„The 1960ies: a fantastic modern“ in the MUSA Vienna reveals the spirit of a decade marked by radical upheaval, along the way the entire who’s who of Austrian art is displayed.

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Not only in politics, also in the domain of the arts the 1960ies were a decade of worldwide upheaval, the radical changes can also be retraced in the Austrian art scene of that period. At the beginning of the decade, art became in many cases more political and provocative in its statements, drawing on subjects in between the realities of the mundane and the artistic. The convergence of high culture and popular culture has its beginnings in these movements, followed by a fundamental challenge to the previous notion of art. more »

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Esra Ersen is interested in the formation of identity and its transformation in different contexts or power structures. Her work “Carousel” shown in the exhibition tanzimat (Augarten Contemporary 21.1.2010 - 16.5.2010) was produced with high school students from Cologne. Ersen asked the students to model Turkish heads out of clay.

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Gulsun Karamustafa is a contemporary artist and film maker from Turkey. In 2009 she was the artist in residence at the Augarten Contemporary in Vienna. For the exhibition tanzimat (Augarten Contemporary 21.1.2010 - 16.5.2010) she produced a new piece entitled “modernity unveiled/interweaving histories”. In the interview with CYA Karamustafa talks about this piece.

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Franz Kapfer is an artist from Austria. His interest lies in patterns of representation.
In his work “Trophies” in exhibition tanzimat (Augarten Contemporary 21.1.2010 - 16.5.2010) he examines cliché representations of Turkish motives in Austrian architecture.

Developed in parallel to the major Prince Eugen of Savoy exhibition at the Lower Belvedere, tanzimat at the Augarten Contemporary examines the continual reorganization of historical constructs and devices that underscore the neverending project of modernity.

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It is an interesting fact that the fez, the iconic Turkish hat that was originally instituted as a “modernizing” symbol for the Ottoman Empire in 1826, was later banned in Turkey in 1925, also as part of a “modernizing” reform. It is also interesting to note that after the invention of synthetic dyes, the main manufacturer of the fez—which up until that point had been colored with native berry juice—was located in Austria, that is, until it was boycotted by Turkey in 1908 more »

“And if there ever was an age when one sees varied and wondrous things I believe that ours is one” (Mateo Bandello, 1554) This podcast was realised with the kind support of UNIQUA ArtCercles.

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Miniatures made of ivory, rhino and narwhale horn. Ostrich eggs, symbols of power and resistance as the ancient mythology says the giant birds live on stones and iron. Seychelles nuts washed ashore on the Maldives. Bezoars, rocks found in the stomach of ruminant animals that are rumoured to dispel melancholy, composed in the finest art of metalworking. Arty watches, wondrous automatic machines, quadrants, astrolabes and other scientific instruments. The most bizarre monstrosities, Madonna figures and Dionysian satyrs standing in a row with mystic animals thrown out of the deepest oceans. more »

Centuries do not have clear boundaries, rather, they flow into each other in the same way that the years which they are made up of do. The transition period in which the nineteenth and twentieth century collapsed into each other was called the fin de siècle. The fact that something was coming to an end was a modern perspective.

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In 1918, Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Otto Wagner, and Koloman Moser all died within a year. Accompanying them was the fall of turn-of-the-century, successfully up-and-coming, modern Austrian art. So what remained in terms of artistic progress? For one thing, there was Oskar Kokoschka. He had moved to Dresden and fled—as did a majority of the intellectual and artistic heavyweights—upon the rise of the National Socialists: first to Prague, and then to London. And then there was Herbert Boeckl, who stayed behind. This starting point was not exactly ideal for the development of the painter: an authoritarian, conservative, anti-modern mood prevailed in Austria, along with a shortage of moral support from colleagues. more »

In 1908, Adolf Loos published a polemic modern architecture pamphlet titled “Ornament and Crime”. Ornamentation, he argues, is redundant, cost-intensive kitschy decoration, and an expression of the cultural backwardness which can be found in primitive cultures, and which is not representative of modern man. “The barbarian era,” the architect concludes, “is finally past.”

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Only a few years later, Siegfried Kracauer showed that even the modern era, which strives for practicality and rationalization, produces ornaments on its surface. He argues that these ornamentations are an expression of modern mass society, visual representations of modern life and its realities. The ornamentation is not taken into consideration by the masses who produce it. It develops without their knowledge. They do not produce it consciously or on purpose, which is why it resembles “the aerial shots of landscapes and cities”, in which patterns only emerge for the distant viewer. more »

In 1771, Louis Sébastien Mercier published the novel 2440, which depicts an utopia of a convenient, more ideal, distant future world. Utopias had already existed in the past. However, in Mercier’s utopia, the ideal world is not stumbled upon – for example, through a storm in which one is shipwrecked and washed up onto the shore of the ideal place – but rather a result of a linear history that is played out through human action.

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“Some were immediately enlightened from the beginning, but the majority of the nation was still careless and childlike. Gradually, the population became more intelligent. We still have much more to accomplish than what we have created so far. We are only halfway there,” according to the caretakers of the future regarding the intermediate conditions of the half-realized utopia. Mercier’s narration of the gradual realization of an ideal world carried out by mankind is a modern vision – with human capital, reason, and faith, as applied to technical, rational progress, as its focal points. more »