DU2323 Vienna and Beyond: Art and Architecture in Austria-Hungary, 1873-1918

Faculty of Arts
Spring 2020
Extent and Intensity
2/0/0. 4 credit(s). Type of Completion: k (colloquium).
Teacher(s)
Matthew Rampley, B.A., Ph.D. (lecturer)
Christian Drobe, Dr. phil. (assistant)
Mgr. Marta Filipová, Ph.D. (assistant)
Julia Secklehner, M.Phil., Ph.D. (assistant)
Guaranteed by
Matthew Rampley, B.A., Ph.D.
Department of Art History – Faculty of Arts
Contact Person: Matthew Rampley, B.A., Ph.D.
Supplier department: Department of Art History – Faculty of Arts
Timetable
Thu 12:00–13:40 K31
Prerequisites
There are no pre-requisites for this course
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is offered to students of any study field.
Course objectives
This course offers a critical account of art and architecture in Austria-Hungary from 1873, the year of the World Fair in Vienna, to 1918, when Austria-Hungary collapsed. Its main focus is on Vienna, but it will also discuss examples from other sites in the Habsburg Empire, e.g. Prague, Budapest, for comparison and context.

It examines the ways in which art and architecture both reflected and also shaped the cultural politics of the late nineteenth-century in Vienna and elsewhere in Austria-Hungary. The course considers not only central and well-known individual artists and architects such as Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Otto Wagner and Koloman Moser, but also broader thematic topics, including, for example, museums and exhibitionary practices, debates on folk and vernacular culture, historicism and national traditions, gender and sexuality; urbanisation and the experience of modernity; photography and mass media.

Being delivered in English, the course will also include a session on the use of academic English and styles of writing.
Learning outcomes
After completing the course successfully the student will be able to:
- identify and critically analyse some of the major developments in the history of the art and visual culture of Vienna of the period 1873-1918
- demonstrate an understanding and knowledge of specific works of art and visual culture of this period in the light of the themes addressed in the course
- demonstrate a critical historical knowledge of specific cultural, social and political factors informing the practice of art and architecture of this period
- critically engage with the concepts, values and debates that inform the study of this period
Syllabus
  • (1) Building a Modern City: Historicism, the Ringstrasse and Urbanism
  • (2) The City as a Melting Pot: Nations, identities and Migrations
  • (3) Czech and Austrian Mates. Masculinity and Homosexuality around 1900
  • (4) Femmes fragiles and national heroines: Women in the Fin de Siecle
  • (5) Early Photography: Pictorialism, portraits and documentation
  • (6) The Rise of the Printed Press: Fine art and mass media around 1900
  • (7) Secessionism: Aestheticism as Revolt
  • (8) In Praise of Paris: Modernist Currents in Prague
  • (9) Out of the City: Rural Idylls and the Search for Authenticity
  • (10) Cultures on Display: World Fairs and International Exhibitions
  • (11) For the Improvement of Taste: Museums, Design and the Applied Arts
  • (12) Academic English and Styles of Writing
Literature
    required literature
  • CLEGG, Elizabeth. Art, design and architecture in Central Europe, 1890-1920. New Haven: Yale University, 2006, x, 305. ISBN 0300111207. info
  • VERGO, Peter. Art in Vienna 1898-1918 : Klimt, Kokoschka, Schiele and their contemporaries. Repr. London: Phaidon Press Limited, 2001, 256 s. ISBN 0714829676. info
  • SHOWALTER, Elaine. Sexual anarchy : gender and culture at the Fin de Siècle. London: Virago, 1992, 242 stran. ISBN 9781853812774. info
  • SCHORSKE, Carl E. Fin-de-siècle Vienna : politics and culture. 1st ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980, xxx, 378. ISBN 0394505964. info
    recommended literature
  • Ways to Modernism :Josef Hoffmann, Adolf Loos and their impact. Edited by Andrea Bocco Guarneri - Christian Witt-Dörring - Matthias Boeckl - Ch. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2015, 333 s. ISBN 9783035603774. info
  • RAMPLEY, Matthew. The Vienna School of art history : empire and the politics of scholarship, 1847-1918. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013, 281 stran. ISBN 9780271061580. info
  • ALOFSIN, Anthony. When buildings speak : architecture as language in the Habsburg Empire and its aftermath, 1867-1933. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2006, xi, 326. ISBN 0226015068. info
  • MORAVÁNSZKY, Ákos. Competing visions : aesthetic invention and social imagination in Central European architecture, 1867-1918. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1998, xv, 508. ISBN 0262133342. info
  • JENSEN, Robert. Marketing modernism in fin de siècle Europe. 1st pbk. print. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996, vii, 367. ISBN 0691029261. info
Teaching methods
Lectures and class discussion; reading
Assessment methods
An written essay of 7 - 10 A4 pages (based on 1800 characters per page).
Language of instruction
English
Further Comments
Study Materials
The course is taught only once.
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