Klimt, Vienna and Psychoanalysis
An Aesthetic Revolution under the Sway of the All-Powerful Feminine
While the splendour of 1900s Vienna saw the European avant-garde flourish in areas such as music (Arnold Schönberg), medicine (Sigmund Freud), philosophy (Ludwig Wittgenstein) and art (Klimt and the Secession), the city was nevertheless subject to an existential crisis.
Gustav Klimt's work captures this exceptional era, particularly as psychoanalysis reveals its repressed desires and neuroses. This analysis is largely informed by the research of Jacques Le Rider and Carl Schorske.
Viennese society praised the conformism of the young Klimt...
By the age of thirty-five, Gustav Klimt had become the most prominent painter in the highly conservative Austro-Hungarian Empire. Three years later, however, he had transformed into the very own disruptor of this same society, with his new public projects causing widespread discord. This metamorphosis reflected the intellectual effervescence of Vienna.
Chapter 1 - The Viennese Context Around 1900
In 1897, the Vienna Secession marked the breakaway.
A group of around forty academic painters leaves the academic institution and Klimt was appointed president of the group. He designed the poster for their first exhibition. A Freudian analysis of its iconography reveals an agenda in which women seize power.