is a story of beauty in an ugly time.

A city that discovered psychology

just as it was having a nervous breakdown.

An artistic rise and fall.

And what was meant to be a prelude turned out to be a finale.

MUSIC: "Waltz No 2" by Dmitri Shostakovich

You know, every year millions of us come here to Vienna

to look at Klimt's The Kiss. It's an absolute tourist must.

-Do you like that?

-Yes.

-Yeah, it's good.

For most on the Viennese tourist trail,

it's all kiss and no tell.

But there's so much more than Klimt.

There was the architect, Otto Wagner,

whose decorative buildings transformed the city.

There was the designer, Josef Hoffmann,

whose exquisite geometric patterns redefined Art Nouveau.

And there was an eccentric supporting cast of renegade artists.

Together, they dared to take on the establishment

and won their creative freedom.

The whole world flocks to Vienna to see the fabulous Art Nouveau,

and what's more, everybody gets to take a little bit home

with them too, in the shape of a fridge magnet, a dish towel

or some souvenir like that.

Klimt Barbie, anyone?

No?

But to go home with a deeper understanding of the art

and the city, we have to leave the gift shop behind,

and ask ourselves, "Who were these eclectic artists?

"What caused an old European city to embrace a radical new style?"

Well, the story begins with a bizarre catalyst in the 1880s

When a terrible tragedy,

a right royal scandal,

forced the city to re-examine its precious Viennese values.

Let me take you back to the days of Old Vienna.

Once upon a time...

January 1899, to be precise...

Crown Prince Rudolf, heir to the mighty Austro-Hungarian Empire,

went for a walk in these woods with his lover.

They never came back.

It was complicated. His lover wasn't his wife.

Rudolf was in an arranged aristocratic marriage but unhappy.

No, she was the teenage Baroness, Marie Vetsera,

who adored her Prince.

But their affair ended in horror.

He took out a gun and murdered his mistress

before turning the weapon on himself.

GUNSHOT

The death of the Crown Prince triggered a cultural crisis.

Vienna was shocked to its very core.

Thinkers and artists, like the designer Josef Hoffmann,

architect Otto Wagner and painter Koloman Moser, met in the cafes

and bars and wondered what had happened

to the city's moral compass.

It was a seismic scandal in a turbulent time.

And the shockwaves made the traditional Viennese values

look increasingly fragile and old-fashioned.

There was a very stifling conventionality,

a very, very stifling official culture, this imperial rigidity.

The picture of the Emperor everywhere, overlooking every room.

But at the same time, you know, there were...

People simply exercised their life choices,

but that had to be away from what is admitted publicly.

You were not supposed to touch your wife in public,

but you could have a lover somewhere

installed in a little apartment, as long as it didn't become public.

So there was a sort of institutionalised hypocrisy.

The imperial identity was very important,

but it was really a paste-on, it was a facade, if you want.

You had to have the official facade that was not questioned,

-and what you did behind it was your own business.

-It was up to you.

Behind the facades, the city was daring

to question its long-held assumptions.

Shouldn't Viennese art be celebrating sensuality,

rather than denying it?

Should its artists not be more honest about psychology,

sex and death?

After all, in other European capitals,

artists were daring to try something new.

La Belle Epoque-era Paris

was in the thrall of what they called l'Art Nouveau.

In Glasgow, Charles Rennie Mackintosh

was designing his inspirational School Of Art.

And with new printing presses rolling,

influential art journals from across the continent

made their way back to the banks of the Blue Danube.

Viennese artists were desperate to waltz to a new beat.

C'mon people, get with the programme. It's the 1890s.

The age of mass rail travel,

popular printing presses and international exhibitions.

Do you come here often? You're a lovely mover.

An idea could take off in Europe

and sweep through the continent in literally months.

In many ways, Vienna's artists were the last to arrive

at the Art Nouveau Ball.

Because there was one seemingly insurmountable hurdle...

The all-powerful committee of the Association of Austrian Artists.

Or as it was known locally, Das Kunstlerhaus.

Such was the stranglehold of the Kunstlerhaus over Vienna

in those days, that if you were an artist,

you couldn't get your stuff into an official exhibition

without their explicit say-so.

The Kunstlerhaus curated all the major art shows in the city,

and always chose ceiling-to-floor classic historic art

by Austrian artists.

Safe. Traditional.

Boring!

There was no room for experiments and new styles were rejected.

In the coffee houses, revolting young artists fumed

at the lack of freedom, and vowed to storm the Conservative Kunstlerhaus.

This is where Art Nouveau was born in Vienna, in April, 1897.

A group of harrumphing young artists turned up here at the Kunstlerhaus.

And they said, "We've had enough of your boring,

"stultifying establishment. We're seceding from it."

And so begat the Secession.

It was a pivotal moment for Viennese art.

The Secession would change everything.

This famous photo shows some of the original Secessionists.

They include Emil Orlik,

a graphic illustrator who'd worked for the prestigious Pan magazine.

Carl Moll, who at this point was an idealistic painter,

but would end up a fervent Nazi,

and Maximilian Kurzweil,

a painter who would later succumb to the same fate as the Crown Prince,

when he shot his lover and then himself.

They may have looked confident.

The picture makes them look like some obscure, cool indie band.

But the Secession was a huge risk.

Without the Kunstlerhaus, the Secessionists had nowhere

to exhibit, no commissions,

and risked artistic ridicule.

They desperately needed a credible figurehead,

so they approached the rising star of Viennese art

and asked him to act as their president.

Gustav Klimt became the best known,

the most celebrated painter in Art Nouveau,

but he began life as just another late classic historical artist.

The young Klimt began painting in the 1880s,

initially churning out the sort of establishment art

cherished by the great and the good.

Like this ceiling panel in the Burgtheater.

And by the way, check out the figure towards the back,

in the beard and the ruff,

looking slightly off.

That's a rare self-portrait of the young Gustav Klimt.

But in 1892, Klimt was traumatised

by the death of his beloved brother and of his father.

He rejected conservative ideas and began to explore a new style.

A couple of years later, he was commissioned by Vienna University

to paint four inspiring ceiling panels.

Sadly the original paintings were destroyed by the Nazis,

and we're left with these black and white copies.

But you can still see how radically Klimt's style was changing,

infused with sex, death and the European spirit of Art Nouveau.

The University hated them, but Klimt didn't care.

He was up for the fight,

and agreed to become president of the Secessionists.

In many ways, Klimt was an odd choice.

He was notoriously taciturn,

not a man you'd turn to to voice an opinion in public.

And he was making a very comfortable living

with commissions from the Viennese establishment and the state.

But this was different. This was about art. It was about freedom.

And so taking a huge professional and personal gamble,

he simply turned his back on the establishment

and became president of the Secessionists.

One of the first things Klimt and the gang did

was to publish their very own art journal.

It gave them a platform to air their Secessionist principles,

their liberal views

and their breathtaking graphic work.

They called it Ver Sacrum.

Ver Sacrum sacred spring. It really means fountain of youth,

with all the connotations of energy, youth,

vitality and sexuality that that expresses.

And there's something of that in the cover plate.

And what we have here is a young plant,

bursting out of the pot it's kept in.

And it's a way of saying, I suppose quite a polite way of saying,

"Sod you lot. We're doing our own thing from now,

"we won't be confined by what's gone before and by what you're used to."

This is the closest thing that the Secession,

the Viennese Art Nouveau, had to a manifesto.

And the fact that the artists and writers were donating their work

for nothing is all part of the spirit of Ver Sacrum.

Art is what counts, not bourgeois values like money.

Not putting things in the bank, but things for eternity,

things of ethereal spiritual value.

And basically they were attracting contributions

from the outstanding artists and writers of the time,

and of course from Klimt, a mainstay of Ver Sacrum.

And in the first ever edition, they declared...

"We want to bring art from abroad to Vienna,

"not for the sake of artists, intellectuals and collectors alone,

"but to educate the great mass of the people

"who are receptive to art.

"And for this we turn to you without distinction of status or wealth.

"We do not recognise any distinction between higher art and low art,

"between art of the rich and art for the poor.

"Art is the property of everyone."

Some of the people who contributed

were still recognisably in the historical tradition,

but there's no doubt that they were all moving towards the Art Nouveau,

as we now understand it.

Except they didn't call it that.

Instead they co-opted a German word, Jugendstil, meaning "youth style".

Jugendstil was Vienna's unique contribution

to European Art Nouveau.

There were influences from Japan, from France,

disparate elements built upon one another.

Like all European Art Nouveau, Jugendstil was sexual.

Dare I say it, even a little bit playful and camp.

There was no hierarchy.

Craft and graphic art were as important

as the painters and sculptors.

And in Vienna,

the curves owed as much to geometry as they did to botany.

But ultimately there were no rules or diktats,

as the Secession was founded on the principles of artistic freedom.

I wanted to show you this special one painting by Wilhelm Bernatzik.

He's one of the founding members.

So whilst works by artists like Wilhelm Bernatzik

might look quite traditional to the modern eye,

the dissent is in the detail.

And this painting represents

one aspect which was very important to the Secessionists.

It was a new beginning in art,

and what they wanted to express is inner feelings

which have been suppressed very much.

So it's not a naturalistic depiction

of things which we can find in the landscape,

but it's about the inner feeling which comes out

when you contemplate this scene.

What kind of things would you say the Secessionists had in common?

What united all the Secessionists was the wish to educate the public.

What they wanted is to elevate taste, elegance, so to say,

so they wanted to bring in international art.

They tried to confront Austrian art with international art,

which up to that point hadn't been seen very much.

As Art Nouveau arrived from across the continent,

artists like Koloman Moser, who'd spent years debating

the merits of the style with his fellow cafe conspirators,

finally had the chance to create a distinctive Viennese version.

This painting over here, by Kolo Moser...

And he was the multi-talent of the Secession.

As you know, he was a designer of furniture.

He was one of the greatest graphic designers of the time.

He was one of the major figures of Ver Sacrum, of the magazine.

And he was a painter. Many of his paintings

in profile or very frontal, very simple.

And this reduction is quite a typical aspect of the Secession.

Another one would be the square format,

the thin-framed... aspects of elegance

which were important to the Secessionists.

What else shall we see?

-Let's go over to there.

-Why not?

Freed from a strict diet of Austrian historic painting,

the Secessionists eagerly embraced Art Nouveau.

They experimented with styles, surface and symbolism

and they explored sexuality, mortality and human frailty.

Jugendstil was a new art for a new era.

And when the Secessionists founded their new movement,

it was so important to them

that they could speak with different voices.

And that's why you really have a variety of expressions

in the first years of the Secession.

So, in this regard, it was really a break

with things that had gone on before.

In 1898, just a year after they'd seceded,

the artistic rebels, with the help of a few wealthy patrons,

built a home for the Secession.

And the building was as radical

as the art it was created to contain.

Significantly, the Secession building is away from

grandiose establishment buildings on Vienna's main Ringstrasse.

On the roof, there's a dome

decorated with 3,000 gold-plated laurel leaves.

But there are no windows looking onto the street.

It's as if the gallery invites you to step inside.

To look deeper. To be introspective.

And maybe that's no surprise, because the architect Joseph Olbrich

said he wanted to erect a temple of art,

which would offer the art lover a quiet, elegant place of refuge.

Inside, there was another shock for visitors.

The Secession was one of the first white cube gallery spaces,

a sparse layout that in 1898 was a dazzlingly new

and daringly modern idea.

To this day, the gallery is still devoted to contemporary art.

But you can get a flavour of the original Secession in the basement,

where Klimt's 1902 masterpiece

the Beethoven Frieze is on permanent display.

The magnificent Beethoven Frieze is meant to be read from left to right.

So in the first panel, these lovely, leggy, ethereal ladies

represent the longing for true happiness.

And you can see how far Klimt's come from historicism.

Look at how delicate and sensuous these women are.

The mood changes a little further along.

These unclothed figures are the sufferings of weak humanity

and they're petitioning the knight in his wonderful golden chain mail,

his armour, to take on their struggle.

But that's bad news for him, in a way,

because he has to have a bout with Typhus,

that King Kong figure in the corner.

And his seconds, if you like, over there are the three gorgons...

Sickness, Madness and Death.

Typhus is also attended

by Licentiousness, Wantonness, Intemperance.

What hope is there for us mortals

in this wretched, lousy world Klimt is suggesting?

Well, here's a clue. This beautiful woman in gold,

plucking at her lyre, represents happiness through poetry.

And this is what he's building up to with his closing finale here.

Our best hope of comfort and fulfilment on this mortal coil

is in the arts.

Look at these beautiful women. The gold, the chorus of angels.

And the finest fulfilment of the arts yet known,

he's almost suggesting,

is the work of Beethoven and the celestial Ode To Joy.

On the opening night,

Mahler put on a special rendition of Ode To Joy,

and I can thoroughly recommend a blast of the old LVB

as you're taking in the frieze.

It really starts to make sense. Trust me.

MUSIC: "Ode To Joy" by Beethoven

Perhaps most tellingly,

the iconic building was emblazoned with the most cherished belief

of the whole Secessionist project.

Above the door, in big gold letters,

it reads, "Der Zeit ihre Kunst. Der Kunst ihre Freiheit,"

which of course translates as...

"To the age, its art. To the art, its freedom."

So what's that all about, then?

Is it just a load of old guff?

"To the age, its art."

Well, here the young ones, the Jugendstil, are saying,

"Move over, Daddio. You've had your time.

"We refuse to be hidebound by what's gone before."

"To the art, its freedom," develops that thought.

It says, "We reserve the right to pick and choose

"from a smorgasbord of ideas, new and old.

"This is a new art for a new century."

Through the pages of Ver Sacrum

and the frequent Secessionist exhibitions,

Viennese Jugendstil grew in confidence.

Works by Klimt, Koloman Moser and Carl Moll

were widely admired and celebrated.

But not everyone was delighted.

When Archduke Franz Ferdinand visited the Secession exhibition,

he said, "Those rascals should have every bone in their body broken."

But the Jugendstil kids couldn't care less.

They were brash, confident young Viennese artists,

and if the establishment hated the YVAs,

that only proved they were onto something.

Their first show pulled in getting on for 60,000 people.

No wonder they were so bold.

The Viennese art revolution coincided with

a social revolution in the city.

The population of Vienna doubled between 1870 and 1900

and as the city expanded,

it gave the architects a chance to get in on the Jugendstil action.

The most celebrated of them in the city was Otto Wagner.

With years of experience, ol' Otto was trusted by the authorities.

But he was also a teacher, with a radical side to him.

His students included architects like Josef Hoffmann,

and the man who designed the Secessionist building,

Joseph Olbrich.

And they seemed to inspire him as much as he inspired them.

Otto Wagner was known as the Secessionists' Secessionist,

and when you look at his buildings, you can see why.

Look at the design, that floral motif, the ornament of it.

It could almost be a painting by Klimt of a woman's dress.

The new art and new city came together

when Otto Wagner designed the spectacular stations

of the Viennese underground,

including a stop built for the Emperor himself.

One admirer at the time said Wagner's stations

were the highpoint of "function and poetry,

"constructions and decoration."

Secessionist architecture,

with its modern geometric patterns, was changing the face of Vienna.

But the artists and architects

weren't content with superficial differences.

After all, they didn't want to just replace the old facade

with a shiny new facade.

They wanted deeper change.

One word, and it's very good word, you're going to love it,

sums up the entire Secession aesthetic.

Are you ready?

Gesamtkunstwerk. Bless you.

It's a Wagnerian concept, and it means "a total work of art".

Because it wasn't enough to gaze at Klimt's beautiful paintings.

It wasn't enough to pop into the Secession exhibitions.

It wasn't even enough to live in a house

decorated and designed by Otto Wagner.

No, for the true Jugendstil experience,

you had to live a life immersed,

surrounded and improved by art.

You needed to live the life Gesamtkunstwerk.

And that meant infusing your life with the spirit of the Secession,

from the Beethoven Frieze to the kitchen cupboard.

Christian, this looks to my untutored eye

to be a fairly humdrum sort of item. Why have we stopped here?

At the time it was really revolutionary for people.

We have artist, which is Josef Hoffmann, an architect,

who bothers to design a piece of furniture for a second-class room,

which is the kitchen.

For us today, the kitchen has become the most expensive room

of the apartment. But then, no visitor would see.

Also, from a formal aspect,

it was revolutionary, because it has no traditional decoration on it,

which would be carving or moulding.

So the function and the construction

produces the aesthetics of the cabinet.

It's all about very subtle details.

Why to waste them on a kitchen cupboard?

Well, why did they waste them on a kitchen cupboard?

That's the basic idea of the arts and crafts movement,

to give the people who were most affected by the negative aspects

of the industrial revolution a voice and a beautiful surrounding.

The cabinet was made by the Wiener Werkstatte,

a collection of Vienna's finest artists, artisans and craftsmen.

The Wiener Werkstatte Vienna Workshop - was founded in 1903

by two of the original Secessionists.

The always impeccably dressed Josef Hoffmann, an architect and designer

who began with big, idealistic ideas

about kitchen cabinets improving the lives of servants,

and his friend, Koloman Moser, the great all-rounder

who painted for the Secession and was instrumental in Ver Sacrum.

They wanted to get away from curvy, botanically inspired Art Nouveau,

towards a distinctive new geometric Viennese aesthetic.

In fact, Hoffmann's obsession with grid-like patterns earned him

the perhaps uncool nickname Little Square Hoffmann.

Together, Hoffmann and Moser ran the Wiener Werkstatte,

infusing Jugendstil principles into the furnishings and objects

of everyday life.

Now, this looks very different.

Can you tell me about this?

OK. Indeed it is extremely different,

and it marks a period where all the social idealism is gone,

and it's all about the artist wanting to realise

his creative idea.

They could have carved this, you know?

Or they could have made the inlay out of flowers.

But they chose this very simple band.

And it's about honesty, simplicity.

It didn't matter if the art was old or new.

They wanted artistic expression again.

The Werkstatte was proud of its perfectionism, declaring,

"Better to work ten days on one product

"than to manufacture ten products in one day."

Despite Hoffmann's early democratic intentions, it soon became clear

that it was only the very rich and the very adventurous

who could afford the Werkstatte's stamp of perfection.

This egg cup and the pepper caster...

one of the most fantastic objects

the Wiener Werkstatte ever produced.

Really?

Today, again, we take them for granted,

this individuality of the shape,

but for people at the time, they must have looked like aliens.

It looks like a flying saucer, this egg cup,

and no ornamentation on it, just the cut-out squares.

And this was an extremely expensive luxury item.

If you bought this, you were really making a statement

about yourself, or trying to, is that right?

Yes.

You tried to tell society that you exist, and that...

It's like what's happening in New York today still,

that... You ask an interior decorator to do your apartment,

to make an impact on society, that you count.

But even for the Viennese middle class desperate to show off,

exquisite Art Nouveau furnishings were prohibitively expensive.

Fortunately for the Wiener Werkstatte,

they had caught the eye of a financier who had invested

in the Viennese railways,

a man called Adolphe Stoclet.

As a cultured, liberal European,

Stoclet was excited by Vienna's Art Nouveau.

And he was also very...

very...rich.

When his father died, Stoclet inherited a fortune.

He and his wife were already keen on the Secession.

Here was a chance for them to indulge their passion.

In 1904, they commissioned Josef Hoffmann

to build them their dream house.

It would be themed and designed right down to the egg cups.

That's right, it was going to be a Gesamtkunstwerk.

For the Stoclets, it was the opportunity

to show off their taste and their modernity.

Viennese artists couldn't believe their luck.

Here was a chance to indulge their wildest excesses, money no object.

It was to be the finest Art Nouveau building in all of...

TRAIN HORN BLARES

..Brussels.

Because Mr and Mrs Stoclet's dream location, location, location

was in fact 570 miles from Vienna.

Believe it or not, Brussels was one of the most exciting

artistic cities of the fin de siecle.

They were creating the first Art Nouveau buildings here in 1893,

four years before the Viennese even plucked up the courage

to start their own Secession.

And just sauntering through the city,

you see architectural gems on every corner.

Brussels' Art Nouveau star

was Victor Horta, whose innovate architecture

pioneered the use of organic curls and swirls.

Horta designed houses for nouveau riche Belgians,

with seaweed-like wrought iron.

And he was one of the first architects to integrate

all-new electric light into his interior stylings.

This is Victor Horta's house. It's now a museum to the old boy.

Built in 1898, it's resplendent, as you see, with light, nature,

organic shapes.

If the Viennese architects were going to come up with

anything as good as this, right here in Brussels,

it would be like the toughest away game imaginable.

The Stoclet Palais would have to be a masterpiece.

Work began on the Stoclet Palais in 1905.

Every detail had to be honed, perfected.

This exhibition shows the extensive preparatory work,

showcasing the early plans and sketches.

Viennese architect Josef Hoffmann designed the building,

and the artists of the Wiener Werkstatte

furnished the interiors.

For an opulent finishing touch,

the great star of Vienna's art scene, Klimt himself,

created a huge centrepiece frieze.

It took five long years to complete.

There was to be a unity of style to every aspect of the building.

It would be a Viennese masterpiece in the heart of Brussels.

So what's the old pile like on the inside?

Does that interior sing like a symphony?

Is that Klimt frieze all it's cracked up to be?

Sadly, for the public, for historians,

and yes, even for arts documentaries,

the house and its contents are out of bounds,

tied up in a long-running legal dispute

involving Stoclet's descendants.

So there's nothing else for it, is there?

But to peek over the fence.

It's the great Miss Havisham of European architecture,

still dressed up in its finery, but withdrawn from the world.

The house, garden, interiors and furnishings

were all conceived as an architectural whole.

Every detail. The carpet, wallpaper, glass, silverware, lighting,

furniture and fittings, was designed and created in Vienna.

The dining room had Hoffmann silver cutlery, crockery

and 24 matching chairs covered in reindeer skin.

Even the children's playroom

had a Wiener Werkstatte-designed frieze on the wall.

Vienna's finest architect, finest craftsman and finest artist

had finally created the ultimate Gesamtkunstwerk.

But to this day, the secrets of the Stoclet Palais

remain locked away.

The most famous painting in Austria,

the jewel in Vienna's Art Nouveau crown,

the work which is synonymous with Gustav Klimt,

was painted in 1908.

It's one of those rare iconic works of art that needs no introduction.

First of all, I have to say it's not The Kiss.

When you look at the painting, you will see it's not The Kiss.

They're lovers.

So, also Klimt named the painting Lovers.

This is something special.

It's not The Kiss, it's definitely the moment before.

So this is very important to know.

Whatever you call Klimt's masterpiece,

standing in front of the original is an overwhelming experience.

No wonder it's held up as the pinnacle of Viennese Art Nouveau.

Decorative and fine arts are intertwined here,

with layers of geometric patterns,

ornamentation and the use of Klimt's favourite material...

gold.

So the father was a goldsmith,

and Klimt was used to working with gold.

You can have the polished gold, you can work with leaf gold,

whatever it is, you know, and with a shiny one, with not so shiny.

Because he had the knowledge about the material, so he used it, yeah?

So he was the only one who did it, more than also the pre-Raphaelites,

because the pre-Raphaelites, they used the gold as well.

But only in connection with saints, yeah?

But Klimt changed it completely.

Klimt worked with the idea of the icon. When you're entering

a church, let's say in Russia or in Greece, with a lot of icons,

you see those metallic pieces there.

But painted is only the face and the hands.

And this is what Gustav Klimt wanted to show, you know.

He's focusing everything on the faces and on the hands.

And that's it. And the rest is gold, and this makes it so famous,

and when the tourists... The moment when they're entering the door here,

it's still. It's quiet, and they're overwhelmed.

It's definitely a kind of Klimt Church, which we have here.

What's it like seeing this painting every day,

as you do, in your professional capacity?

Can you still see it?

Has it become like the furniture for you?

-Sometimes I really hate the painting...

-Do you?

..because you can see it everywhere, on the umbrella, everywhere,

and I always feel as though

there's something in the painting which I don't know,

there is another secret which I didn't realise, and I have to work.

It's always a confrontation between me and the painting.

Every day I have these confrontations.

Klimt almost never explained his paintings.

He lived with his mother and his sister.

He rarely courted the limelight, and never married.

But although you might not take ol' Klimt for a lothario,

oh, bless him, the sensuality and brazen sexuality of his work

set tongues a-wagging.

Klimt hardly ever painted men.

And when he did, their faces were averted.

He had countless lovers, and in the coffee shops of Vienna,

they whispered about the young girls flitting through his studio.

Of course Art Nouveau had a thing about bare girls and nymphs,

but Klimt was obsessed with the female form.

Some of his paintings and etchings were pure Viennese Viagra

for a certain class of gentleman collector.

In fact, in 1901, the Public Prosecutor of Vienna

ordered the latest edition of Ver Sacrum to be seized

and all copies found, destroyed.

Fortunately, the court rejected the call

to destroy Klimt's erotic sketches,

and I've come to the storerooms of the Leopold museum

to look under their mattress.

I mean, to access some of Klimt's rarely displayed material.

Tell me about this one, Maria.

I'm sure this is one of those drawings which were created

after Klimt has made love to her,

because her expression is after orgasm.

And this was unusual

in that he's celebrating the female sexuality here?

Yes, and that's what was perhaps shocking for his contemporaries.

Female sexuality was a taboo

and to show a face of a woman

in this...very happy...

-circumstances.

-Orgasmic.

Orgasmic, of course, you say it, was not usual to see in a picture.

The spontaneous expression here in the drawing,

you never find in the same way in the paintings.

One of the few pronouncements that Klimt did make

was that "all art is erotic".

He's articulating one of the core beliefs of Art Nouveau,

a movement that celebrated sensuality.

And it's clear that Klimt idolised women,

both sexually and aesthetically.

But despite the flattering treatment,

it sometimes seems that the women in his work are there

as part of the artist's own decorative scheme,

rather than as portraits of living, breathing individuals.

And of course, from a feminist point of view,

this is terrible, because he had a very male view on these girls,

and he didn't respect their individuality.

So, for the feminists, he is a terrible guy.

But on the other hand, he is a great artist,

and I think you cannot blame him personally for this attitude,

because it was so typical for the time and for the atmosphere

in which he lived, and in which he created his art.

But with all this wanton sexuality,

all these richly decorated portraits of smouldering society women,

these opulent ornamental buildings

stuffed with luxurious chairs and pepper pots,

the sheer decadence of Art Nouveau made it ripe for criticism.

And it was no longer just idiotic aristocrats

whinging on about traditionalism.

The era of mass production was well under way

and urban life grew ever more anxious.

Art Nouveau sceptics were emerging.

And none more so than this man, the eccentric Adolf Loos.

Loos was a vehement opponent of the Secession.

He spent three years in the United States,

and came back here to Vienna

enthralled by their much more practical approach to design.

He was a deep thinker and a man with a clever turn of phrase.

Herr Loos wrote essays on every aspect of life.

But his most influential writing was on architecture.

In Ornament And Crime,

he dismissed the Secessionists' idea of the craftsman as an artist,

and he declared ornamentation "degenerate".

In 1909, he finally got the chance

to put these theories into practise, when he won a commission

in the historic heart of Vienna.

Get a load of this place. This is the Emperor's Hofburg Palace.

And that's only the back door.

One day a couple of tailors approached Adolf Loos and said,

"Can you build us a new shop front? It's got to be opposite the palace."

What would he come up with?

How would he satisfy the curiosity of the Viennese

for architecture with attitude?

What would the man deliver?

Da-na!

Please yourselves.

At first glance,

you could be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss was about.

But believe me, when it was first revealed in 1910,

the Looshaus shocked Vienna.

There was no traditional ornaments,

no nude muscular heroes, no cherubs,

but nor were there florid Art Nouveau patterns,

gold, curling metal.

To Viennese eyes, the building was naked.

One wag dubbed it the house without eyebrows!

That's probably funnier in German.

Inside, the public areas of the shop combined mahogany,

oak, brass and mirrors to stunning effect,

while the work areas were more Spartan.

Loos dismissed the idea of Gesamtkunstwerk.

Real people didn't need a life surrounded by art, he said.

What they needed were buildings

that were primarily functional and simple,

and any superfluous decoration was an old fashioned idea.

Loos thought it was as savage as getting a tattoo.

His definition of modern architecture

was influential and compelling.

Even the Secessionists' star architect seemed to concur.

Otto Wagner, who originally designed buildings like this,

ended up producing buildings like this one.

The era of decoration was well and truly over.

In the fine arts too, Art Nouveau was beginning to age.

Nothing illustrates this better than the emergence in 1909

of the enfant terrible of Viennese art, Egon Schiele.

At first, Schiele seemed destined

to be the next big thing in Art Nouveau.

So, Frank, what are we going to see first?

What have you got up your sleeve?

Well, it's quite an interesting picture, really,

cos although I would be the last to say it's a GOOD painting,

it's a very young Schiele. He was 18 when he did it.

It's called Stylised Flowers.

I don't see that you can describe this picture at all

without mentioning Art Nouveau or Jugendstil.

He has turned everything into a decorative device.

It's ornamental.

But what's really interesting about it, it seems to me,

is the evidence that it provides

of his interest in what Klimt was doing.

First of all, you've got a square format,

of which Klimt himself was so fond.

Secondly, we've got that central position in the painting.

But then there's the final clincher, if you like,

which is the use of gold and silver,

actually IN the surface of the paint,

which of course is taken directly from those paintings by Klimt.

What was their relationship like, Frank?

Well, Schiele would very much have liked it to be

a kind of father/son relationship, but it was never that.

Klimt obviously liked Schiele.

He admired to an extent what Schiele was doing.

He helped Schiele early in his career.

Schiele, on the other hand, absolutely ADORED Klimt.

So, Frank, is it the case with Schiele then,

that he's got all these influences from Klimt,

there's an Art Nouveau period,

but then he's taking art onwards in some way?

Very much so.

And I suggest we look at a painting now,

which will demonstrate that in maybe even a shocking way.

Really, Frank? Well, we're both consenting adults.

Let's have a look.

-Lovemaking. Wow, that is quite full on, isn't it?

-It is.

You wouldn't know that was the same bloke.

No.

-And that, of course, is a self-portrait.

-Really?

The whole point about this really is

that he makes himself look like a corpse

and she looks like one of these rubber dolls that you...

..well, not exactly rubber. But you know what I'm trying to say.

-I have heard of them.

-Yes.

-Yes.

He's dealing now with death, with melancholy,

with extremes of all sorts.

And he's also, of course, consciously dealing

with what might be regarded as an impossible subject.

He's using his work to express something

which is beyond what you can see.

What you can see is merely, as it were, the veil

which is cast in front of the true message of the picture.

Schiele is now, particularly in a painting like this,

concerned with almost everything BUT the surface.

Frank, where did Schiele's new direction

and everything else that was happening associated with him,

where did that leave Art Nouveau?

Was it a bit old hat by now?

It was just losing relevance

and losing importance.

And this sort of thing was becoming...

..I won't say fashionable

because it never became fashionable in the same way,

but it was doing all the interesting new things

which Art Nouveau had long since ceased to do.

It was the end for beauty,

for ornament, for decadence.

Art Nouveau suddenly felt archaic,

as egotistic Egon was happy to point out.

It's called The Hermits, it's dated 1912.

It shows Schiele,

finally out of the Art Nouveau Jugendstil mould.

-There's no going back from this point?

-Oh, no. No going back.

It looks as though Schiele is supporting

the weight of Klimt on his shoulders.

Klimt looks almost dead.

And I think he's trying to tell us something.

And what's he trying to tell us?

-He's in charge now?

-Yeah, yeah.

There's poor old Klimt, on whom he used to rely,

who's now relying on him.

It's quite a bold, even arrogant, thing to be saying or painting?

It certainly is, but Schiele was, in terms of modernism,

that much further ahead than Klimt was.

I do see Klimt as being, as it were,

the end of something rather than the beginning of something.

He belongs as much to the 19th century as to the 20th century.

There's nowhere else really for him to go.

The work of Schiele and Loos

heralded the end for Viennese Art Nouveau.

By 1918, Otto Wagner, Gustav Klimt and Koloman Moser were all dead,

and the Austro-Hungarian empire had ceased to exist.

There's an argument that the Art Nouveau

that flourished on the banks of the Danube here

wasn't a new wave, so much as the last eddies of the old.

True, they banged on about being young.

They were the Jugendstil, remember.

And they dealt with trendy things like sex and psychology.

But the whole design movement here

remained essentially the plaything of the rich and the well-to-do,

and they self-consciously turned their backs

on the new means of production - industrial methods.

After the stinging criticisms of Loos,

the idea of paying a craftsman to spend ten days

making you an egg cup or a stool seemed frankly laughable.

With its decadence, decoration and luxurious prices,

Art Nouveau is as much

the last artistic flourish of the 19th century

as it is the first of the 20th century.

Perhaps it's no surprise that a stylistic movement

founded around the idea of the new never fully matured.

The style had bloomed in cities

like Vienna, Paris, Brussels, Glasgow, Prague, Barcelona,

and was built around a myriad of modern ideas about what art was for.

But just a decade or so after its spectacular rise,

it died out throughout the continent.

With the advent of the First World War,

Art Nouveau's international style was deemed unpatriotic, foreign,

and disowned by both sides of the conflict.

And by the 1920s, Adolf Loos's radical ideas

inspired modernist movements like the Bauhaus

to reject all decoration and embrace functionalism.

Fine art was enthralled to Picasso, Cubism, Abstraction.

For decades, Art Nouveau was dismissed

by both modernists and traditionalists.

Its buildings neglected, its art ignored.

In fact, it wasn't until the 1960s that a new generation

began to rediscover and celebrate European art's fin de siecle moment.

And after so much darkness in 20th century Austria,

celebrating the golden era of Klimt, Wagner, and the Wiener Werkstatte

has become vitally important to the image of the city.

Young couples snuggle up in front of The Kiss.

Tourists learn the story of the Secession.

And every day, thousands of Viennese commuters

pass through Otto Wagner's sumptuous stations.

A multi-million pound tourist industry

is now built around the story of the Secessionists.

Klimt, Hoffman, Wagner, Moser, and Schiele, take a bow.

It strikes me that Viennese Art Nouveau

was as much about artistic freedom

as it was fancy buildings and naked ladies.

"To every age its art, and to the art its freedom."

A century on, that still sounds like a radical manifesto.

And if we ever lose sight of that,

well, then it really is Goodnight, Vienna.

# Goodnight, Vienna

# You city of a million melodies

# Our hearts are thrilling to the strains that you play

# From dawn till the daylight dies

# Goodnight, Vienna

# Where moonlight fills the air with mystery

# And eyes are shining to the gypsy guitars

# That sing to the starry sky. #

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