For incentive operations, a visit to Vienna is a holiday with high cultural added value, as it gives participants a chance to learn about a debate that founded modernity. Imperial Vienna is, of course, the great classic,\" notes Petra Pardjo-Grammel, incoming director of the Mondial incoming agency, \"but the Secession aspect is an integral part of the architectural discovery, which is the city's strong point, even if, in terms of Art Nouveau, Prague and Budapest have more monuments. Perhaps the best way to get to grips with the great movement of artistic protest that was the Viennese Secession, founded in 1897, is to begin your discovery of the city on the Ringstrasse. This is the model for everything that the protagonists of the Secession movement rejected: an Italian Renaissance university, a neo-Gothic town hall (Rathaus), a Greek-inspired parliament (Reichsrat), a Baroque theatre (Burgtheater), as well as an Academy of Fine Arts, an opera house, a stock exchange, museums and apartment blocks resembling ducal palaces. In short, it's ostentatious art, ceremonial architecture whose aesthetics are absorbed in the cult of the past, neglecting functional needs and ignoring the creative potential of the new wave of contemporary artists.<\/p>\n
\"To each age its art, to art freedom\": the motto of the secessionists advocated an art freed from eclecticism, a \"new\" art as it emerged in Germany, the Netherlands and France, an art regenerated by the contribution of young Viennese artists. \"Our art is not a battle of modern artists against the old, but the promotion of the arts against the hucksters who pass themselves off as artists and who have a commercial interest in not allowing art to flourish. Commerce or art, that is what is at stake in our Secession. It is not an aesthetic debate but a confrontation between two states of mind\", reads the first issue of Ver Sacrum (Sacred Spring), the group's magazine.<\/p>\n
Vienna is a well-known destination, so there is a demand for different types of stay,\" explains Gerda Maria Knapp, Associate Incentive Director of the incoming agency Top Travel. The nature of the group is decisive. If they are dealers staying with their wives, Imperial Vienna will win them over. On the other hand, Secession has every chance of attracting a group of young salespeople. Essentially urban, the major stages of fin-de-si\u00e8cle Vienna take in public and private buildings, caf\u00e9s, museums and underground stations... an opportunity to explore the world of architects Otto Wagner and Adolph Loos, painters grouped around Klimt, president of the Secession group, and a handful of graphic designers and craftsmen whose work provided lasting inspiration for the twentieth century.<\/p>\n
The logical place to start is the Secession pavilion, built in 1898 by Joseph Olbrich to provide \"art lovers with a calm and elegant refuge\". A stone's throw from the Ring, the building, financed by patrons from the industrial bourgeoisie, boasts an immaculate white fa\u00e7ade and a dome of laurel leaves celebrating Art Nouveau. Its purpose, to showcase the work of the secessionists, led it to adopt a free interior plan for its main hall, a vast plateau that could be adapted to the figurations of each exhibition using a modular design based on movable walls, an innovative principle that reflected the attention the artists paid to the presentation of their works. The result is a venue that can be easily customised and made private for cocktails, dinners or product launches.<\/p>\n
This is where Klimt's major work, the Beethoven frieze, created in 1902 on the theme of the Ninth Symphony, is exhibited. Spanning 34 metres and three walls, the frieze draws the viewer \"into\" the work, a visual adaptation of a musical work. Most of Klimt's work can be found a little further along, in the south-east of the city. The Belvedere, a breathtaking Baroque ensemble of two palaces commissioned by Prince Eug\u00e8ne of Savoy, houses the world's largest collection of Klimt's paintings, including The Kiss, a sensual sublimation of amorous passion by a couple kneeling on a flower bed, seemingly levitating, transported by a fusion of harmony. The eroticism of the leader of the secessionists is powerful, as was that of his friend Egon Schiele, in a more crude vein, as can be seen at the Leopold Museum, in the heart of the Museums Quartier, one of the world's largest cultural complexes set up on the site of the former imperial stables on the Ringstrasse. His shocking nudes earned him a short stay in prison. But the master of Austrian Expressionism cannot be reduced to this aspect of his work. Overcome by a heightened sensitivity, the artist, who died of Spanish flu at the age of 28, had found his style some ten years earlier: the transcription of an anguished interiority through eccentric positions of the body and faces with distorted and grimacing features, permanently disturbing the viewer. Just like the works of Oskar Kokoschka, baptized \"the chief savage\", another early genius of Expressionism.<\/p>\n
This microcosm of the artistic avant-garde, bound together by a shared sensibility, was discovered and appreciated in the hushed atmosphere of the Viennese caf\u00e9s, which at the time were an unrivalled institution for keeping up to date, as Stefan Zweig, himself a regular customer at the time, would testify. In a good Viennese caf\u00e9, you could find newspapers and art magazines from all over the world: \"Perhaps nothing contributed more to the intellectual mobility and international outlook of the Austrian than the ease with which he could read up on all events in the caf\u00e9 and discuss them in a circle of friends. We spent hours there every day and nothing escaped our notice. Cultural centres, then, and for the most part still in operation. The Caf\u00e9 Central is as crowded today as it was when Freud, Zweig and Trotsky frequented it. The in-house pianist's repertoire, from waltzes to standards by Trenet or Michel Legrand (Les parapluies de Cherbourg!), is lost in the hubbub of people aged 17 to 77: schoolchildren, students, tourists or colleagues who have come here to share a glass of gespritzter. Viennese caf\u00e9s are always crowded, with regulars reserving their tables as they would at a restaurant in France.<\/p>\n
Schiele, Klimt and Kokoschka met at the Museum caf\u00e9, designed by Loos in 1899, and later at the American Bar, another work by Loos inaugurated in 1909, this time a tiny caf\u00e9 whose designer succeeded in visually increasing the surface area by using mirrors around a coffered ceiling. Most of these establishments can be privatised for lunch, snacks or dinner,\" explains Gerda Maria Knapp, Associate Incentive Director of the Top Travel incoming agency. The caf\u00e9 Central is on the ground floor of the Ferstel palace (1860), which can also be privatised, so a number of combinations are possible; we often use its inner courtyard, which is very pleasant in the summer months.\"<\/p>\n
Adolf Loos was a fierce critic of the aesthetics of the Ring. \"These palaces (...) are not even made of the material they are made of. They give the illusion of being built either in stone, like the Romanesque and Tuscan palaces, or in stucco, like the Baroque buildings in Vienna\". However, they are built of brick, adorned with nailed cement ornaments... \"A parvenu approach,\" laments the architect, \"inauthentic: the individual who passes himself off as higher than he is is called a swindler.\" Also highly critical of Art Nouveau as implemented by the Secession, Loos the radical built little in Vienna, apart from villas and a building that provoked acerbic comments: the Michaelerplatz building. Housing a bank, the Looshaus, as it is known today, is striking for its smooth facade, in stark contrast to the treatment of the ground and mezzanine floors. A proponent of the truth of materials whose nobility is self-sufficient without the need to add to it, Loos is the pillar of modern architecture and its constructive approach, which extends from the inside out to create quality living spaces that resonate with their purpose.<\/p>\n
Among his contemporaries, the only architect who stood out for him was Otto Wagner, who in the second half of his career focused on the functionality of buildings. The architect built many buildings in Vienna, including the Post Office Savings Bank, a sober marble fa\u00e7ade housing rational interior spaces. The glass-roofed counter room, bathed in overhead light, contributes to the well-being of depositors, and its transparency is an unambiguous sign that it is a trustworthy establishment.<\/p>\n
It was this same 'modern' concern to adapt the building to its function that governed the design of the Saint-L\u00e9opold church, where the architect was interested in many details: a slightly sloping floor so that all the worshippers had good visibility, natural lighting only from the side to avoid glare, careful acoustics, and so on. These qualities of use are reflected in the metro stations he designed. One of them was built especially for the imperial family to mark the inauguration of the Stadtbahn. The Hofpavillon (Court Pavilion), which was used only once, can be rented out to private individuals, as can the first villa he built in 1886, a \"country\" house now in the 14th arrondissement. Inspired by the Renaissance, it lacks the purity of his later works, but the magic works: here you can recapture the splendour of the upper middle classes at the turn of the 20th century by organising a fancy dress ball. The ball, the waltz, remains an essential part of the stay,\" says Gerda Maria Knapp, \"the theme can be that of the 1920s, but we're spoilt for choice. Vienna is home to Europe's largest costume manufacturer and hire company, Lambert Hofer. This company, founded in 1862, has supplied the costumes for countless period films, including the famous Sissi films, the real ones, starring Romy Schneider!<\/p>\n
The city's imperial past is never far away. A stay with a Secession theme doesn't mean you can't discover the Baroque side of the city. Until June, the major exhibition devoted to Alfons Mucha at the Belvedere Palace provides the perfect opportunity to confront Art Nouveau with a major building of Baroque architecture.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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