Leopold Museum

The Leopold Museum contains the collection of the Leopold family, which includes paintings, furniture, vases, and sketches. There are five stories of items on display from their private home. Herr Leopold made a deal with the city of Vienna that if they built him a museum then he would donate his entire art collection for the city to put on display. Herr Leopold is considered an art guru and almost everything he buys turns to gold. For instance, people used to not be big fans of Schiele however because Leopold enjoyed his art Schiele has now become one of the most famous artists in the last century.
photo: courtesy of google images
Gustav Klimt (1862-1918)
Klimt is considered to be one of the Ringstrasse artists. He was born right into the height of the Secessionist movement. Klimt was originally enrolled in the Applied Arts Academy to be a goldsmith; however, after realizing he did not have much interest in being a goldsmith he picked up painting. Klimt was very involved in the construction of the Ringstrasse buildings and leading the Secessionist movement; however a scandal ousted him from his influential position and the Jugenstil group. Klimt was asked to paint three panels in the opening hall for the University of Vienna. Klimt’s panels were refused because they looked quite controversial and they were blurry and would be hard to view on the ceilings. The refusal of the University to accept the panels was a big blow to Klimt and he would be unable to find work for some while, in this time he painted The Kiss, which not only put him back into mainstream art but elevated him to become one of the most influential artists ever. Klimt’s work can be placed into three periods: 1) Ringstrasse period 2) Art Noveau, Jugendstil period 3) Expressionism.
photo: courtesy of google images
Death and Life
Klimt created this in 1910 and thought he was finished with it, but five years later he pulled it out and decided it was not finished and started adding certain touches to it and it is now what we see today hanging in the Leopold museum. Death is portrayed as menacing, sinister, sneaky, and playful. Life is portrayed through many people. The old person is blue, similar to the color of death. The couple in the foreground seem to be mourning and have been touched by death and the man seems to be protecting his woman. The outer ends of “life” are the parts that he added in 1915. These additions helped to close the gap between life and death. Also if you look at the grooves in between life and death, you can see that they fit together. Last, but most important, is the girl, the only person with their eyes open, is the person in which the observer can be pulled into the painting.
Vienna Workshop
The Vienna Workshop is the antithesis of Jugendstil. The two most influential architects and artists that came out of the Vienna Workshop were Adolf Loos and Josef Hoffman. They disliked the Jugendstil style and all its ornamentation and pomp. The Vienna Workshop artists believed in simplicity and thought ornamentation was a crime. They believed that with the use of beautiful material, you would not need decoration. Vienna Workshop artists wanted to take applied arts and incorporate it into the fine arts. They thought that a well-designed chair could be a work of art. Loos thought that the architect should design everything in a building down to the doorknob.
photo: courtesy of google images
Egon Schiele
Schiele was one of Klimt’s greatest admirers and learned a great deal from Klimt. He was an expressionist painter and ushered in the new style of art flawlessly. According to Parsons, he showed “disregard for bourgeois proprieties” (Parsons, 244) and often painted pornographic works that society found very distasteful.photo: courtesy of google images
Dead Mother
Dead Mother is a work that Schiele produced that somewhat prophesized the fate of his wife. The painting features a dead mother carrying her child, which is what happened to Schiele. His wife died carrying his seven-month baby of the Spanish Influenza. This is a strange mysterious characteristic of Schiele’s work. He is often said to have been able to see and feel the future and would paint what he felt.photo: courtesy of google images
The Cardinal and the Nun
This is one of Schiele’s most famous pieces and marked his transition from “self-disgust of many self-portraits to shocking eroticism” (Parsons, 244). The cardinal and the nun both have knobby, weathered, peasant-like feet, which represents that even though religious people are seen to hold a certain moral standard, they are in the end still people and still have desires and needs. The face of the cardinal looks as if he is completely consumed by the beauty of the nun and the face of the nun looks as if she has just been caught. This piece was very ground-breaking for Schiele’s time.