Studio: international art (25.1902)

Vienna Secession Exhibition

There is very much that is attractive and good
in the present exhibition. Kolo Moser has adopted
the expedient of raising the two side-rooms, and
thus, by giving a flight of five or six steps, has
succeeded not only in giving us something to
which we are not accustomed—and a change from
the conventional is always agreeable—but, at the
same time, in gaining effect.

There are fewer portraits than usual. In fact,
they are almost absent. Klimt, however, shows
an unfinished picture of A Lady, clad in misty
pearl grey, so delicately depicted that she seems
enveloped in a cloud with a silver lining. Klimt
also shows four other works: A Forest of Fir
Trees, Still Water, Seashore, and Gold Fish.
Here at once we have something to think about.
In the Forest the artist shows us a long line of firs
with their misty tints of blues and greens and
browns, with the sun in the distance shedding his
light upon them. We see the irregularity of trees,
and recognise them as we have seen them in the
Bohemian woods. Gold Fish is evidently destined
for a decorative panel, and would, no doubt,
show to better advantage in its proper place, for
here much of its beauty is lost. Throughout
there is a tone of gold, and the fish seem swim-
ming in the water, their fins move, their scales
glisten, and a mermaid is playing with them
as they swim by. Everything seems in a whirl,

and other mermaids in the distance help to create
a kind of intoxicating eddy. Here, too, the
colouring is peculiar to Klimt, the delicate airiness
which seems as if no brush had ever touched it,
only a slight whiff—a puff, and the colour is there.

Franz Stuck (Munich) has sent a series of
portraits of ladies of different nationalities. These,
with a plaster relief of Beethoven, a portrait of
Hermann Levi, director of music at the Royal
Opera, Munich, and The Furies, occupy a niche to
themselves. The ground-tones of this last are in
black, white and red, but not so happily and easily
mingled as those of the portraits, though the
picture is well conceived and carried out. The
Beethoven is an excellent piece of work, as is the
portrait of Herr Levi. Among the exhibits, those
of Ferdinand Andri have a worthy and foremost
place. They depict scenes of Eastern Europe,
and possess many charms. Slovaken (Slovaks),
which has been bought by the Legislative Assembly
of Lower Austria, shows, as do all this artist's
exhibits, an intense knowledge of and interest in
peasant life. In this picture we have in the
foreground an old peasant clad in his sheepskin-
lined drab coat, enjoying the honour paid to
him, to judge from the tell-tale face. This mass
of drab is relieved by the various coloured head-
shawls worn by the women, yellow, reds, and blues.
Butter Women has been bought by the Austrian

EXHIBITION OF THE VIENNA SECESSION
268

ARRANGED BY KOLO MOSER