Leopold Museum

I was ecstatic to have Dr. O back for our tour of the Leopold Museum. This excitement can be attributed to the fact that she is both an excellent tour guide and perhaps more importantly, she does not have red hair or wear copious amount of green. The Leopold Museum has without a doubt the most expensive entrance fee of any museum I have been to so far here in Vienna and perhaps that is a major contributing factor to the decreased attendance the museum has been facing, according to Dr. O. The museum opened roughly a decade ago and its collection comes entirely from the Leopold family who has been collecting paintings and some sculptures since the 1950s. It’s an extremely vast collection of all different styles of paintings that was financed, according to Dr. O, by the sale of a rare stamp collection. Perhaps my favorite part of the museum’s history would be the naked exhibit where people would come in trench coats and bathrobes and then remove them to see the exhibit free of charge. If that’s not getting into the artwork I don’t know what is!

The first artist we investigated was the Viennese master Gustav Klimt. Klimt lived from 1862 until 1918. Although he was never married, he apparently produced 18 illegitimate children, and it's clear he was a fan of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Klimt was born into the Ringstasse culture and studied at the applied arts academy after leaving his goldsmith trade. He would consider himself not just a painter, but more a “decorator”. Following the University Scandal where his paintings were refused, he joined the Secession and was its first President. I feel like this was a major break in Klimt’s life’s work and fueled his departure from a solely Ringstrasse artist into a period of art nouveau. One can only imagine how Viennese art would have been forever changed if he had never departed from solely working on the Ringstrasse.

I find his Death & Life painting is intriguing for both its substantive and cultural elements and influences. There was a five-year hiatus in between the beginning portion and final product of this painting where Klimt would add or change crucial elements. In changing the painting Klimt essentially brought the death elements closer to the life elements and made them fit together perfectly if moved together.

Josef Hofer was an architect of the period and also designed both furniture and upholstery. I was happy to learn more about the architect of the Secession building that I had passed so many times while walking from one area of the city to the other.

Otto Wagner was another architect, but also a engineer and contributed to the formation of many cultural elements of the Secession. His motto: “something that is not practical can not be beautiful” was essentially the foundation for the ideals of the Secession movement and resentment of the Ringstrasse architecture that was essentially essentially duplicating other styles. His designs of Stadtpark and the Karlsplatz Pavilion exhibit a style seen nowhere else that serves to exhibit his ideas about the direction of the country’s architecture.

Hofer, Moser, and Waernerdorfer founded the Vienna Workshop that aimed to lift the applied arts and crafting to the level of distinction afforded to the fine arts. The idea that “just because it’s useful doesn’t mean it can’t be art” served to drive their cause and mission. Both this workshop and the mindset of Wagner served as an exhibition of the growing artistic counter-culture to the Ringstrasse that had dominated Viennese artistic culture in the last half of the nineteenth century.

I found the Schiele paintings particularly interesting because they were bought by the Leopold family primarily when he had not yet gained popularity and also for the strange and almost shocking elements of his artwork. Schiele was a great expressionist as seen in his Dead Mother painting which turned out to be one of his most shocking pieces. It shows a pregnant woman dying and strangely enough foreshadows the same fate that would befall his own wife eight years later. I also found his portrayal of a Cardinal and Nun particularly interesting. It offers an interesting religious and social commentary showing two members of the church who have taken vows of celibacy embracing each other. I believe the greater message here is that despite whatever vows are taken, pure animal instincts of attraction cannot be stopped. Finally, his portraits are both stunning and somewhat upsetting, as they seem to be influenced by a large degree of personal narcissm while also being almost pornographic.

I enjoyed the tour of the Leopold museum not only for the large and exceptional collection of Viennese artwork, but also for the supplemental value to the class as a whole. Observing these works, both in substance and style, functioned as an exhibition of the departure from Ringstrasse culture of the late nineteenth century and the emergence of the Secession in the early twentieth century that I had read about in the Cultural History of Vienna text. On the surface, what the class saw today was some very well done paintings and design styles, but the true value of our tour lies in the ability of the artwork to contextualize and symbolize the elements of Viennese culture that we have been learning about through both lecture and reading to give us the greatest possible understanding of Viennese culture.