Program

Short biography

Dr. Anette Freytag is a professor at Rutgers University (USA). She conducts research on design and representation methods and scenography in landscape architecture, with a focus on topology, phenomenology and biophilia. Her expert opinion on the protection of the Palais Stoclet garden (2005) also contributed to the inscription of the ensemble on the UNESCO World Heritage List (2009). Anette Freytag studied art history in Vienna, Berlin and Paris and later completed her doctorate at ETH Zurich.

Abstract

When Gustav Klimt and protagonists of the Wiener Werkstätte broke away from the Vienna Secession in 1905, they did so because they saw themselves as true pioneers of a new art for the young. They wanted to make the dawning ver sacrum finally blossom in accordance with their ideas. The lecture will show how the symbolism of the Garden of Paradise and the Golden Age - in both of which eternal spring reigns - is manifested in the artworks of Gustav Klimt as well as in the houses, gardens and interiors of Josef Hoffmann and the Wiener Werkstätte. One highlight is the Tree of Life frieze (1905-1912) in the dining room of the Palais Stoclet (1905-1911) in Brussels. The important role of flowers and garden motifs in the work of artists and craftsmen will be highlighted, as will the opportunity that Art Nouveau offered the Jewish upper middle classes as an aesthetic of identification on the path to social emancipation in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.

Short biography

Symbolism, Vienna around 1900, Expressionism and the interwar period in Austria. Exhibition curator and author of essays and books on Austrian art, architecture and history of the 19th and 20th centuries. She wrote her dissertation on the sculptor Othmar Schimkowitz (1864-1947) and architectural sculpture in Vienna around 1900. She is currently working on an online catalog raisonné of all of Gustav Klimt's drawings.

Abstract

In 1904, Karl and Leopoldine Wittgenstein commissioned Gustav Klimt to paint a life-size portrait of their daughter Margarethe, who was about to marry the American manufacturer's son Jerome Stonborough. Numerous myths and misunderstandings surround the creation of the portrait, which are subjected to a fact check based on diaries, letters, contemporary reports and an analysis of paintings and sketches. A recurring narrative is that Gustav Klimt had to "wrestle" for the portrait, as numerous position studies and letters by the artist seek to prove. Numerous questions arise, which will be investigated on the basis of the source material: What is Gustav Klimt's usual approach to a portrait commission, and how does this differ in the case of this portrait? What were Klimt's motives for later altering the painting? What demands did Karl and Leopoldine Wittgenstein place on the portrait of their daughter? Were there any specifications for the artist, and was the portrait already assigned a specific place in the Wittgensteins' villa on Alleegasse in Vienna? Was Klimt supposed to create the portrait for this location? Was Klimt able to fulfill the client's expectations? How should the portrait be placed in the context of contemporary portraits of women? How did it come to be assumed that the sitter did not like the portrait? How was it judged by the public and critics when it was shown in exhibitions in Berlin, Mannheim, Vienna and Rome - at Gustav Klimt's express request? The creation, significance and reception history of this extraordinary portrait will be reconstructed and interpreted, and the stages of the work from the Alleegasse in Vienna via the Villa Toscana in Gmunden to the Neue Pinakothek in Munich, where it is now located, will be traced.

Short biography

Stefanie Jahn worked for several years as an apprentice cabinetmaker in Hamburg. From 1996 to 2001 she studied painting restoration at the University of Fine Arts in Budapest. From 2001 to 2005, she worked as a freelance restorer in the restoration workshops of the Federal Monuments Office in Vienna under Doz. Manfred Koller. From 2005 to 2010, she was head of the painting restoration workshop at the Institute for Conservation and Restoration at the University of Applied Arts Vienna under Prof. Gabriela Krist. From 2010 to 2013 Stefanie Jahn was a painting conservator at the Belvedere, and since 2013 she has been head of the conservation department at the Belvedere.

Abstract

Gustav Klimt's passion and artistry are also concealed in his painting technique. A look behind the "scenes", through the upper layers of the picture, illustrates his struggle for representation and the demands on his artistic conception.

How do you examine and understand a Klimt painting? Klimt's paintings consist of a wide variety of materials, which he used spontaneously and rationally in the process of creating the artwork. Extraordinary circumstances in the technical execution were added when it came to works that Klimt painted while traveling and in nature.

The key to understanding the artworks of an artist as versatile as Gustav Klimt is found through systematic and abstract observation of the individual materials in the painting. The examination of material and technique with reflected light, raking light, microscope and macroscope photography, with ultraviolet radiation, infrared reflectography and X-rays is carried out in the same way for each painting. This also extends the possibility of recognizing and documenting damage phenomena.

Do the paintings still look the way Gustav Klimt created them? If the original appearance of a painting has changed since it was completed by the artist, there may be various reasons for this: a faulty production technique, the use of unstable materials, unfavorable climatic conditions, historical events (wars, flight, robbery, storage), restorations and reworking by third parties.

In 2023, the opportunity arose to examine the painting Life is a Struggle (The Golden Knight) from 1903 for the Japanese Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art in Nagoya. It was possible to determine how Klimt altered the painting himself. The use of various metal decorations brings a surprising luminosity to the composition, which is predominantly in dark tones. The painting is in a stable condition, but old restorative interventions have had an impact on its external appearance.

Since 2017, seven landscape paintings by Gustav Klimt from the years 1906-1914 have been undergoing methodical art-technological examination at the Belvedere. Over the past 100 years, the landscape paintings have changed both visually and in the stability of the paint layers as a result of various events. All the landscapes show the same pattern of damage: The fragility of the undercoat. Questions about the working process outside the studio and the changes to the original appearance are put up for discussion.

Short biography

Born in London, trained at Warlingham School. Studied fine jewelry and watchmaking at Garrard & Company, Crown Jewellers in London. Subsequently held various management positions with the International Thomson Organization. Founder and CEO of Simpson Communications. Contributing author to the series Edition Klimt, Volume 3 Gustav Klimt. Emilie Flöge - Reform of Fashion, Inspiration of Art, published by the Klimt Foundation, Vienna. Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and member of the Society of Authors.

Abstract

Had Gustav Klimt not become one of the world’s most prized painters only some art experts and Vienna 1900 historians would have known of Emilie Flöge. She was one of three sisters who owned a fashion salon that rivalled Chanel, Poiret and Schiaparelli with haute couture designs that adorned Vienna’s urban elite for over thirty years.

After Gustav Klimt died in 1918 Emilie Flöge left few traces of her relationships other than for being the custodian of many of his effects and affairs which she carefully guarded until her death in Vienna in 1952.

Her family’s graves were derelict until a visitor to Klimt’s Women Exhibition in 2000 decided to find out more about the woman who was at Klimt’s hospital bedside every day and night for the final 3 weeks of his life.

In 2012, the 150th Anniversary of Gustav Klimt’s birth, Paul H. Simpson gave a lecture about his book “Flöge and Klimt A Family Affair” in Wien Museum. Further research led to the discovery of more Flöge children, a missing Klimt painting and interviews among others with Alice Strobl, Wolfgang Fischer and the oldest living member of the Flöge–Klimt Family.

Twelve years later in 2024, the 150th Anniversary of Emilie Flöge’s birth, his book has been translated to German and is being prepared for publication by Klimt Foundation who will also integrate his research archive into their online database about the life and work of Gustav Klimt.

Short biography

Born 1963 in Passau, Germany; studied Art History and Law at the University of Vienna, Studies on International Relations at the Johns Hopkins University in Bologna and Washington DC; 1998 PhD in Law on the topic: The Princely Liechtenstein Art Collection. Legal issues surrounding the transfer of the collection from Vienna to Vaduz in 1944/1945; 2001-2009 Collection Curator at the Austrian Belvedere Gallery, Vienna; 2009-2017 Collection Curator at the Leopold Museum, Vienna; 2013-15 Interim Museological Director of the Leopold Museum; since 2017 Collection Curator at the Austrian Belvedere Gallery, Vienna; 2017 PhD in Art History at the University of Vienna on the topic: The painter Robin Christian Andersen (1890-1969). Life and work. With a catalog raisonné of all artistic works; research focus: Art in Vienna around 1900; Austrian and international classical modernism

Author and (co-)editor of numerous catalogs and publications, including: Vienna around 1900, Museo de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid 1993; Österreichischer Expressionismus. Malerei und Grafik 1905-1925, Musée d'Ixelles, Brussels 1998; Gartenlust. Der Garten in der Kunst, Belvedere, Vienna 2007; Klimt persönlich. Pictures-Letters-Insights, Leopold Museum, Vienna 2012; Kokoschka. The Self in Focus, Leopold Museum, Vienna 2013/14; Alberto Giacometti. Pioneer of Modernism, Leopold Museum, Vienna 2014/15; Gustav Klimt. Wienand's Kleine Reihe der Künstlerbiographien, Cologne 2018; Wolfgang Paalen. The Austrian Surrealist in Paris and Mexico, Belvedere, Vienna 2019/20; Klimt. La Secessione e l'Italia, Museo di Roma, Rome, 2021/2022; Viva Venezia! The invention of Venice in the 19th century, Belvedere, Vienna 2022

Abstract

Gustav Klimt's fame is inextricably linked to his portraits of women. He had already achieved undivided admiration for them during his lifetime. Klimt's portraits of women can be divided into two large groups. On the one hand, they include depictions of people whose names are known to us, for example because the pictures were always titled with the names of the people depicted or because the people come from Klimt's family or circle of friends. Klimt created around thirty such portraits between around 1890 and 1918.

On the other hand, there is another group within Klimt's portraits of women in which the names of the people depicted are still unknown today. These are mostly depictions of professional models who worked for Klimt and whose names Klimt did not associate with the paintings. Nevertheless, this group of anonymous portraits also comprises almost thirty works, which were also created over Klimt's entire creative period. The artist's oeuvre contains a large number of such portraits, particularly in the late 1890s, in the years shortly before 1910 and then again in the last two years of his career. In addition to the versions painted on canvas, portraits of models also regularly appear in Klimt's drawings, where they form the most extensive group of motifs in his graphic oeuvre alongside the nudes.

The special feature of these anonymous portraits is that Klimt regularly gives the sitters an unusually fashionable outfit that goes far beyond that of the portraits of women known by name. The ladies seem to be slipping into the role of elegant models and advertising the latest women's fashion; they wear the most fashionable headgear of the time, dress in elegant coats with turned-up collars, show themselves with artfully draped scarves and adorn themselves with fashionable accessories. Their striking appearance is regularly matched by an accentuated posture, such as a striking turn of the head, and occasionally an affected facial expression; Klimt sometimes also covers parts of the face to make the subjects appear even more interesting. These portraits can probably best be described as "fashion ladies".

For the first time, this lecture will take a closer look at Klimt's "fashion ladies" as a separate motivic group and reflect on their particularities from many different perspectives. In some cases, an attempt will also be made to determine the identity of the people depicted.

Short biography

Art historian, visual scientist, author and curator. Works as a photo historian in the picture archive and graphics collection of the Austrian National Library in Vienna. Since 2010 Executive President of the European Society for the History of Photography (ESHPh) and editor of the journal PhotoResearcher (www.eshph.org). Senior Lecturer CP at the Danube University Krems/Department of Visual Studies since 2006. Curator of numerous exhibitions and author on the history of photography (e.g. Moriz Nähr, Lucca Chmel, Ferdinand Schmutzer, Heinrich Kühn - Autochrome) and on art in the 19th/20th century. Current research and publication project: "Photography in the context of Viennese Modernism around 1900".

Abstract

Moriz Nähr, who is considered the most important representative of the photographic renewal movement around 1900, maintained close contacts with Gustav Klimt and the members of Karl Wittgenstein's family. He had a lifelong friendship with Gustav Klimt and, as the Wittgensteins' "family photographer", a relationship of trust developed between them until the late 1920s, especially with the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. In this network of the Vienna Secession, the modernism of painting, spatial art and photography met in artistic-aesthetic congruences, from which new forms of visual languages developed in synergetic interrelationships.

Short biography

Mag. Laura Erhold

Laura Erhold studied art history at the University of Vienna and the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. She completed her studies in 2013 with her diploma thesis . Her studies focused on Spanish painting of the Siglo de Oro, Austrian painting around 1900 and the post-war period. Internships at Sotheby's Vienna (2013/14) and in the archive of the Vienna Künstlerhaus followed. In the course of this, research on the participation of Austrian artists in the Venice Biennale. Art mediator for the Künstlerhaus, Vienna (2014/15) and 2014 - 2017 for the Albertina, Vienna. In addition to guided tours, she was responsible for concept development and workshops. Subsequently, she worked at the Austrian Cultural Forum Kiev (2017/18) and completed the course "Forum Kunstrecht" at the University of Vienna. Since May 2018, she has been working as an assistant director and research assistant at the Klimt Foundation. In addition to providing organizational support in various areas, her editorial focus has so far been on the following projects: Gustav Klimt database, Edition Klimt: Gustav Klimt. Floral Worlds, new editions of Edition Klimt: Gustav Klimt. Last Studio 1911-1918 & Gustav Klimt. Sommerfrische am Attersee 1900-1916, catalog raisonné Moriz Nähr (1859-1945). Photographer for Habsburg, Klimt and Wittgenstein

Lucy Coatman, MLitt MA MA

Lucy Coatman, MLitt MA MA is a Research Associate at the Klimt Foundation. She specializes in photographic portraits of the Habsburgs and Mayerling and has published and lectured on these subjects. Lucy is currently writing the first English language biography of Baroness Mary Vetsera. Lucy has recently worked with the French television program Secrets d'Histoire for their forthcoming episode on Mayerling and with Scottish Ballet for their production of The Scandal at Mayerling.

Short biography

Annette Ahrens BA, Vienna (* 1972 in Vienna) is an Austrian expert on historical and contemporary dining culture. She grew up bilingual (German and Czech) and studied economics and art history at university in Prague and Vienna. She researches and trades in porcelain, silver and glass objects from the past three centuries. Her work for the Museum of Applied Arts (Vienna), Liechtenstein Museum (Vienna-Vaduz), Marton Museum (Zagreb), Musée national de céramique (Sèvres near Paris) and the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague and Brno has resulted in numerous publications. As a link between her academic work and her knowledge of the current art market, Annette Ahrens has succeeded in opening up important private collections for the PORCELAIN MUSEUM IN THE AUGARTEN and attracting them as lenders, as well as facilitating the acquisition of high-quality exhibits. The enthusiastic cook is an important lender for photo shoots as well as setting historical tables for film projects. Her passion for cooking according to historical recipes as well as the use of authentic tableware underline the passion that has become her profession. She is the founder and president of the Austrian Society for Cooking and Dining Culture.

Short biography

Christina Wimmer, M.A., has been working as a freelancer for the art collections of the Diocese of Regensburg since 2022. She is also currently in the final phase of her dissertation on the furnishings of music rooms in the 19th and early 20th centuries. From 2019 to 2021, she worked on the exhibition "Apostles for Beauty". Max Schultze (1845-1926) as architect, artist, alpinist, nature and heritage conservationist", which was on display at Regensburg's Städtische Galerie im Leeren Beutel in 2021 (www. maxschultze.de). Wimmer has completed internships at the Association of German Art Historians, the Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie and the Regensburg University Library and has worked several times as a tour guide on Open Monument Day. Her research focuses on art from the second half of the 18th century to the first half of the 20th century, including painting, villa construction, interior design, domestic culture and the relationship between fine art and music, especially around 1900.

Abstract

Music rooms (English: music room, French: salon de musique), i.e. private rooms in residential buildings that were used exclusively for music, were widespread after an initial heyday in the early modern period, especially around 1900 against the background of salon culture: they were not only part of the room program of upper-class villas, in which they often represented the most magnificent and important room in the house, but were also presented at exhibitions or galleries and discussed in art magazines and home advisors, whereby they were also referred to as music salons, music halls or music rooms. By distinguishing them from multifunctional salons, for example, music rooms were particularly suitable for artists to create and decorate spaces that were entirely geared towards music, both architecturally and in terms of their furnishings with paintings. There were also many such rooms in Vienna, the city of music, designed by Auchentaller, Frank, Hoffmann, Loos, Mackintosh, Moser, Olbrich, Seligmann, Witzmann and others. One of the most famous examples is Gustav Klimt's music salon in the palace of art patron Nikolaus Dumba (1898/99), which marks the transition from early to mature work in the painter's oeuvre. It is also Klimt's only "total" interior design. As in Theodor Billroth's house or Karl Wittgenstein's palace, Johannes Brahms and other composers were guests at salon events at Palais Dumba. The popular supraporte "Schubert at the Piano" in particular has been frequently discussed in previous research - not only by art historians but also by musicologists - but, like the interior design as a whole and the second supraporte "The Music", it has hardly been contextualized. For this reason, other music rooms of the time in the neoclassical style or with a pictorial program of composer portraits and/or music allegories as well as panel paintings, prints and trivial art with a similar iconography will be used for comparison. The veneration of Schubert around 1900 must also be addressed. In this way, the prominent position of Klimt's music salon Dumba can be worked out.