EVENTLANGUAGE: ENGLISH.
In cooperation with the Friends of the Secession In her book Modern Art & the Remaking of Human Disposition (University of Chicago Press, 2021), Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen singles out Gustav Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze as the groundbreaking work of art marking the inception of modernism. She proposes a surprising new reading of the iconography of the mural, created in 1902 for a temporary exhibition in Beethoven’s honor at the Secession.
Placing particular emphasis on fundamental dimensions of the depiction of bodies in Klimt’s oeuvre—bodily weightlessness, buoyancy, and the characteristic motif of the “floating head”—the lecture will demonstrate that the Beethoven Frieze is a privileged artifact: it can help us understand a much broader phenomenon in European art and culture around 1900 that also reflects recent insights into human consciousness and the mind–body relation in art.
Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen is a professor at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. She holds a PhD in art history from Princeton University.
Vereinigung bildender KünstlerInnen Wiener Secession
In spirit of their motto “Die Zeit ihre Kunst. Der Kunst ihre Freiheit”, the Secession presents relevant contemporary forms of artistic expression in internationally oriented solo and thematic exhibitions. The Association of Visual Artists of the Vienna Secession is the world’s oldest independent exhibition house dedicated to contemporary art and has always been run by artists.
Lecture by Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen: “A New Look at the Beethovenfries”
16 Nov 2023/18:30-20:00H
Secession
Friedrichstraße 12, 1010 Wien, Österreich
