Beethoven exhibition (1902)
The Beethoven exhibition took place from April 15 to June 15, 1902 as the 14th exhibition of the Vienna Secession . In accordance with the idea of a total work of art, Josef Hoffmann grouped the works of 20 artists around a Beethoven statue by Max Klinger . Gustav Klimt's Beethoven frieze was prominently represented .
Klimt's frieze illustrated Richard Wagner's interpretation of Beethoven's 9th Symphony . The three painted walls formed a coherent narrative. On the long wall to the left, according to the catalog, the longing for happiness was depicted, the suffering of weak humanity, but also the knight defending it, motivated by pity and ambition. The narrow wall illustrated the “hostile forces”, symbolized by the ape-like giant Typhoeus and his daughters, the three Gorgons (illness, madness, death). The second long wall illustrated the quenching of the longing for happiness through poetry (the woman with the lyre), and the arts lead into the “ideal realm”.
The depictions of the narrow side in particular sparked controversy among the public. Klimt was accused of obscenity, criticized the characters of illness, madness, death and those of gnawing sorrow as "delusions", "pathological scenes" and "shameless caricatures of the noble human figure", and rejected the lascivious eroticism of the Gorgons and the depictions of lust and unchastity as "painted pornography". There was also enthusiastic approval. The dispute over the Beethoven frieze is related to the dispute over the faculty pictures of the University of Vienna that broke out in 1900 on the occasion of the seventh exhibition of the Vienna Secession .
literature
- Gerbert Frodl, Margarethe Szeless, Marian Bisanz-Prakken, Markus Brüderlin: Gustav Klimt - Beethoven Frieze. Secession 2002, ISBN 3-901926-44-5 .