Vienna secession12/16/2023 ![]() The three University paintings represent the epitome of Klimt’s use of classical myth and symbolism to communicate a critique of the condition of modernity. Starting with the three paintings commissioned by the University of Vienna, Klimt embarked on a modernist quest, descending into the darkness of the unconscious and unveiling the instinctual drives that Freud had been writing about around the same time. Having established his reputation decorating several buildings along the newly designed Ringstrasse, Gustav Klimt took a daring step away from the tastes of the powerful patrons. This break led to the formation of the Vienna Secession and Vienna’s entrance in the ranks of the European avant-garde. The resigning artists believed that art and culture should be left to the artists, rather than statesmen. The dispute was not merely a conflict between contrasting aesthetics, but rather a question of value and status of art itself. On May 22, 1897, Gustav Klimt led a group of artists to resign the Viennese Künstlerhaus, a state-sponsored art institution under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture. (Carl Gustav Jung, The Undiscovered Self, 1957) Orpheus mourned her to the upper world, / And then, lest he should leave the shades untried, / Dared to descend to Styx… (Ovid, Metamorphoses) The pleasingness of the artistic product is replaced by chill abstractions of the most subjective nature which brusquely slam the door on the naïve and romantic delight in the senses and on the obligatory love for the object. Though seeming to deal with aesthetic problems, is really performing a work of psychological education on the public by breaking down and destroying their previous aesthetic views of what is beautiful in form and meaningful in content.
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