The Vienna Secession
In 1897, Gustav Klimt led a group of radical artists to break free from the cultural establishment of Vienna and found a movement that became known as the Vienna Secession. In the vibrant atmosphere of coffee houses, Freudian psychoanalysis and the music of Wagner and Mahler, the Secession sought to bring together fine art and music with applied arts such as architecture and design. The movement was characterized by Klimt’s stylised paintings, richly decorated with gold leaf, and the art nouveau buildings that began to appear in the city, most notably the Secession Building, which housed influential exhibitions of avant-garde art and was a prototype of the modern art gallery. The Secessionists themselves were pioneers in their philosophy and way of life, aiming to immerse audiences in unified artistic experiences that brought together visual arts, design, and architecture.
→ Listen on BBC Sounds website
Guests
-
Mark Berry No other episodes
Professor of Music and Intellectual History at Royal Holloway, University of London -
Leslie Topp No other episodes
Professor Emerita in History of Architecture at Birkbeck, University of London -
Diane Silverthorne No other episodes
Art historian
Reading list
-
Arnold Schoenberg: Critical Lives
Mark Berry (Reaktion Books, 2018) Google Books → -
Facing the Modern: The Portrait in Vienna 1900
Gemma Blackshaw (National Gallery Company, 2013) Google Books → -
Art, Design and Architecture in Central Europe, 1890-1920
Elizabeth Clegg (Yale University Press, 2006) Google Books → -
Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World
Richard Cockett (Yale University Press, 2023) Google Books → -
Gustav Mahler
Stephen Downes (Reaktion Books, 2025) Google Books → -
Freud, Jews, and Other Germans: Masters and Victims in Modernist Culture
Peter Gay (Oxford University Press, 1979) Google Books → -
Vienna: City of Modernity, 1890-1914
Tag Gronberg (Peter Lang, 2007) -
Wittgenstein in Vienna: A Biographical Excursion Through the City and its History
Allan S. Janik and Hans Veigl (Springer/Wien, 1998) -
Vienna 1900: Style and Identity
Jill Lloyd and Christian Witt-Dorring (eds.) (Hirmer Verlag, 2011) -
Dionysian Art and Populist Politics in Austria
William J. McGrath (Yale University Press, 1974) Google Books → -
Gustav Klimt: Painting, Design and Modern Life
Tobias Natter and Christoph Grunenberg (eds.) (Tate, 2008) -
Fin-de-siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture
Carl E. Schorske (Vintage, 1979) Google Books → -
Style and Seduction: Jewish Patrons, Architecture and Design in Fin-de-Siecle Vienna
Elana Shapira (Brandeis University Press, 2016) Google Books → -
Die Flache: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902-1911
Diane V Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds and Megan Brandow-Faller (Letterform Archive, 2023) -
Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist: Culture & Catastrophe in Habsburg Vienna
Edward Timms (Yale University Press, 1989) Google Books → -
Architecture and Truth in Fin-de-Siecle Vienna
Leslie Topp (Cambridge University Press, 2004) Google Books → -
Art in Vienna, 1898-1918: Klimt, Kokoschka, Schiele and Their Contemporaries
Peter Vergo (Phaidon, 2015) Google Books → -
Vienna 1900: Birth of Modernism
Hans-Peter Wipplinger (ed.) (Walther & Franz Konig, 2019) -
Masterpieces from the Leopold Museum
Hans-Peter Wipplinger (ed.) (Walther & Franz Konig ) -
The World of Yesterday: An Autobiography
Stefan Zweig (University of Nebraska Press, 1964) Google Books →
Related episodes
-
The Decadent Movement
18 Nov, 2021 820 English and Old English literatures -
Sturm und Drang
14 Oct, 2010 830 German and related literatures -
Bauhaus
10 Nov, 2022 700 Arts -
Bohemianism
9 Oct, 2003 700 Arts -
Wagner
20 Jun, 2002 780 Music -
The Siege of Vienna
14 May, 2009 940 History of Europe -
Beethoven
21 Dec, 2017 780 Music -
Surrealism
15 Nov, 2001 700 Arts -
The Frankfurt School
14 Jan, 2010 300 Social sciences, sociology and anthropology -
The Avant Garde’s Decline and Fall in the 20th Century
25 Feb, 1999 700 Arts
Programme ID: m002d1b5
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002d1b5
Auto-category: 709.4361 (Art of Austria)