In order to to shake off the dust of rampant Historicism and pay tribute to a new ideal of beauty, on 3 April 1897: Gustav Klimt, Josef Hoffmann (1870-1956), Joseph Maria Olbrich (1867-1908), Koloman Moser (1868-1918), Carl Moll (1861-1945) and several other artists left the “Austrian Association of Visual Artists”.
Calling themselves the “Vienna Secession”, they became the founding fathers of an internationally recognised group of artists and formed the artistic nucleus for the now almost legendary “Vienna Modernity”, which became established through a series of exhibitions.
“To every period its art and to art its freedom,” is inscribed in that temple of art which is now the Secession Museum, a building dedicated to Jugendstill (art nouveau) and designed by architect Joseph Olbrich for the group’s 14th exhibition in 1902, has a filigree dome of laurel leaves, sneeringly dubbed the “golden cabbage” by detractors. The architecture of the building itself became a symbol of protest, with its external simplicity and functional rooms. Joseff Hoffmann, based his design on the model of the antique sacred temples.
THE INAUGURAL EXHIBITION
April 15 to June 27, 1902
DEDICATED TO BEETHOVEN
The center of exhibition was Max Klinger’s semi-nude statue of Beethoven as an enthroned Zeus. Before reaching that central room, however, the visitor would have to transverse a room with roughcast walls decorated with Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze. It is said that this frieze was Klimt’s visual expression of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. On the day of the inauguration, Gustav Mahler conducted the unfinished last movement of the work.
THE BEETHOVEN FRIEZE
an expression of the neuroses of society
The frieze was originally only designed as a decoration for the duration of the exhibition, and was meant to be dismounted and destroyed afterwards. However, it was bought by a collector who ensured its preservation by cutting it from the wall in eight parts.
Only in 1973 was it bought by the Austrian Republic, and restored for about 10 years by the Bundesdenkmalamt (Federal Office of Monuments). Finally, in 1983 the fresco was re-mounted in Secession and made permanently accessible to the public.
Starting with the left hand side, the 3 sections of the fresco form a coherent narrative (drawn from Wagner’s interpretation of Beethoven’s IX. Symphony) , that was elucidated as following in the catalogue of the 1902 exhibition: