Beethoven frieze
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The Beethoven Frieze is a picture cycle painted by Gustav Klimt in 1901 , which is dedicated to the composer Ludwig van Beethoven and has the shape of a frieze . It was first displayed on the walls of a hall of the Vienna Secession on the occasion of the 14th exhibition of the Association of Visual Artists of the Secession in 1902. The sequence of images is an outstanding work of art of Viennese Art Nouveau .
The paintings
The cycle was part of an exhibition project by Josef Hoffmann staged as a total work of art , which was grouped around the large Beethoven sculpture created by Max Klinger . Klimt's 34 by 2 meter work consisted of three large thematic groups on three U-shaped walls:
- The longing for happiness. The sufferings of weak humanity: the requests of these to the well-armed strong ones as external, compassion and ambition as internal driving forces that move him to take up the struggle for happiness ...
- The enemy forces. The giant Typhoeus, against whom even gods fought in vain; his daughters, the three Gorgons. Illness, madness, death. Lust and unchastity, excess. Gnawing grief. The longings and desires of the people fly over it ...
- The longing for happiness finds satisfaction in poetry. The arts lead us into the ideal realm in which alone we can find pure joy, pure happiness, pure love. Choir of the Angel of Paradise. "Joy, beautiful spark of gods"; "This kiss for the whole world!"
Klimt depicts Beethoven's 9th Symphony in his allegorical pictorial work . In formal terms, Klimt places two-dimensional, stylized monumental figures emphasizing lines in an ornamentally structured image space. Large white areas of unworked plaster are included in the compositions. The figures are allegories of longing, passions, happiness and danger.
Left wall
- The floating female figures (genii) symbolize the longing for happiness and love.
- A standing girl and a kneeling couple with outstretched, pleading hands represent human suffering. They implore the golden knight to take up the fight for happiness for them. The knight is supported by two female figures, ambition (with a wreath) and compassion as the inner drive of his actions.
Middle wall
- The ape-like, almost invincible giant Typhoeus in the middle, whose bodies are snakes, and his daughters to the left, the goddesses of fate (gorgons), symbolize the hostile forces. Dark, mask-like heads lurk above the Gorgons in the background as illness, madness and death.
- To the right of this stand three female figures for lust, unchastity and gluttony. Next to it the grief shows its miserable figure.
Right wall
- The floating geniuses, as longing for love and happiness, find a woman with a lyre who embodies poetry. (This is followed by a gap in the picture, originally located above a wall opening that offered a view of Klinger's Beethoven figure.)
- Five women standing one behind the other in moving gestures represent the arts that point to the realm of ideas, ideals and happiness and specifically point to the final chorus of the 9th Symphony, the singing with Schiller's text “Joy, beautiful gods spark, this kiss of the whole world ”( To the joy ). A couple sinks into a blissful kiss, woven into a paradisiacal setting.
The work within the framework of the exhibition as a total work of art
The exhibition of the Vienna Secession aimed at staging within the architecture of the exhibition space. However, it was not just about creating an overall context of different genres, but the idea of standardizing the arts also aimed at aesthetic sacralization. Part of it is the thought that art brings liberation and sensual exaggeration of existence to life. The museum architecture became the "temple of art", the artist stylized the savior. Klimt later declared, on the occasion of the art show in 1908, that the idea of art's socially changing effect could no longer be redeemed. The progress of culture in the penetration of life with art showed itself to have failed in the light of the social and economic crises in the course of the socially upheaval progress of technology. In retrospect, as critics noted, Josef Hoffmann's 1902 exhibition concept looked like a monument to the artists' “collective narcissism ” in the spirit of Beethoven's euphoria. The painters in the exhibition glorified the sculptor Klinger, who glorified the great musician Beethoven in his sculpture, who in turn paid homage to the poet Schiller and his pathos that enveloped humanity in the final movement of his 9th symphony.
History of ownership
The cycle, originally intended only as a temporary work of art, was split into seven parts and acquired by the art collector Carl Reininghaus in 1907 . In 1915 the frieze came into the possession of the Jewish industrialist family Lederer , who were expropriated by the National Socialists in 1938 . It survived the Second World War in Thürnthal Castle , after which it was returned to Erich Lederer. However, the Federal Monuments Office rejected its export request with reference to the legal situation ("Export Prohibition Act").
In 1973 Erich Lederer sold the frieze to the Austrian state for 15 million schillings and, in contacts with Federal Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, was extremely satisfied with the result of the negotiations with Minister Hertha Firnberg , which would keep the frieze open to the public. The auction house Christie's had estimated the value of the frieze three years earlier at around 25 million schillings. The frieze, restored at state expense, has been in the Vienna Secession again since 1986 . Klinger's sculpture, for which the frieze was originally intended as a frame, is now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig .
In October 2013, Erich Lederer's heirs announced that they would use the new legal situation based on the 2009 amendment to the Art Restitution Act to sue for the cancellation of the 1973 purchase by the Republic of Austria and to demand the surrender of the frieze. According to them, the republic would have used the export ban as leverage to force Lederer to sell. On March 4, 2015, a very close employee of Minister Firnberg and contemporary witness of her conversations with Erich Lederer, Wolf Frühauf, publicly commented on this in a lengthy newspaper comment: No looted property, no case for restitution.
On March 6, 2015, the Advisory Board in accordance with Section 3 of the Federal Act on the Return of Works of Art from the Austrian Federal Museums and Collections to the Federal Chancellery recommended that Chancellery Minister Josef Ostermayer not respond to the heirs' demands, as the purchase contract between the Republic and the heirs of the previous one Owner was considered legal. The Minister declared that he would follow this recommendation.
Individual evidence
- ^ Exhibition catalog, Vienna 1902
- ^ Leopold Museum - Gustav Klimt, Hugging, standing naked couple. Study for “This Kiss of the Whole World” in “Beethoven Frieze”, 1901
- ↑ Meret Baumann: No Restitution - Klimt's Beethoven Frieze Remains in Vienna , Neue Zürcher Zeitung, March 6, 2015; accessed on March 9, 2015.
- ↑ a b “Beethoven Frieze”: History of an Art Nouveau Icon , wien.orf.at
- ↑ Federal Law Gazette I No. 117/2009, see legal information system of the Federal Chancellery ( Memento of October 18, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ "Beethovenfrieze": "Tricks" der Republik , report in the Vienna section of the ORF website, October 17, 2013
- ↑ a b Olga Kronsteiner: Beethoven frieze: purchase appreciated, export ban ignored. In: derStandard.at. March 6, 2015, accessed March 7, 2015 .
- ↑ Wolf Frühauf: No looted property, no case for restitution , comment in the daily newspaper Der Standard , Vienna, March 4, 2015, on the website of the paper
- ↑ The Advisory Board sees the Republic as the owner , on orf.at, accessed on March 6, 2015