Die zwei Schwestern: neoclassical taste

After three hours of train trip, really mainly passed out sleeping, departing from Budapest I finally arrived at home. No, I didn’t find out a very fast line between Hungary and Italy, not really. The fact is that I spend an entire day in Wien and really I felt so comfortably at home that I really couldn’t imagine having really left Budapest. The two cities are maybe the most outstanding example of how Secession was an European artistic movement, rather than a national one, able to share experiences and influences without, of course, renouncing to the inner national characteristic of the style.

The author here don’t affirm at all the two cities are identical, or they could be confused. Not at all, since there are differences, by either architectural, urbanistic and artistic point of view. however the development of the Secession and of the Szecesszio have some interconnections which are more evident when comparing some buildings and artistic production in general.

In this first insight, the neoclassical turn-of-the-century tendencies and related applications in the two cities are examined.

Let’s begin this trip. Noticeably, the development of the art fin-de-siecle in both the cities have a common point in a very particular attitude toward classicism:

A building in first distric, in Wien

a neoclassic tatse building in the 6th District in Budapest …

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The aesthetic of neoclassical style ornament are quite common in various building of the two cities. First two rows, a selection of Wien …

And just below its sister Budapest:

However this neoclassical approach is far from being an arrival point in the development of the turn of the century art in both the former Austro-Hungarian Empire capital cities. On the contrary, it is just a starting point, a material and matter of study which was very soon trasfigurated in order into a true modern style. A style in which the line rapidly became much more smooth and curve, in which the neoclassical element was melted with the new attitude toward japan bidimensional art and finally able to figure out a human figure wich was reduced to the very essential line. The line as style in itself, a line which was able to deal with human passions. A line which was able to translate the passions themselves into style, and which through the evocative power of the style and of the beauty, which was able to determine strong reactions in fruitiers. At that point, when this development happened, the classic themes of ten or five years earlier, became sign of the secessionist artistic language who eventually were able to use them in a completely different expression, in other more philosophical terms , a new hermeneutic which was opened to other linguistic horizons as well (japonisme, linearism, symbolism, to quote some of them). Being able to speak different since being able to speak wider, with a more rich expressions; being lover of the beauty since being able to enlarge the vocabulary used to express the adoration of it (or her ? ). The widespread of the symbolic language of the secession had different heritages which eventually were exploited, and neoclassicism was one of them. and the following are effective examples of neoclassical term spoken in secessionist expressions. Not strangely, similar discourses could been heard either in Budapest and Wien, the two sisters, die Schwestern des Secession …

Budapest:

and Wien: