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From Paris to Vienna and then in America: the strange and uncertain light coming from the Salons de
la Rose+Croix to the new interpretation of Wiener Secession, until the American reinterpretation of
Symbolism into Imagism, and what this implies about political meaning of artistic expression.
Abstract
The main idea of the short essay starts as an effect of the recent exhibition organized by the
Guggenheim's Foundation and held in New York and then in Venice «The Salons of the
Rose+Croix (1892-1897)». There, especially through the filter of the three essays
accompanying the catalogue, we have the possibility to give the right focus to a moment often
neglected by art historicists and criticist of recent past.
The Wiener Secession began its activity exactly in 1897, the same year of the last R+C
exhibition, taking the heritage of this movement. The name of the movement came in reason of
those artists (painters, sculptors, and architects) who had resigned from the Association of
Austrian Artists. The first president of the Secession was Gustav Klimt. Remarking the close
aesthetic with the R+C movement, the official magazine was called Ver Sacrum.
The Secession can't have a destiny different from the meaning of its name. In 1905 a heavy
internal division lead Klimt to exit from the movement.
It was ten years later when a French critician described the anthology Des Imagistes (1914) as
descendants of the French Symbolists, leading the transition from earlier, Pre-Raphaelite velvet
style (which was into the basis of R+C Salon's experience) towards a harder one.
The name of William Carlos Williams inside this anthology gives evidence to the link with Beat
poets. As everybody knows, it was Williams to write an introduction for the book publication
of Ginsberg's Howl (1955).
Davide C. Crimi
FONDAZIONE M
Notes
The link between the Symbolist movement and Klimt, the celebrated
Vienna's artist, is given especially through the influence of Jan Toorop,
an artist that was part of the Parisians Salons. Jan Toorop was one of
the few Dutch artists to exhibit twice around the turn of the century at
the Vienna Secession. More important, Toorop's influence allowed Klimt
to know what was going on with in Paris, as the R+C Salons were
composing an alternative way to the bourgeoise annual Louvre's
exhibition, passing from a bourgeoise aesthetic to a idealistic conception
of Art as leading factor in emancipation of consciousness.
The Toorop cult in Vienna reached its peak with the twelfth Secession
(1901/2), yet, Klimt's attention towards Toorop dates from the 1890s,
and his work brings quotes including Toorop's works rarely shown
together such as Fatalism, Garden of Woes and Les Rodeurs
(source: https://www.gemeentemuseum.nl/en/exhibitions/toorop-in-vienna-inspiring-klimt).
Toorop was a man of East African origin, whose exoticism combined with the sinuous Art Nouveau
style produced works of a mysterious but decorative nature. If we compared Toorop's The Three
Brides (1893, Otterlo) with Klimt's Goldfish (1901-02, Solothurn) and Water-Snakes 1 (1904-07,
Vienna), we can see clearly the connection between the two, most markedly in the stylistic use of the
women's hair and their exaggeratedly narrow limbs.
In 1898 Die Sezession, the group's exhibition
house, was built, following the design by Joseph
Maria Olbrich. Inside, the building displayed
several other influential artists such as Max
Klinger, Eugène Grasset, Charles Rennie
Mackintosh, and Arnold Bocklin.
In 1905 Klimt suggested, in order to distinguish
art from design, to purchase the Gallery Miethke
as place where market the paying public. His
suggestion (whose supporters have been called
the "Stylists" - as opposed to the "Naturalists,"
primarily easel painters), was not approved; then
Klimt, Koloman Moser, Auchentaller, and several other prominent members (often called the
Klimtgruppe) formally resigned.
ecame
The heritage came back in Paris. The anthology Des Imagistes b
one of the most important and influential English-language collections of
modernist verse, including poems were by Aldington, H.D., Pound, F.S.
Flint, Skipwith Cannell, Amy Lowell, William Carlos Williams, James
Joyce, Ford Madox Ford, Allen Upward and John Cournos. In an article
in La France, 1915, the critic Remy de Gourmont described it as
descendants of the French Symbolists
The main artist in the Imagist's avant-garde, in a 1928 letter to the
French critic and translator René Taupin, Ezra Pound, specified the
debted to the Symbolist tradition, linking back via William Butler Yeats,
Arthur Symons and the Rhymers' Club generation of British poets to
Mallarmé.
Against romanticism and Victorian
poetry, imagism emphasized
simplicity, clarity of expression, economy of words and the use of
exacting visual images.
The name of William Carlos Williams inside this anthology gives
evidence to the link with Beat poets. As everybody knows, it was
Williams to write an introduction for the book publication of
Ginsberg's Howl (1955).
In 1914 D. H. Lawrence told Amy Lowell that Ezra Pound's imagism was "just an advertising scheme." He might have
added, "but what an advertising scheme!" As we will see, his suspicions of Pound the propagandist were justified. But Amy
Lowell appreciated the importance of imagism better than Lawrence did because she was still a relatively unknown artist.
Pound coined the term imagism in 1912 to help market some poems by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) that he was sending to Poetry
magazine. Since H.D. had published nothing to date, Pound shrewdly reasoned that her work would be more readily
accepted if she were identified with a group of poets. Pound appended to the manuscript the words "H.D., Imagiste" and
explained to Poetry's editor, Harriet Monroe, that H.D.'s poems were written "in the laconic speech of the Imagistes." When
Amy Lowell read H.D.'s poems in the January 1913 Poetry, she felt her own identity as a poet had been defined. Not only
Lowell but all aspiring poets, including some hostile to Pound's movement such as Conrad Aiken, now had to define
themselves in relation to this new literary phenomenon. Harriet Monroe referred to the "battle for Imagism" to indicate the
central importance the movement had in the pages of her journal. More important to Pound, however, was the larger battle
to establish what he called "our modern experiment." The rapid rise and fall of imagism provided the context in which
Pound developed his conception of modernism.
To consider the modernity of the aesthetic of some works that the Salons hosted, see here a suggestion
comparing two portraits, one of the Salons and the other one of a later artist. The Reader may do his
(her) researches.