When you think of Vienna 100 years ago…what and who comes to mind?

Gustav Klimt, Sigmund Frued, Wittgenstein….such a fascinating period.

Gustav Klimt dominated Vienna in this period….

Famous, controversial and scandal-prone in his lifetime, Klimt continues to arose the passions of art lovers.

One of the first exhibits visitors see when they enter the display is Klimt’s 1887 painting of the final performance at Vienna’s old Burgtheater, attendend by the by great and grand.

Direct Art Australia is offering patrons who visit the Vienna Exhibition a chance to own their very own Gustav Klimt painting…simply click the image below!

Gustav Klimt Melbourne Winter Masterpieces Vienna Art and Design

13 June – 4 October 09
Open daily 10am – 5pm
Open until 9pm every Wednesday
Ground Level, NGV International
Admission fees apply

Dalí was a skilled draftsman, best known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealist work. His painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissance masters.[1][2] His best-known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in 1931. Dalí’s expansive artistic repertoire includes film, sculpture, and photography, in collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of media.

Dalí attributed his “love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes”[3] to a self-styled “Arab lineage,” claiming that his ancestors were descended from the Moors.

Dalí was highly imaginative, and also had an affinity for partaking in unusual and grandiose behavior, in order to draw attention to himself. This sometimes irked those who loved his art as much as it annoyed his critics, since his eccentric manner sometimes drew more public attention than his artwork

Persuasion:

Fashion in the Age of Jane Austen

22 May – 8 November 09
Myer Fashion and Textiles Galleries, Level 2
Free entry

The period from the mid 1790’s to about 1820 (which included all of Jane Austen’s adult life) seems to have been pretty much the only one between the middle ages and the 20th century when women’s clothing styles, in the predominantly Protestant and Catholic countries of Europe, were neither corseted or tightly-fitted from the waist up; nor hoop-skirted, crinolined, heavily full-skirted, or bustled below. Later (Victorian) authors such as Charlotte Brontë and Mrs. Gaskell sneered at the “scanty petticoats” of this period, but to our eyes these clothes generally seem much less burdensome (and much more like something somebody would actually wear in real life, instead of at a costume party) than the styles of the Victorian era.

Persuasion: Fashion in the Age of Jane Austen looks at the changes in fashion that occurred over Austen’s lifetime, with a focus on English women’s fashion during the first two decades of the nineteenth century. Drawing on work from the National Gallery of Victoria’s holdings of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fashion, prints and drawings, decorative arts and paintings, and complemented by key works from other Australian institutions and private collections, Persuasion broadly surveys the years from the 1770s to around 1830, one of the most dynamic periods in fashion.

The exhibition comprises over 300 works and covers all artistic media from painting to photography, fashion to film and architecture to jewellery.

Art Deco was a popular international design movement from 1925 until 1939, affecting the decorative arts such as architecture, interior design, and industrial design, as well as the visual arts such as fashion, painting, the graphic arts and film. This movement was, in a sense, an amalgam of many different styles and movements of the early 20th century, including Neoclassical, Constructivism, Cubism, Modernism, Bauhaus, Art Nouveau, and Futurism. Its popularity peaked in Europe during the Roaring Twenties[1] and continued strongly in the United States through the 1930s.[2] Although many design movements have political or philosophical roots or intentions, Art Deco was purely decorative. At the time, this style was seen as elegant, functional, and modern.
28 June to 5 October 2008

Open daily 10am–5pm
Open until 9pm every Wednesday
Ground Level, NGV International
Admission fees apply