Something impractical cannot be beautiful.
Otto Wagner
Vienna. Where to start? The city is an open-air museum. I took so many photos, yet I hardly scratched the surface. I've decided to post more than a single photo essay, each one featuring an element of the city I find compelling. Of course, it will be far from complete, and perhaps amatueris -- though at least I didn't shoot thesm on a phone.
Vienna is set up for tourism, so there are lots of websites to visit if you want something more polished and less personal and serendipitous.
These contemporary works are from inside the Secession Museum.
Here's an informative link to Joseph Olbrich: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Olbrich
The Vienna Secession was a group of progressive artists who broke away from established organizations in Austria and Germany. Formed in Vienna in 1897 by Gustav Klimt, this movement favored a highly ornamental Art Nouveau style, rejecting prevailing academic traditions.
The Secession Building, completed in 1898, is an icon of this anti-traditionalist group. Designed by Joseph Olbrich, with fellow Secessionists like Klimt, Otto Wagner, and Josef Hoffman, they aimed to create a new style free from historical influence. The building's motto, "To Every Age, Its Art. To Every Art, Its Freedom," encapsulates their revolutionary spirit. Klimt's work, such as "The Kiss" and the Beethoven Frieze, are notable examples of the movement's output.
More from Britannica https://www.britannica.com/art/Art-Nouveau-- this about Josef Hoffmann
Josef Hoffmann (born December 15, 1870, Pirnitz, Moravia [now in Czech Republic] died May 7, 1956, Vienna, Austria. He was a German architect whose work was important in the early development of modern architecture in Europe.
Hoffman studied under Otto Wagner in Vienna and in 1899 joined in the founding of the Vienna Sezession, which, although influenced by the Art Nouveau movement, was more modernist than Wagner’s approach. Beginning in 1899 he taught at the School of Applied Arts, Vienna, and participated (1903) in the establishment of the Vienna Workshop, a centre for arts and crafts, which he directed for some 30 years.
I shot these Secession poster images inside the Leopold Museum. https://www.leopoldmuseum.org/en/collection/gustav-klimt
There is no shortage of outstanding museums in Vienna.
This is from The Art Story online https://www.theartstory.org/movement/art-nouveau/:
The advent of Art Nouveau - literally "New Art" - can be traced to two distinct influences: the first was the introduction, around 1880, of the British Arts and Crafts movement, which, much like Art Nouveau, was a reaction against the cluttered designs and compositions of Victorian-era decorative art. The second was the current vogue for Japanese art, particularly wood-block prints, that swept up many European artists in the 1880s and 90s, including the likes of Gustav Klimt, Emile Gallé, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Japanese wood-block prints in particular contained floral and bulbous forms, and "whiplash" curves, all key elements of what would eventually become Art Nouveau.
It is difficult to pinpoint the first work(s) of art that officially launched Art Nouveau. Some argue that the patterned, flowing lines and floral backgrounds found in the paintings of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin represent Art Nouveau's birth, or perhaps even the decorative lithographs of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, such as Moulin Rouge: La Goulue (1891). But most point to the origins in the decorative arts, and in particular to a book jacket by English architect and designer Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo for the 1883 volume Wren's City Churches. The design depicts serpentine stalks of flowers emanating from one flattened pad at the bottom of the page, clearly reminiscent of Japanese-style wood-block prints.
In Vienna - home to Gustav Klimt, Otto Wagner, Josef Hoffmann and the other founders of the Vienna Secession - it was known as Sezessionsstil (Secession Style). It was also known as Modernismo in Spanish, Modernisme in Catalan, and Stile Floreale (floral style) or Stile Liberty in Italy (the latter after Arthur Liberty's fabric shop in London, which helped popularize the style). In France it was commonly called Modern(e)-Style and occasionally Style Guimard after its most famous practitioner there, the architect Hector Guimard, and in the Netherlands it was usually called Nieuwe Kunst (New Art). Its numerous detractors also gave it several derogatory names: Style Nouille (noodle style) in France, Paling Stijl (eel style) in Belgium, and Bandwurmstil (tapeworm style) in Germany - all names which made playful reference to Art Nouveau's tendency to employ sinuous and flowing lines.
Art Nouveau painters were few and far between: Klimt counted virtually no students or followers (Egon Schiele went in the direction of Expressionism), and Prouvé is known equally well as a sculptor and furniture designer. Instead, Art Nouveau was arguably responsible, more than any style in history, for narrowing the gap between the decorative or applied arts (to utilitarian objects) and the fine or purely ornamental arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, which traditionally had been considered more important, purer expressions of artistic talent and skill.
Wagner took the position of chief artistic director for the Stadtbahn, a collection of urban railway lines planned and constructed at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The project, intended to serve a growing and flourishing city, eventually foundered on multiple rocks…notably WWI, the subsequent break up of Austria-Hungary, and the economic problems that followed. The Stadtbahn routes find their modern expression within what are now the U6 subway line, the U4 subway line, and the S45 city train line. Wagner designed the new Jugendstil station buildings, bridges, etc. along the Stadtbahn. You can still see many in more or less their original condition.
