Gustav Klimt, Beethoven Frieze,: Typhoeus, Lasciviousness, Wantonness, and Imtemperance, 1902, photo: Jorit Aust”/>
Many travelers visit the Belvedere Palace in Vienna, Austria to see Gustav Klimt’s ‘The Kiss’.
Another representative work of Klimt is a large mural measuring 34 meters in length and 2 meters in height. This is ‘Beethoven Frieze’ based on Beethoven’s 9th Symphony ‘Ode to Joy’.
Around 1900, Vienna, Austria experienced a turbulent history.
All of Europe rejected the Academy and the wind of avant-garde art such as Barbizon and Impressionism blew, while Viennese society, which maintained the monarchy until the end, fell into aestheticism.
It was also a time of contradiction, with a splendid city on the ground and poverty and crime on the outside. Vienna, faced with these contradictions, tended to become a socialist ‘Red Vienna’, but was later occupied by the Nazis and became a city that went back and forth between extremes.
![Korean contemporary art encountered with Klimt’s ‘Beethoven Frieze’ [영감 한 스푼]](https://dimg.donga.com/wps/NEWS/IMAGE/2024/10/24/130285628.1.jpg "Korean contemporary art encountered with Klimt’s ‘Beethoven Frieze’ [영감 한 스푼]")
Among these, the art that captures the atmosphere of Vienna, which was overflowing with ‘aestheticism’, is Klimt’s gorgeous works.
For the first time, Korean contemporary art was properly introduced next to works containing such history. I got to visit the site in person and introduce it in today’s newsletter.
DMZ in ‘Golden Cabbage’
Vienna’s art museum ‘Sechesion’ is famous for Klimt’s ‘Beethoven Frieze’. Even on the day I visited, I could see audiences lining up to see this work even before the doors opened.
Among them, several students from local art schools stood out. This is because this is a modern art museum that not only exhibits Klimt’s works, but also regularly holds special exhibitions.
The exhibition ‘Shadow Shapes’ was being held here, introducing Korean contemporary art properly to Austria for the first time.
This exhibition, planned by Kim Seon-jeong, artistic director of the Art Sonje Center, started with ‘Real DMZ’, which has been held in the Demilitarized Zone since 2012. In other words, a contemporary art exhibition featuring various ideas originating from Korea’s demilitarized zone was held in the ‘Golden Cabbage’ museum.
This exhibition does not only consist of works by Korean artists. The photo above is the first sight you see when entering the exhibition hall entrance, and you can see a large installation work by Adrian Villar Rojas from Argentina.
It is a reinterpretation of the 1969 moon landing, and the figure with a very heavy head in the center is impressive. This figure holds Michelangelo’s David statue in his hands.
The author tells the story of the Cold War through the space exploration race between the United States and the Soviet Union, and Greek classical art, which is brilliant but also reminds us of imperialism.
Lim Min-wook’s ‘Corehy – Standing Alone’, shown behind this work, is a painting painted on a military blanket. This work was created with the idea that in the military, soldiers cannot freely control their bodies or thoughts, but they cannot even control their dreams when they sleep under a blanket. After this, ‘Obad V’, created by artist Lee Bul using barbed wire from a DMZ surveillance post, was also displayed.
<img src="https://dimg.donga.com/wps/NEWS/IMAGE/2024/10/24/130285653.1.jpg" alt="Forms of the Shadow, installation view with works by Young In Hong (left), Lee Bul (center), Tomoko Yoneda (right), Secession 2024, photo Iris Ranzinger”/>
The shadow of the Cold War
Migration, conflict, etc.
To the many shadows of the world… .
Although this exhibition started at the DMZ, the location is Austria, so the content starts from the Cold War and division and expands to other contemporary social issues.
Turkiye writer Nilva Guiresh films people climbing local mountains to get a phone signal in the eastern part of the country, where decades of conflict have left a severe lack of infrastructure.
Ramiro Wong’s ‘Notes on Migration’ series shows works that are made by collecting leftover dishes, wrapping them, and putting them in a suitcase. This artist cooks traditional dishes from the place where he was born using local ingredients in each region he exhibits. The taste of food, which cannot be perfectly reproduced, but is not completely remote, makes us think about the lives of people living away from their hometowns.
A video work will also be shown in which ‘non-conformists’, including musicians, artists, poets, anti-militarists, environmentalists, immigrants, and queers, perform funeral ceremonies at an abandoned resort in Jeju to end a world built on class and division. ‘Funeral of this Order’ by Jane Jin Kaizen.
“‘Cool’ Korea,
“I get to know a deeper side of myself.”
Bettina Spohr, a curator at Sechesion who also viewed the exhibition, mentioned the recent election results in Austria (the extreme right received the most votes) and talked about the horrors of war. In this way, local curators and writers expressed serious interest in the issue of Korea’s division.
I was able to meet director Ramish Daha and hear more details about the process of opening the exhibition. Daha, an artist, said he was exposed to a lot of Korean pop culture through streaming services during the pandemic.
He said, “In Europe, the general public has images of ‘cool’ South Korea and ‘horrible dictatorship’ North Korea through mass media.”
He confessed that he was surprised to see the production process of Ham Kyung-ah’s work, which was commissioned by a North Korean traditional embroidery artist through an intermediary.
He also says, “Austria experienced two world wars and the Cold War in the 20th century, and has recently been under pressure from the extreme right and concerns that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will spread to Europe.”
In this regard, he said he wanted to invite Korean art works and an exhibition planned by a curator from Korea, where the Cold War is still ongoing.
“Jecession has works by Klimt, but since it is still a modern art museum run by artists, we try to actively participate and speak out about modern society and politics. In that respect, I expect that we can learn something from Korean artists as well.”
※ ‘A Spoonful of Inspiration’ is a newsletter that introduces news from across the art world, focusing on various examples of creativity that can be seen in art. Published every Thursday morning at 7am.
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