Vienna: Art and Design

Another one of my favourite things about winter time is the Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibitions at the NGV. Yesterday we finally went along to the Vienna: Art and Design Exhibition. I literally look forward to these exhibitions all year and am never disappointed! While it didn’t quite blow me away like the Dali exhibition did a few years ago, it was still pretty amazing! We’re so lucky to have exhibitions of this standard every year. One curator said that Klimt’s portrait of Fritza Riedler would never leave the Belvedere again!



For me, Klimt was definitely the highlight of the show, and Emilie Flöge (1902) was my favourite. I could have looked at it all day. Despite having majored in art history at uni, I got away with never really studying Klimt. That may well be why I like his work so much; I only really judge it on beauty and my initial reaction, rather than background knowledge and analysis. Although, maybe if I had studied Klimt, I would have been less disappointed to discover that it was not the original Beethoven Frieze (1902) which was on display, but a replica! It was still amazing though.





While I’m not usually particularly interested in photography as art, I do love the works of some of the early pictorialist photographers. Heinrich Kuhn was one of the earliest photographers to use photography as a form of art and a few of his works were included in the exhibition. I am particularly in love with his autochromes. Although they didn’t actually have any on display, a number were shown on a little screen alongside lovely Mary Werner (1908).









It's definitely an opportunity not to be missed!