Faculty pictures (University of Vienna)

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The Hygieia (Greek "health") from the Faculty picture Medicine by Klimt in a reproduction of the original (excerpt)

Faculty Pictures is the name given to four paintings that were intended to decorate the ceiling of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna on Vienna's Ringstrasse . They were supposed to represent the four classical faculties of a European university in an allegorical way . The artists Gustav Klimt and Franz Matsch were commissioned to produce them in 1894 . Klimt was supposed to take over the images for philosophy , medicine and jurisprudence , while Matsch designed the image for theology .

Arguments

When the picture “Philosophy” was first presented at the seventh art exhibition of the Vienna Secession in 1900, there was massive public criticism, especially from the professors of the university. Klimt's style of representation did not correspond to the specifications of the client or his previously submitted draft sketches, but showed a deeply pessimistic and critical perspective of science. The exhibition of the picture "Medicine" caused a similar scandal. The differences probably even encouraged Klimt to make his image “Jurisprudence” even more aggressive than originally planned. The fronts were so hardened that an agreement no longer seemed possible.

Topics of the disputes, which were also conducted in the media, were not only the position of university science in society, but also the meaning and purpose of state funding for the arts as well as the possible influence on artistic freedom .

In order to avoid the controversy, Klimt decided in 1905 to buy back his paintings, for which he had already received state payments, with the help of private patrons (above all August Lederer ). The three pictures ended up in private ownership.

The disputes over the symbolist images had an impact on the further artistic work of Klimt. After that, the artist no longer accepted a commission from the public sector and turned mainly to portrait and landscape painting. In the course of this reorientation, world-famous works were created to this day. The most spectacular is probably the painting Adele Bloch-Bauer I from 1907, which is considered the second most expensive painting in the world with a sales price of 135 million US dollars in 2006. The most popular and still mostly reproduced today is the painting The Kiss from 1907/1908 . Today Klimt is known as the most important Austrian artist of Art Nouveau .

Whereabouts of the pictures

Franz Matsch's "Symbol Theology" is still owned by the University of Vienna and is located in the meeting room of the Catholic Theological Faculty.

Klimt's privately bought faculty pictures came back into state ownership during aryanization measures during the Nazi era. During the Second World War they were relocated to Immendorf Castle in Lower Austria . Towards the end of the war the castle was set on fire by retreating SS troops and burned out completely with the art treasures stored there. The drafts and black-and-white photographs of the originals of Klimt's three faculty pictures still exist today.

As part of the exhibition Naked Truth (2005), the Vienna Leopold Museum put black and white copies of the faculty pictures by Klimt and Matsch on the ceiling of the large ballroom of the university.

Description and interpretation

Klimt: Faculty picture "Philosophy"

Klimt: Philosophy

In the exhibition catalog of the Secession, at the first presentation of philosophy in March – April 1900, the left group of figures - knotted, floating bodies of different ages - are described as arising , fruitful being and passing away . On the right side is the globe , the so-called world puzzle , which emerges as a sleeping sphinx from a fog-like background. Conscious intelligence appears below, knowledge as an enlightened figure.

With this picture, Klimt does not provide the allegory in the traditional sense required by the client, but a representation of philosophy as a symbol of determined humanity. This corresponds to the artist's pessimistic view of science in contrast to the general belief in progress at the turn of the century. In this faculty picture, science is not shown as triumphant, but as eternally struggling and searching. In the figurative sense , the world puzzle is probably also an allusion to the mythological puzzle of the Sphinx .

Klimt: Faculty Profile "Medicine"

Klimt: Medicine

On the right you can see a chained group of people from which a skeleton protrudes on the upper part of the picture . The figures in this crowd have closed eyes or are depicted in a crouched position with their backs facing the viewer. A man stretches his arm towards a naked woman who is apparently asleep floating on the left side of the picture, a newborn child can be seen at her feet. She shows a contorted torso, extends her left arm into the group and touches the extended arm of another figure. The outstretched arms create a connection - a kind of cycle - between the woman on the left and the group of figures on the right. In the middle below is Hygieia with an Aesculapian snake and a bowl of water from the Lethe river , from which the snake drinks.

In the preface of the catalog for the tenth exhibition of the Secession is explained on this picture, that life between Will and crimes happening, and that life itself is on its way from birth to death that deep suffering creates, for the Hygeia the linderne and healing Has found funds . Klimt thus shows the cycle of life in his medicine .

Due to the figures' closed eyes and crouched postures, it can also be assumed that Klimt depicts sleep as a healing, perhaps even disease-preventing agent. The artist may also allude to ancient rituals such as temple sleep and trauma oracles, in which one hoped for healing or the giving of medical advice.

Klimt's opponents complain to Klimt's medicine, on the one hand, about the naturalistic depiction of naked bodies, which, in their opinion, would rather fit into an anatomical museum. On the other hand, they criticize the lack of the two most important functions of medicine: healing and prevention .

Klimt: Faculty picture "Jurisprudence"

Klimt: Jurisprudence

An old sinner , naked and gaunt, stands bent over in the lower half of the picture. A polyp wraps around him and cuffs his hands behind his back. Three Erinyes with snakes in their hair stand around the sinner. Above are personified, female representations of justice (center), law (right) and truth (left). Justice holds a sword, the law holds the book of Lex . The truth is half naked and only clad in a cloak. The judges can be seen as small figures in the center of the picture. Presumably the polyp represents the guilty conscience of the man. However, the sinner also appears to be a victim of justice.

Klimt's critics criticize the orientation of the work as a mural that can be read from bottom to top, but what was required was a ceiling painting. The artist is also accused of reducing jurisprudence to crime and punishment .

Klimt's change in style is most clearly recognizable in jurisprudence ; because it deviates greatly from his design from 1898, in which the personified justice stretches up a sword. This radical change can be interpreted as Klimt's reaction to the rejection of his two previously presented faculty pictures Philosophy and Medicine . Despite harsh criticism, the artist remains true to his own development process. It is possible that the old sinner in jurisprudence is even a self-portrayal of Klimt, who sees himself as the victim of an unjust assessment of his faculty images.

Matsch: Faculty picture "Theology"

Matsch: Theologie (1900), detail

Matsch depicts theology as an allegory in the traditional sense in the style of historicism . In the center of the picture sits a female figure with a nimbus . She holds a pen in her right hand and rests her right elbow on a book carried by a nimbly bird, probably an eagle . On the left half of the picture a female figure hovers without a nimbus, on the right side outstretched hands can be seen. The floating figure stretches its arms towards the hands on the right. In the upper part of the picture you can see a figure nailed to a cross with one arm . The figures are shown in a frog's perspective .

The nimbly eagle with a book indicates the evangelist John or the gospel according to John . The floating, not nimbly figure and the hands could refer to the prologue of the Gospel. In it the coming of Jesus Christ is presented as the Incarnation of the Eternal Word . The crucifixion is also dealt with in John. Accordingly, Matsch chose the Christian religion as a representative of the term theology , the doctrine of God or gods of different religions.

Gallery of Klimt's designs for his faculty pictures (incomplete)

  • Transfer sketch of philosophy

  • Sketch for philosophy : the sphinx with knowledge, globe, lovers, old desperate man

  • Sketch on philosophy : The Sphinx, lovers with child, figure at the bottom

  • Painted design to medicine

  • Transfer sketch of medicine

  • Sketch for jurisprudence

  • Draft for jurisprudence

  • Sketch of the sinner in jurisprudence : naked old man bent to the right,

  • probably a sketch on the sinner in jurisprudence : Naked old man bent to the right

  • probably sketch for the sinner in jurisprudence : standing man to the right with bowed head

  • Sketch for jurisprudence : man with toga bowing

  • Sketch for jurisprudence : man in a long robe from the front

  • Sketch for jurisprudence : a portrait of a man from the front

  • Sketch for jurisprudence : standing with sword in the raised right hand

  • Study for Justitia in Jurisprudence : Female figure with toga

  • Sketch for jurisprudence : standing female nude from the front with raised right arm

literature

  • Alice Strobl: To the faculty pictures by Gustav Klimt. In: Albertina Studies. Vienna, Jg. 2/1964, Volume 4, pp. 138-169
  • Christian Michael Nebehay: Gustav Klimt. His life according to contemporary reports and sources. German Paperback Publishing Munich, 1976.
  • Christian Michael Nebehay (Ed.): Gustav Klimt. Documentation. Verl. D. Galerie Christian M. Nebehay, Vienna 1969.
  • Tobias G. Natter / Max Hollein (eds.): The naked truth. Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka and other scandals. Exhibition catalog Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt and Leopold Museum Vienna, Munich / Berlin / London / New York 2005. ISBN 3-7913-3284-8 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Franz Matsch: symbol of theology (faculty picture) . Article on the website of the University of Vienna.
  2. ↑ For the first time to be seen in their entirety: The faculty pictures by Klimt and Matsch are returning to their destination after more than 100 years. Article on the exhibition Naked Truth on the website of the Leopold Museum. 2005.
  3. ↑ Gabriele Planz: boredom: a sense of time in German-language literature at the turn of the century. Page 9. Tectum Verlag, 1996. ISBN 978-3-89608-115-5 . Preview on Google.
  4. ↑ Edvin Lachnit: The Vienna School of Art History and the Art of its Time. Böhlau Verlag Vienna, 2005. Page 42. ISBN 978-3-205-77422-8 . Preview on Google .
  5. ^ Gustav Klimt: The philosophy (faculty picture) on the website of the University of Vienna. Retrieved December 19, 2017.
  6. ↑ Wolfgang U. Eckart : History, Theory and Ethics of Medicine , 7th edition. Springer Verlag Heidelberg, Berlin, New York 2013, p. 5. doi: 10.1007 / 978-3-642-34972-0
  7. ^ Claus Westermann: Outline of Biblical Studies. Calwer Verlag, Stuttgart 1979, ISBN 3-7668-0620-3 , p. 164 f.

Web links

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