A kiss changes the world
Exhibitions and other events of the Klimt Year 2012, Vienna
MúzeumCafé 32.
The former villa of Gustav Klimt was ceremoniously opened in Wien-Hietzing on 30 September earlier this year. It was the peak of a series of events whereby the 150th anniversary of Klimt’s birth is being commemorated by the imperial city. The series of exhibitions that began last year with Pioneers of Modernism, Gustav Klimt/Josef Hoffmann in the Lower Belvedere is continuing in the autumn of 2012, and the final memorial exhibition, 150 Years Gustav Klimt in the Upper Belvedere, will close only in January 2013. The events of The Art Trade Celebrates Klimt, which started in March, will also run over to next year. Nine of Vienna’s prestigious art dealers have teamed up to shed light not only on Klimt’s works, but also on his cultural-political significance and his influence on the art of his age. They do not have to make a huge effort since Klimt and his younger fellow artists, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka, and in a wider sense the Secession and the Wiener Werkstätte, have for years represented a very important appeal for cultural tourism aimed at Vienna. The booklet published in seven languages by Vienna Tourist Offie to mark the anniversary year recommends the artists of Wiener Modern together, for example, with Otto Wagner’s pupil, Joseph Maria Olbrich, who designed the Secession Building in 1898 with its motto still showing on the façade: “To every age its art – to art its freedom”. One of Klimt’s most important works, the Beethoven Frieze, can still be seen there today. The Vienna Tourist Office worked for two years on preparing the events and chose ‘A kiss changes the world’ for the motto of the Klimt Year. The words refer to the artist’s most well-known and most often reproduced work, The Kiss, painted in 1907-1908. Klimt’s works will continue to have the same appeal in Vienna.