A Kiss for all the World - Gustav Klimt and the Viennese Secession
26 March 2026 at 14:30:00
Moor Park Mansion, Rickmansworth
Booking closes:
19 March 2026
The Kiss by Gustav Klimt, 1907-8 - detail
BOOKING FOR THIS EVENT WILL OPEN IN FEBRUARY 2026
A search for salvation? A crisis of confidence in the future? So much of modern art and thought was born out of the crisis of political and social disintegration that characterised the turn-of-the-century Austro-Hungarian Empire. The ultra-conservative imperial city of Vienna became the cradle of modernism, not just in the creative arts but, in the years leading up to the First World War, in every aspect of thought, design, philosophy, psychoanalysis and politics.
Perhaps its embodiment, the Vienna Secession, led by the trailblazer Gustav Klimt, was a manifesto of artistic freedom, and its exhibitions and publications are still recognized as crucial moments in the history of European art. Klimt and his contemporaries explored complex areas of interpretation and new and exciting techniques, creating some of the most beautiful and seductive images of the 20th century.
In this special Afternoon Lecture our Speaker Douglas Skeggs will trace for us the course of this brief, often dark, but always dazzlingly inventive period of art.
The lecture will be followed by (optional) Afternoon Tea at 4.00pm.
Douglas Skeggs
Douglas Skeggs read Fine Art at Magdalene College Cambridge and has been a lecturer on paintings since 1980. He was the director of The New Academy of Art Studies for three years and is presently a regular lecturer at The Study Center, Christie's course 'The History of Art Studies' and other London courses. Among his more improbable venues for lectures are the bar on the QE2, the headquarters of MI5, the Captain's Room at Lloyds, and an aircraft hangar in a German NATO base.
He has written and presented various TV documentaries, notably the Omnibus programme on Whistler and the exhibition video on William Morris. Three one-man exhibitions of his paintings have been held in England and Switzerland. He has also published five novels, which have been translated into eight foreign languages, and his book River of Light: Monet's Impressions of the Seine, has sold over 30,000 copies in England, America and France.