Transition from Traditional Vienna

The Viennese middle class had enjoyed a large amount of parliamentary power as liberals earlier in mid-nineteenth century. As such, the bourgeoisie had been a highly moralistic and scientific group, deeply rooted in the liberal attitudes of reason and organized law. For those who preached the importance of individual rights, however they were still impressively attached to Victorian cultural ideals, committed to the principles of coolly intellectual and strictly apollonian thought processes. With the end of the century, however, came the fall bourgeoisie liberalism, symbolized by the election of the anti-Semitic Catholic Karl Lueger as mayor to the city in 1897. Gone from middle class life was the security of political power, and with the fall came a new vulnerability to the temptations of the aristocracy. It was here that the shift began: how was the strictly logical and ordered bourgeoisie to conform in order to find favor with the aesthetically oriented upper class? When the scientifically and moralistically oriented tried to wrap their minds around the aristocracy’s preoccupation with grace and style, the outcome was nothing short of a breach in emotional security and self-assurance.
It is not a coincidence that the Secession movement was founded in 1897, the same year as the final crumbling of liberal power. As the bourgeoisie began losing power and facing the conflict between scientific and aesthetic views, so rose the tendency towards introspective—some say narcissistic—inclinations. Klimt’s flat and idyllic subjects are constantly in danger of being engulfed by their extravagant, glittering surroundings. The art reflects Klimt’s reaction against the liberal bourgeoisie culture of traditional rationalism. Most of his commissioned portraits society ladies, for example, depict faces beautifully colored and lifelike, utterly two-dimensional.