Birth of the Modern: Style and Identity in Vienna

With this publication and its related exhibition, the Neue Galerie New York sheds new light on the subject of Vienna 1900 by revealing a common thread running through the fine and decorative arts of the period: the redefining of individual identity in the modern age. In fine art, decorative arts, and music, this entails both a dialogue between surface ornamentation and inner structure, and a search for a specifically modern, Viennese sense of self. Both the exhibition and the catalog also explore the new attitudes towards gender and sexuality that surface in Viennese literature and psychology at the time.