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Beethoven Frieze

Gustav Klimt, 1902

Gustav Klimt's Beethoven Frieze, made in 1902, is a mural cycle 215 cm high and 3414 cm long that runs around the upper walls of a room. It belongs to the Belvedere and is located in the Secession Building in Austria, the building for which it was conceived. Reading it means walking it, wall by wall, as a story told in line, pattern and gold.

Where to see it

The Beethoven Frieze is in the collection of the Belvedere and is located in the Secession Building, Austria. Because the work is owned by one institution and sited in another building, check the official websites of the Belvedere and the Secession for current display status, opening hours and ticketing before you plan your visit.

What to look for in person

The Longing for Happiness

The frieze opens with floating, elongated female figures drifting along the wall like a slow current. They embody humanity's longing for happiness. Look for the small group of kneeling, naked figures representing suffering humanity, who appeal to a knight in golden armour. He stands for the strong, well-armed hero who takes up the struggle for happiness on their behalf. Notice how Klimt leaves large stretches of the wall almost bare, so the figures read as a line of movement rather than a crowded scene, and your eye is pulled forward along the room.

The Hostile Forces

The central wall turns dark and dense. A huge ape-like giant, Typhoeus, fills the space with coiling, serpentine forms, flanked by his daughters, the three Gorgons. Around them are figures personifying Sickness, Madness and Death, as well as Lust, Wantonness and Excess, along with a hunched figure of Gnawing Grief. Above them, the longings of humanity float past. Compare the heavy patterning, gold and ornamental detail here with the sparser walls on either side; the sudden change in density is a key part of how the story is told.

The Kiss to the Whole World

The final wall resolves the struggle. The longing for happiness finds fulfilment in poetry and the arts, represented by a female figure playing a lyre, leading towards a choir of angels. At the end, a couple embraces in front of the choir, a reference to the line 'This kiss to the whole world' from Schiller's Ode to Joy, which Beethoven set in the finale of his Ninth Symphony. Look closely at the surface here: gilded and applied elements catch the light differently from the painted areas as you move.

About the painting

Gustav Klimt created the Beethoven Frieze in 1902 for an exhibition of the Vienna Secession, the association of artists he had helped to found. The exhibition was devoted to Ludwig van Beethoven and was conceived as a total work of art, in which architecture, painting and sculpture would combine around a central sculpture of the composer by Max Klinger. Klimt's contribution was a painted cycle running around the upper part of the walls of one room, which visitors passed through on their way through the show. The programme of the frieze follows an interpretation of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony associated with Richard Wagner: humanity longs for happiness, a hero confronts hostile forces, and longing is finally fulfilled in the arts and in an embrace that echoes Schiller's Ode to Joy. Klimt worked directly on the wall surface, combining painting with gilding and applied ornamental materials, and he deliberately left areas of the ground unpainted. The result is a work that is as much about rhythm and empty space as about its figures. The frieze was intended for a temporary exhibition, and it drew sharp criticism from some contemporaries, particularly for its frank treatment of the nude body in the Hostile Forces section. It was nonetheless preserved rather than destroyed, later removed from its original setting, and eventually restored. Today it belongs to the Belvedere and is located in the Secession Building in Austria. At 215 cm high and 3414 cm wide, it is best experienced by walking slowly along its full length.

Key facts

More by Gustav Klimt

• Danaë
• Death and Life
• Judith I — Belvedere
• Portrait of Margaret Stonborough-Wittgenstein
• Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I
• The Kiss — Belvedere

Sources

• Wikidata Q684689
• www.belvedere.at