Beyond Klimt: New Horizons in Central Europe ed. by Alexander Klee and Stella Rollig

Abstract

Reviewed by: Beyond Klimt: New Horizons in Central Europe ed. by Alexander Klee and Stella Rollig Julie M. Johnson Alexander Klee and Stella Rollig, eds., Beyond Klimt: New Horizons in Central Europe. Exhibition catalogue Belvedere Vienna, March 23–August 26, 2018. Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 2018. 389 pp. What would a more inclusive art history of the interwar years look like? With Beyond Klimt, the Belvedere sets out to remap a field that has been dominated by accounts of Weimar Germany and France. A great reference source and point of departure for future researchers, this exhibition catalogue offers an overview of art that may not fit into the better-known templates of twentieth-century modernisms. Its thesis is that circuits of creativity and artistic identity were not beholden to geography or political borders. To conceptualize this new topography of mobility, curator and editor Alexander Klee makes good use of the network metaphor: Vienna lost its status as an art center during the interwar years, becoming instead one "network node" and "first point of call" among many (341). Maps of changing political boundaries and dictionary definitions of related terminology are interspersed throughout the catalogue. Everything was in flux, including how one conceptualized "border" or "nation." Artists had various reasons for migration but created new networks and found new sources of creativity during this time. Setting the stage in the introductory essay, historian Arnold Suppan covers the political aft ermath of the dissolution of the Habsburg monarchy. Organized more or less chronologically, more than dozen essays then cover various art centers, war painters, international and local art movements, and the role of the theater and avant-garde journals that provided cultural transfer [End Page 97] in multiple directions. The first group of essays addresses the reception of Klimt, Austrian Expressionism, and trends in Czech and Hungarian art. Franz Smola's essay on the late Klimt, his exhibition activities with the next generation and subsequent musealization is beautifully written and translated. Stephanie Auer covers Austrian Expressionism in the interwar years, giving good coverage to Oskar Kokoschka, Herbert Boeckl, and Anton Kolig. This essay could have benefited from the inclusion of women to better follow through with the network metaphor. Marie Louise von Motesiczky, whom Kokoschka visited while she was in exile in London, is certainly among Vienna's greatest artists of the interwar years. Expressionist Helene Funke, originally from Chemnitz, became Vienna's "grande dame" during that period. Lilly Steiner also merited mention in this context, which proposes that Kokoschka returned to the Baroque to embrace his Austrianness in exile: "No other Expressionist artist between the wars drew on the 'Baroque heritage' to the same extent as Oskar Kokoschka, especially during his time in exile in Prague and London. He did this in order to emphasize the specifically 'Austrian' and unmistakable character of his art" (52). That may be true, but he was not alone. In exile in Paris, hearing about what was happening in Vienna, Steiner painted her key work of 1938, Baroque Composition, an allegorical landscape with recognizable architectural monuments from Vienna and Salzburg. To be fair, the Belvedere and its curators should be lauded for including all of these women and many others in the exhibition and color plates. Baroque Composition appears at the end of the catalogue in a section of plates devoted to exile and the Anschluss. One of the most valuable essay collections is subtitled "Internationalist Art." With an unusual pairing of movements, such as the Bauhaus with Surrealism, this section demonstrates that the more nationalistic politics became, the more international became the artists. Flóra Mészáros presents new information on artists from the former Habsburg monarchy who became active in 1930s France in the Abstraction-Création group. Barbara Lesák covers the rise and fall of avant-garde theater and the 1924 International Exhibition of New Theater Technology, organized and designed by Friedrich Kiesler, a figure well known to architectural historians. Judith Elisabeth Weiss has new information on the consequences of André Breton's visit to Freud's house in Vienna and the expanding Surrealist network in Prague—a fascinating read. Éva Bajkay documents the connections between Vienna and the Bauhaus, [End Page 98...