Secession (art)

Secession (art)
International Style, Bauhaus, and Art Deco

In art history, secession refers to a historic break between a group of avant-garde artists and conservative European standard-bearers of academic and official art in the late 19th and early 20th century.^[1] The name was first suggested by Georg Hirth (1841–1916),^[2] the editor and publisher of the influential German art magazine Jugend (Youth), which also went on to lend its name to the Jugendstil. His word choice emphasized the tumultuous rejection of legacy art while it was being reimagined.^[3]^[4]^[5]

Of the various secessions, the Vienna Secession (1897) remains the most influential. Led by Gustav Klimt, who favored the ornate Art Nouveau style over the prevailing styles of the time,^[4] it was inspired by the Munich Secession (1892), and the nearly contemporaneous Berlin Secession (1898), all of which begot the term Sezessionstil, or "Secession style."^[4]

Hans-Ulrich Simon later revisited that idea in Sezessionismus: Kunstgewerbe in literarischer und bildender Kunst, the thesis he published in 1976.^[6] Simon argued that the successive waves of art secessions in the late 19th and early 20th century Europe collectively form a movement best described by the all-encompassing term "Secessionism."

By convention, the term is usually restricted to one of several secessions — mainly in Germany, but also in Austria and France — coinciding with the end of the

Weimar Germany.^[8]

Artists and their art

See also:

Salon du Champs-de-Mars (1890–present), is named after the 1791 Champ de Mars Massacre that saw dozens of civilians killed at the hands of the military, which radicalized the Paris citizenry – and the Salon's organizers were likely hoping for a similarly revolutionary effect.^[9] Eager to curate their own work, Puvis de Chavannes and Auguste Rodin declared independence by forming a break-away group, which was a ground-breaking departure in a culture with salon traditions dating back to the early 1700s.^[10] Unlike subsequent secessions, Chavannes' group sought higher standards and a more conservative approach, not a more liberal one.^[10] Over the next several years, artists in various European countries followed in the Salon's footsteps, likewise "seceding" from traditional art movements and follow their own diktats.^[8]

lithograph for the 14th International Art Exhibition in Vienna, created in 1902.

Dresden Secession — An Otto Dix etching and aquatint 'Stormtroopers Advance Under a Gas Attack' (Sturmtruppe geht vor unter Gas) that illustrated 'The War' by Karl Nierendorf

, 1924.

The Vienna Secession, founded in 1897, is the most famous of these groups. Although the Austrian Gustav Klimt is one of its most well-known members, the group also included Czech Alphonse Mucha, Croatian sculptor Ivan Mestrovic and the Polish artists Jozef Mehoffer, Jacek Malczewski and Stanislaw Wyspianski,^[11] the latter of whom were invited to join the Secession in its opening year, as well as write for Ver Sacrum, the Secession magazine Klimt founded, which spread the influence of Art Nouveau.^[11] Curvilinear geometric shapes and patterns of that period are typical of it. Artists reveled in the movement's broad visual vocabulary. Their work spanned the arts — painting, decor, architecture, graphic design, furniture, ceramics, glassware and jewelry — at times naturalistic, at times stylized.^[4]

Founded in 1919, the

First World War, and replete with criticism of Weimar Germany.^[12]^[13]^[14] The Nazis would later condemn both artists.^[12]^[13]^[14] Although the Dresden Secession officially dissolved in 1925, many of its artists continued pursuing careers into the 1930s and beyond, even while the Nazis began "cleansing" the culture of the Modernist art and artists they deemed offensive.^[15] Their "purification" program included displacing Modernist art in Germany's museums with an earlier style of rigid Realism and an Apollonian "classical" style that glorified the Third Reich.^[3]^[12]^[16]^[17]

In 1937, while planning a major exhibition of "pure" art,

Degenerate Art Exhibition, which ultimately featured 650 works of art confiscated from 32 different museums – and then sold for profit.^[15]^[12] "Degeneracy" was an entrenched policy by then, a useful way for Hitler, who twice failed to matriculate into art school, to routinely sanction other artists.^[15]^[17] At that point, artists who could fled, those who couldn't were later deported to concentration camps.^[15]^[18] Some, like Berlin Secessionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, committed suicide.^[18] Still others collaborated.^[16]^[17]

In 1945, the last year of World War II, the British and American

bombing of (civilian) Dresden controversially left the city, an arts and cultural landmark, known for both the Dresden Secession and the turn-of-the-century Expressionist art movement Die Brücke, in ruins.^[19]

Portraits

(Selection was limited by availability.)

French painter Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824–1898) c. 1880. → Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts
German painter, sculptor, printmaker, and architect
Franz Stuck
(1863–1928) self-portrait, 1923. → Munich Secession
Lovis Corinth (1858-1925) portrait of German painter and graphic artist Otto Eckmann (1865–1902), painted in 1897. → Jugendstil
German painter Max Liebermann (1847–1935), painted in 1925. → Berliner Secession
Austrian painter Egon Schiele (1890–1918) self-portrait from 1910. → Sonderbund westdeutscher Kunstfreunde und Künstler
Portrait of German painter and printmaker Otto Dix (1891–1969) by Hugo Erfurth, c. 1933. → Dresden Secession

Movements

Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts

Paris (1890–present) — Known for its role in decisively ending the stranglehold the state had on the salon exhibition system, the rebel Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts formed in reaction to the Société des artists français.^[20] The revolt led by Puvis de Chavannes, Ernest Meissonier, Carolus-Duran and Carrier-Belleuse helped radicalize the Central European art world.