Vienna comes to Lausanne

Founding members of the Viennese Secession. Gustav Klimt second from left, sitting in a chair.

MCBA – Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts

The building itself is impressive, newly built, it opened in October 2019. It is located in a new art district, called Plateforme 10, next to the main train station in Lausanne. It is the first museum here and construction is underway for another building that will house the Musée d’Elysée (photography) and mudac (Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts). This is due to open in late 2021.

For more information on Plateforme 10

Under the Skin. Vienna 1900, from Klimt to Schiele and Kokoschka.

These Viennese artists had a huge impact on art and in particular on the birth of modernism in the early twentieth century. They were part of a movement called the Vienna Secession, which played a major role in the broader Art Nouveau movement and was led by Gustav Klimt.

The exhibition tells the story of this group of artists from a new perspective, using skin as a theme. They rejected the conservative and redefined connections between individuals and the world, everyday objects and their surroundings, buildings and streets. At the same time the human body became an object of research in disciplines such as medicine and psychology. In 1900, Sigmund Freud published his major work ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ in which he analysed dreams in terms of unconscious desires and experiences.

Oskar Kokoschka, poster for an art show, 1908

My favourite part of the exhibition was the last section (on the second floor). I love the furniture and decorative objects. Many of these were produced by the Wiener Werkstätte, which was a production cooperative of artists and craftsmen. Their objective was to flood everyday life with artistic, high-quality products. Its trendsetting designs left a mark on design history and has influenced many 20^th century architects and designers, e.g. Bauhaus in Germany, Art Deco in America and Scandinavian design from 1940 to 1960.