Wieber, S.

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       Wieber, S. (2011) Viennese history painting is booming. H-Net Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences        http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/59576/     Deposited on: 1 February 2012   Enlighten – Research publications by members of the University of Glasgow http://eprints.gla.ac.uk Werner Telesko. Geschichtsraum O¨sterreich: Die Habsburger und ihre Geschichte in der bildenden Kunstdes 19. Jahrhunderts. Vienna: Bo¨hlau Verlag, 2006. Illustrations. 576 pp. EUR 79.00 (cloth), ISBN978-3-205-77522-5.Reviewed by Sabine Wieber (University of Glasgow)Published on HABSBURG (April, 2011)Commissioned by Jonathan KwanViennese History Painting is BoomingIn June, two major exhibitions on Austria’s mostillustrious nineteenth-century painter, Hans Makart,will open in Vienna at the Lower Belvedere (“Makart:Maler der Sinne”: June 5 - October 16, 2011) and atthe Wien Museum (“Makart: Ein Ku¨nstler regiertdie Welt”: June 9 - October 9, 2011). These ex-hibitions have been long awaited and have alreadycaptured the public’s imagination through two spec-tacular art historical interventions: the open-studiorestoration of Makart’s painting“The Triumph of Ari-adne” (1873-74) and the spectacular loan of Makart’sfinal canvas “Spring” (1884) from the Salzburg Mu-seum where it has hung in the same spot for forty con-secutive years.[1] It is hard to believe that Vienna’slast serious curatorial engagement with historicismdates back twenty-six years to the groundbreaking ex-hibition “Traum und Wirklichkeit, Wien 1870-1930,”which was staged in 1985 at the Historische Museumder Stadt Wien (now the Wien Museum). Since then,historicism has never completely vanished from thehorizon–indeed, this seems impossible given the phys-ical fabric of the city–but exhibition makers have ded-icated most of their energies and financial resourcesto the critical reconstitution of “Vienna 1900.” Thesehave been productive endeavors, but the time mightnow be right to focus our attention back onto the en-tire scope of the “long nineteenth-century” and takeinventory of its multifarious cultural, social, and po-litical dimensions. Werner Telesko’s book makes animportant scholarly contribution to this reassessmentof nineteenth-century Austrian art and given its pub-lication date (2006), one might even suggest that helaid some of the academic groundwork for the currentrediscovery of Vienna’s historicist heritage.Telesko’s monograph focuses on nineteenth-century history painting, sculpture, and print cultureto explore how members of the Habsburg monarchyinstrumentalized the past to legitimize their politicalambitions in the present. Telesko relies on “recep-tion history” (p. 13), which enables him to surveythe diverse ways in which nineteenth-century artistsand historians took up the theme of Austrian history,without ever losing sight of the complicated relation-ship between the past and the present. In this con-text, Telesko is keen to think about iconography notonly as reflecting historical conditions operating atthe time of production, but also as actively participat-ing in the formulation of social hierarchies and powerstructures–a methodology clearly shaped by T. J.Clark’s social art history. Viewed from this perspec-tive, nineteenth-century history painting thus func-tioned as a “medium of social identification” betweena ruler and his people that “simultaneously containedand produced history” (p. 13). The Geschichts-bilder encompassed by Telesko’s monograph beginwith the rhetoric of the Casa de Austria, or DomusAustriae, and conclude with the construct of the Hab-sburg nation-state or Gesamtstaat. Telesko thus cov-ers Austrian history from Franz II to Franz JosephI, although his narrative is not strictly chronologicaland revolves around themes as much as time periods.Geschichtsraum O¨sterreich is divided into tenchapters, with chapters 1 and 2 presenting Telesko’stheoretical scaffolding that underpins his case-specificargumentation in chapters 3 to 10. Telesko’s post-structuralist approach sets out a by now familiar dis-course of “identity and alterity,” “imagined commu-nities,” “canon formation,” and “nationalism, tradi-tion and patriotism.” With these analytical conceptsfirmly anchored in one’s mind, the reader then em-barks on a scrupulously researched, archivally rich1H-Net Reviewsjourney through the maze of visual strategies em-ployed by Habsburg rulers keen to justify their claimsto power while bringing the empire’s diverse ethnici-ties into the fold. In chapters 3 and 4, Telesko reliesheavily on sculpture and print culture in his discus-sion of the predominant nineteenth-century iconogra-phies of Maria Theresia as a unifying mater patriaeand the more complicated vacillation of her son Em-peror Joseph II between absolute ruler and belovedsovereign. But Telesko is quick to point out thateven a fairly stable iconography like the one em-ployed in the revival of Maria Theresia as Landesmut-ter experienced significant iconographic transforma-tions throughout the nineteenth century. Chapter5 returns to a more theory-driven mode of analysiswhen examining the interstices between dynastic andnational identities that could not be fully containedin the imperial iconographies of Franz II (I), Ferdi-nand I, and Franz Joseph I. This chapter also bringsinto play new technological innovations that facili-tated a more socially diverse dissemination of impe-rial iconography from cheap prints to fine art portrai-ture.Chapter 6 functions as one of the book’s key chap-ters in that it investigates the “rediscovery” of RudolfI (1218-91) as the first Habsburg monarch, progeni-tor, or “Stammesvater” of the dynasty, and staunchdefender of the Catholic faith. The chapter is drivenby the theme of genealogical origins and ancestrallines. Seduced by the period’s love affair with theMiddle Ages, such key artists as the Nazarene Broth-erhood painters Franz Pforr and Julius Schnorr vonCarolsfeld painted exquisite cycles of the Rudolf leg-end in the first part of the nineteenth century, whileLudwig Schwanthaler and Arthur Strasser producedevocative sculptural pieces later on. The diverse vi-sual material in this chapter opens up exciting newvenues for scholarly investigations. Chapter 7 followsnaturally from these discussions because Telesko in-troduces two important historians behind this “re-discovery” of Austrian history, namely, Joseph Frei-herr von Hormayr (1781/2-1848) and Joseph Alexan-der Freiherr von Helfert (1820-1910). Chapter 8 isentirely dedicated to the interpretation and circu-lation of an increasingly patriotic historiography inpopular prints. Some of the visual material in thischapter represents wonderful discoveries, such as KarlRuss’s magnificent 147 ink and watercolor drawings(in sepia) executed in 1847 for his series Pictures ofthe History of Vienna. The final two chapters, chap-ters 9 and 10, shift the discussion into the realm ofmilitary iconography which dominated so many as-pects of Austrian life in the second half of the nine-teenth century. Here, Telsko uses a series of concreteexamples, such as the conscious revival of Austria’sgreat military hero of the Napoleonic Wars, FieldMarshal Radetzky, to show how Franz Joseph I en-couraged a staunch Milita¨rmythos (“myth of the mil-itary” [p. 389]) to instill military virtues into his sub-jects. We are all familiar with Franz Joseph’s manyportraits in military uniform, but Telesko presentsthe fresco decorations of the Pantheon in Vienna’sArmory (by Carl von Blaas) as a wonderful case studyillustrating the artistic deploy of this Milita¨rmythosin chapter 10. In the end, Telesko’s multifacetedstudy reveals that the Habsburg Empire’s Geschichts-malerei–i.e., painting of history and for history–reliedheavily on an iconography of dynastic lineages to jus-tify imperial constellations of power. Telesko assertsthat this“personality cult”was an effective and neces-sary strategy in a constant struggle to accommodatethe Habsburg Empire’s political and geographical re-alities of a Vielvo¨lkerstaat to the prevailing ideas ofa nation-state.In the book’s summary, Telesko concludes thathis analysis of the “diverse reflexion on history innineteenth-century Austria in the visual arts ... war-ranted a considerable expansion of the familiar ma-terial basis” (p. 417). And indeed, Telesko’s sight-ing and subsequent contextualization of new, broadlyscoped visual and textual sources represents one ofhis project’s major achievements. But he does notstop here; Telesko uses this material to formulatenew questions around the complicated relationshipbetween political iconography, the monarchy, and thenotoriously fractured Austrian state. Telesko demon-strates through a series of thoroughly grounded casestudies how a canon of key events and subjects fromthis past performed the “central principle of collec-tive identity-formation and [identity-] stabilization”(p. 419). For the first time–at least in the his-toriography known to the present reviewer–a studyprovides a sound theoretical platform for the com-plex interactions between the Habsburg dynasty andthe representation of history in the visual arts. Thisis an ambitious undertaking and for the most parthighly successful. However, a slight sense of disconti-nuity emerges between Telesko’s introductory chap-ters and the proceeding case studies in that Teleskodoes not always explore the full potential of his post-structural methodology. For example, when work-ing with notions of identity and alterity, it is cru-2H-Net Reviewscial to pay attention to the ways in which the vi-sual cannot quite contain meaning and always offersspaces through which viewers/beholders can subvertits iconography. It would have been interesting toexplore some of these ruptures and interstices in theexamples provided by Telesko. To be fair, this wouldhave directed the discussion into a different directionand threatened the book’s coherence. But as a result,the book is very much a “history from above.” Andindeed, Geschichtsraum O¨sterreich is the first of atwo-part publication and the second volume (Kultur-raum O¨sterreich: Die Identita¨t der Regionen in derbildenden Kunst des 19. Jahrhunderts [2008]), alsoby Telesko, promises to delve much deeper into thekinds of regional and ethnic tensions that the Habs-burg Empire tried to contain throughout its tenure.Overall, Telesko’s publication makes a vital con-tribution to the scholarship of nineteenth-century artand culture. But let us not be fooled, this book goesbeyond a mere analysis of Habsburg Historienkunstand gives pertinent new insights into the multifariousways in which history was deployed in nineteenth-century art and historiography across a spectrum ofmedia. Telesko’s book is amply and beautifully il-lustrated, introducing his reader to many unfamil-iar visual sources. Telesko’s bibliography is extensiveand attests to years of dedicated research in archivesand libraries–an endeavor increasingly threatened bythe current realities of academic life. Telesko isequally comfortable with historical, literary, and vi-sual sources, and this book definitely warrants a placeon the shelves of art historians and historians alike.Note[1]. See http://www.ots.at/presseaussendung/OTS 20110111 OTS0153/hans-makart-schaurestaurierung-im-oberen-belvedere-bildand http://www.salzburg.com/nwas/video/index.php?-vicid=65241ECA88F2255D290FF7DC81E95734.If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the list discussion logs at:http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl.Citation: Sabine Wieber. Review of Telesko, Werner, Geschichtsraum O¨sterreich: Die Habsburger und ihreGeschichte in der bildenden Kunst des 19. Jahrhunderts. HABSBURG, H-Net Reviews. April, 2011.URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=31809This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.3

Viennese history painting is booming

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