Austria Pioneering Modern Art

Fülszöveg

Schick, Klimt, and the others The golden era of Austria's art
When art became "modernistic" - at the dawning of the period we in retrospect call "Classic Modernism" - no one even imagined that from this lively movement would evolve a new comprehensive style: Jugend-stil.
Many saw in Klimt an escape from decadence, and in Schiele - whose expressionism seemed shocking after his beginnings in Jugendstil - an illicit, modernistic derailment. A revolutionary like Gerstl was not acknowledged anyway, and Kokoschka soon turned his back on Vienna when he felt icy rejection. Even the few, who at the turn of the century unabashedly confessed their allegiance to the new developments, did not at first know if they did it for the sake of Modernism or for art itself, if they honored the power to break with the past, or if it was the fascination created by the eruptive ingenuity of the new talents.
Schiele, Klimt, Gerstl, Kokoschka, Kubin, and the others clairvoyantly proclaimed the end of an... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Schick, Klimt, and the others The golden era of Austria's art
When art became "modernistic" - at the dawning of the period we in retrospect call "Classic Modernism" - no one even imagined that from this lively movement would evolve a new comprehensive style: Jugend-stil.
Many saw in Klimt an escape from decadence, and in Schiele - whose expressionism seemed shocking after his beginnings in Jugendstil - an illicit, modernistic derailment. A revolutionary like Gerstl was not acknowledged anyway, and Kokoschka soon turned his back on Vienna when he felt icy rejection. Even the few, who at the turn of the century unabashedly confessed their allegiance to the new developments, did not at first know if they did it for the sake of Modernism or for art itself, if they honored the power to break with the past, or if it was the fascination created by the eruptive ingenuity of the new talents.
Schiele, Klimt, Gerstl, Kokoschka, Kubin, and the others clairvoyantly proclaimed the end of an epoch - exclamatory, flaming, passionate, engrossing. They were not understood at the time. Their path seemed to many to be errant. But today we recognize how right they were, because that which they proclaimed with their works has come true: a chaotic, monstrous century in which the existence of humanity is put on the line. Thus, their style is still contemporary and can still give to each of us, because it fills the vacuum of time with a solicitude given by art to all eras - even then, when it seems to have a negative impact upon the beholder.
Hans Dichand Vissza