Here, the young girl, depicted as tragic muse, is playing the kithera - instrument of Apollo, god of light and music - but her song is Dionysian (Friedrich Nietzsche had used the same symbols in The Birth of Tragedy). The instinctual becomes the subject of Klimt’s painting ‘Die Musik’ (Music). Over the entrance, within the gilded oriental decoration, are the entangled heads of the Medusas which emphasize the instinctual, irrational elements in art. The Secession building by Josef Maria Olbrich became their temple of art, a refuge for the art lover, and the inscription on the left side of the building, Ver Sacrum ( Sacred Spring), became their motto – art forever to be renewed – no longer just an imitation of an ancient past. Just as the young architects had objected earlier to the historicism of the Ringstrasse buildings, Klimt and his fellow artists now also refuted the established traditions of academic painting, in order to create the art of their time, searching for a new message and a new language, which became known as the Vienna Secession. He subsequently became the portrait painter of Vienna’s rich and famous.
Gustav Klimt started his career as architectural decorator just as the Ringstrasse program of monumental building entered its final phase – in fact, he had been hired to decorate the interior staircase of the Fine Arts Museum.
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