The Vienna Secession

5 Jun, 2025 700 Arts

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.

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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 →

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Programme ID: m002d1b5

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002d1b5

Auto-category: 709.4361 (Art of Austria)

Hello (First sentence from this episode) Hello. 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.