Review


The Fine Arts and Crafts of the Fin-de-siècle
Associate Editors: Síghle Bhreathnach-Lynch, Isa Bickmann, Nicola Gauld, Sarah Turner.
SUMMER 2008
REVIEWS
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WILHELM VON GLOEDEN
Review by *Isa Bickmann*
Mewo Kunsthalle Memmingen, Bahnhofstraße 1, 87700 Memmingen, Germany
Tel. 08331/850-771; Fax. 08331/850-772; mewo.kunsthalle@memmingen.de
27th January–10th October 2008. Open: Tuesday through Sunday and holidays 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.
In South Germany an exhibition is being shown with works by the photographer Wilhelm von Gloeden ‘... auch ich in Arkadien’ (‘And I too was in Arcadia’). Under this title, standing for idyll and beatitude, 400 photographs by von Gloeden from the Collection Heinz Peter Barandun, Zürich, Switzerland are exhibited. Oscar Wilde has been among the collectors of Gloeden’s works, so this exhibition may be recommended here along with some critical words on the exhibition catalogue and some ideas for further studies.
The central thing about the subjects of Wilhelm Baron von Gloeden is the fact that he shot photos of young naked men 100 years ago, which still causes quite a stir these days[1], where male nakedness is still connected with homosexuality and pictures of young naked boys with paederasty. The exhibited works in Memmingen are considered as controversial against the background of some cases in recent past.
Gloeden, who was born 16th September 1856 in Mecklenburg, Germany, and died 16th February 1931 in Taormina, Sicilia, suffered from a serious lung disease (tuberculosis) and lived therefore from 1876[2] in Taormina. He had studied art history and painting and was an enthusiast for the theatre. Being comparatively rich – the people in Sicily were quite poor at that time – gave him freedom in terms of his homosexuality, away from prudery and body rejection in Germany: in Taormina he found ‘the paradise on earth’[3]. Photographing local young boys without usual fig leafs on their genitals was revolutionary. A lack of sophistication and abandon mark the life of the male village youth (normally girls were not allowed to stay outside the houses). It was usual in those days to see kids running naked through Taormina.
The boys (and a few girls, too) were arranged in sublime, pathetic and – seen with modern eyes – quite kitschy gestures in settings à l’antiquité with auloi (double flutes), laurel wreaths or flowers, antique bowls, draperies, columns and leopard’s skin, in front of balustrades and the sea, in landscapes with antique monuments. Sicily was the right place for that. Von Gloeden uses the plate camera, which allows him to work en plein air. The models were fishermen, countrymen, whose bodies show traces of their hard works, weals and dirty feet were visible in some photographs.
Being an amateur in photography Gloeden begins with learning by doing. Then, becoming a professional he worked as an independent photo artist in the meaning of today. His studio became famous through mentioning in the ‘Baedeker’ and publishing the Taormina nudes in The Studio, 1893, June, p. 101-105 under the title ‘The nude in photography: With some studies taken in the open air.’

The Studio, 1893, p.107
At the International Exhibition of the Photographic Society of Great Britain 1893 Gloeden won a medal. After 1900 he got into the profitable postcard business with the Berlin Company Adolph Engel. All this made Taormina really famous and tourism began changing its primitiveness. Von Gloeden tried to give back what the people of Taormina had done for him: He opened bank accounts for his models, with a share in the profits of the pictures’ sales. By 1902 eight hotels had been established. Politicians, aristocrats, artists, poets visited Gloeden’s studio. The visitors’ book, which is lost, offered entries of ‘the who is who’ from Europe. Oscar Wilde visited von Gloeden’s studio in 1897.
Five years after Gloeden’s death, in 1936 big parts of his oeuvre were destroyed by fascist policemen, and his pictures were forbidden in Italy until the end of the sixties. The oeuvre of von Gloeden is estimated to be 3000-7000 photographs[4] although many photographs by his cousin Wilhelm (Guglielmo) Plüschow (1852-1930), who worked after 1870 in Rome and Naples, were attributed to Gloeden. If stamps are missing, it is hard to assign them to Plüschow or Gloeden, apart from the fact that Plüschow made photos in a more pornographic way, Plüschow’s pupil and lover Vincenzo Galdi (1871-1961) was another nude photographer in Italy.
We do not know very much about von Gloeden. Somewhat we can learn from Roger Peyrefitte[5], who met contemporary witnesses fifteen years after von Gloeden’s death, so it is a pity that the curators of the exhibition in Memmingen could not offer a better catalogue-book. Of course, there is a smart, but inappropriate, layout and good and many illustrations. The curators were looking to classify and readjust the Barandun-Collection. But texts on a cultural and historical integration, aethetical-philosophical basics and on Gloeden’s ideals and his reception in Europe are missing. By the way: a proof-reading of the texts would do no harm.
The book begins with an article by Joseph-Kiermeier-Debre, one of the curators, focussing on the link between Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s art theory and Gloeden’s ‘neo-classical’ photography including Winckelmann’s homosexuality and the education canon of the second half of the 19th century trained with the texts by Goethe as well as presenting the acceptance of homosexuality in these days. The Apollo Belvedere is the paradigmatic ideal.
The second chapter of the Catalogue, a virtual interview between von Gloeden and Volker Klüpfel in a 19th century linguistic style, is far away from a required seriousness, e.g.: Klüpfel: ‘After your death in 1931 ...’ Von Gloeden: ‘Oh dear, don’t remind me of that ...’
On the other hand, worth reading is the text by Hans-Wolfgang Bayer. He goes further into the question of Gloeden’s position in Taormina and analyses the role of the models. The article by Gioia Dal Molin concerning the leopard’s skin as requisite in art history is important. She refers to the Jewish tradition of the fall of mankind (p. 80). Adam and Eve choose a leopard’s skin covering their nakedness. The leopard is associated with chase and tamed wilderness. Also it is an attribute of Artemis and Dionysos, symbolizing strength and fertility. Unfortunately the author stops at Eugène Durieu, whose photographs Eugène Delacroix had used instead of life-models. I think it would be worthwhile to look at the contemporaries because the fin de siècle theory of the Androgyne would give some additional results.
In 1896 Fernand Khnopff painted The Sphinx, or, The Caresses (Musée Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels). Here we can find von Gloeden’s picture elements: the Androgyn, the landscape with cypresses, the sphinx in the costume of a leopard.

So we have to ask: did Khnopff know the photographs by Gloeden? I would think so, because we know Khnopff was anglophile, he loved English art and literature and since 1895 he became correspondent of the art magazine The Studio, that had published Gloeden’s photographies two years before. Joséphin Péladan’s theory evokes the androgyne with virginal beauty, wearing the symbol of the sun[6] (in mythology the leopard wears the attribute of the moon), full of erotic attraction, but in a state of purity. The sphinx is – if we follow Péladan – the gynander, the female androgyne. Khnopff exhibited in the Rose-Croix Salons of Péladan in 1892, 1893, 1894, 1897[7]. Samas, protagonist in Péladan’s novel ‘L’androgyne’ is threatend by seduction because of his beauty. This may be the line von Gloeden walked on: innocent eroticism in the meaning of male love – if you follow Plato – the highest form of love.
The Androgyne was in vogue at the fin de siècle. He and the Dandy, all these are facets of one coin. So is it wrong, as Fritz Franz Vogel says, that an effeminisation of the men’s world has been accomplished only in our days (p.142). Vogel’s essay on the male nude in photography has some important facts and a forecast of today’s male nude photography and the Forerunners in nude photography like Thomas Eakins (1848-1916) with sportsmen, rowers, wrestlers, bathers, boxers and Muybridge’s motion studies up to photographers of a muscular masculinity of the 20th century like Kurt Reichert, Herb Ritts, Leni Riefenstahl and Robert Mapplethorpe. But Vogel remains at the surface with notes on e.g. the British artists Gilbert & George (p. 150). The diction of that text is inadequate, careless and colloquial. Here are some examples, I refuse to translate them into English: ‘in diesen Körpern mit ihren durchaus potenten Zeigestäbchen’ (p. 145), ‘bis 25 bleiben die jungen Frauen sozusagen bei der Mutter im Haus drin’ (bad, bad German, p. 145), ‘das Dreckige am Sex ist am Verblassen’ (bad German, p. 149), ‘Schwengel’ (p. 151), ‘den Betrachter vom Gesicht wegzusehen zu lassen’ (p. 153). A revision of this text would have been deeply needed!
I recommend Ulrich Pohlmann’s essay on photography and painting ‘Körperbilder. Akte, Akademien, Anatomien’[8], who points out the importance of nude photography as a tool for art. There, genitalia do not have to be retouched. The above mentioned Eugène Durieu, Eadweard Muybridge, Ottomar Anschütz were important photographers. Gloeden and Guglielmo Plüschow were the first who did nudes en plein air.
A motif which maybe has influenced later artists or maybe is influenced by some paintings is the terrace with a view on to the coast area in the background of the picture.

Wilhelm von Gloeden, Gulf of Naples, Silver gelatine print, 235 x 179 cm, Date of print ca. 1900-1930, Regr. no. 45, Cat. no. 151
You can find naked young boys in front of a balustrade and the sea in Jean Delville’s ‘L’école de Platon’.

Jean Delville, L’école de Platon, 1898, Musée d’Orsay, Paris
But the most important forerunner is Lawrence Alma-Tadema with his love for Pompeii and antique mythologies.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema, A Dedication to Bacchus, 1889, oil on canvas, 77,5 x 177,5 cm, Hamburger Kunsthalle Hamburg
Alma-Tadema had a collection of 5,300 vintage prints of Plüschow, most of them originated in Pompeii between 1851-1910 (today in the collection of the Birmingham University Library). Ulrich Pohlmann states in an essay on Alma-Tadema and photography that the terraced scenes are after photos by Plüschow[9].
On the other hand there are a lot of signs that von Gloeden found himself examples in art history to create pictures like ‘tableaux vivants’. He re-enacts Hippolyte Flandrin’s ‘Jeune homme assis au bord de la mer’ (1836), so an inspiration by art is self-evident.
The neo-Greek style, as found in Gérôme, Boulanger, Ingrès etc. may be of great influence on this way of arranging figures and scenes.
Beginning now, in June 2008, an exhibition in Wuppertal is being held on Hans von Marées. Although there is no direct reception of photos by Gloeden in his oeuvre, the curators decided to show photos by Gloeden and Plüschow, because there are signs that Marées uses photographs for his paintings, and there are some similarities in figures and compositions.[10]


Hans von Marées : Drei Jünglinge unter Orangenbäumen (Three youths among orange trees) 1875-1880 oil on canvas, 187,5 x 145cm, Neue Pinakothek München
So, attitudes, gestures, scenes are full of references in painting and photography. Often it is difficult to say who inspired whom. Did the painter knew Von Gloeden’s photos? To what extent was Gloeden informed about the contemporary art production? Or did some image details emerge by chance? There are still more evident elements like Khnopff’s circular form used by Gloeden like an aureole, further researches have to show this.

Fernand Khnopff : A dreaming woman. Nevermore. ca. 1900	Wilhelm von Gloeden: Head of a young man, pencil and coloured pencil on paper, private collection, albumen, 16,6 x 22,8 cm, Date of print ca. 1905-1930, Regr. no. 9508, Cat. no. 760
Wilhelm von Gloeden’s photos are full of an Ancient Greece loving spirit close to that of Winckelmann and Goethe. The archaeological excavations in Pompeii since 1863, idealistic movements in art, nudism and Reformbewegung[11] have an effect on Gloeden’s work. New technical possibilities to take pictures in plein air might have that, too. The essence is the mixture of antiquity, androgyny and l’art pour l’art, idealism mixed up with realism, pathos mixed up with naturalness: old-fashioned and in a revolutionary way modern in our today’s eyes. LINK to endnotes.
· Isa Bickmann is a critic and curator, based in Frankfort. She is a Joint Editor of VISIONS.

BELLE EPOQUE Ruth E. Iskin: Modern Women and Parisian Consumer Culture in Impressionist Painting. Cambridge University Press 2007. ISBN 9780521840804. £50.00; $91.00. Review by *D.C. Rose*
The three-decker title of this remarkable book brings together subjects that might be developed over many volumes. To tackle any two of the three themes together would be a formidable enough task, but, undaunted, Ruth E. Iskin also takes on a fourth, through her incorporation of literary references, notably from the works of Zola. The thrust of her argument is to show how the ‘consumer culture’ that took over Paris in what we loosely call the Belle Epoque was replicated in the art of the Impressionists, which in turn provided an iconography both for fashion and for the construction of the Parisienne. It is quite difficult to keep these elements harmonious, but Dr Iskin is equal to the task, leaving one only to regret that she confines her detailed study to the Impressionists (notably Caillebotte, Cassatt, Degas and Manet) – one could have done with more on painters like Béraud.
Umbrellas, hats and opera glasses particularly engage her interest and close attention, the first a mundane and utilitarian article, the second a decorative and utilitarian accessory, the third an item of luxury; one forming a shelter, one an adornment, one a way of seeing. Ruth Iskin brings a very precise scrutiny to bear, so that even a familiar subject, such as Manet’s ‘Bar at the Folies-Bergère’, takes on fresh meaning. In doing this, she offers a new and revisionist alignment of the syndrome of man as gazer / woman as gazed upon, a restoration of agency to the woman too often depicted as passive object (I use these terms in their grammatical sense).
Sometimes, to be sure, Iskin’s determination to wring every nuance from her subject leads to her stretching her argument until it becomes thin: a good example is her description of Manet’s ‘The Milliner’ of 1881:
The woman propping up a black velvet hat with white stuffing, performs a chore that indicates she is not a consumer. She is perhaps the owner of the shop, and her revealing dress mode indicates she may be a madam of a hat shop functioning as a hat shop for clandestine prostitution. (p.96)
It is a possible reading, certainly, but it depends upon piling ‘may be’ on ‘perhaps’, and that is not good argument.
A little more wearisome is the repeated used of the leaden phrase ‘consumer culture’. To be sure, it is a major theme of the book, but once defined and identified it could have been used more sparingly.
Manet introduces consumer culture into the painting [‘The rue Mosnier with pavers’] through a prominently located, large, brick color advertisement on the wall of the building on the left. Its presence has often been overlooked and on the rare occasions when scholars note its inclusion, the advertisement has not been interpreted as central to the meaning of the painting or as a sign of consumer culture. (p.134)
Could this be because it is not central to the meaning of the painting? One hears the clip clop of a hobby horse being ridden rather hard.
Yet these are trivial criticisms in the sweep of this book, which may be read with pleasure by social and art historians alike, as well by all who enjoy descriptions of this Parisian gilded age. Cambridge University Press has done well by the book, allowing it ninety-two illustrations. Dr Iskin teaches Art History and Visual culture at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, and she must bring to her students in that desert region some welcome breezes from the boulevards of Paris.
· D.C. Rose is a founder member of the Société Oscar Wilde en France, and lives in Paris.

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SUMMER 2008

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