Vienna 1900: A Total Work of Art – June 2025
Dr Niccola Shearman
Tuesday 10 – Friday 13 June 2025
£660
Please note that this tour also runs later in the year, from Monday 8 – Thursday 11 September 2025.
Course description
The concentration of landmark buildings, historical monuments and world-renowned art collections within a relatively small urban area makes the city of Vienna a fascinating destination for an art-historical visit. For centuries it was the capital of the vast Habsburg Empire, with a grand architectural façade to match. Around 1900, the tensions arising from efforts to maintain the surface splendour against a subversive spirit of intellectual enquiry gave rise to the artistic experiment that is visible across the urban fabric and in numerous museums today.
Beginning in this era of Freud, Klimt and the architects and designers of the Austrian Secession, our spatial and historical encounters will follow successive cultural and political turns of the twentieth century. Taking in galleries of Expressionist painting and the social housing of ‘Red Vienna’, visits will extend through the dark era of Nazi power, to finish with the flowering of new hope after 1945. Everywhere observing plentiful traces of that dominant imperial past, we shall contemplate the complex legacy of shifting identities specific to this cultural crossroads at the heart of Europe.
How to book
To book your chosen course(s) please use the book now button below and you will be taken to our booking system where you can book and pay (Visa / Mastercard / GooglePay / ApplePay).
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(Please note: this ticketing login is not the same as your Short Courses VLE login if you have one).
Please note that in the EU new VAT rules for online courses are coming into effect. This means that from 1 January 2025 we will be required to charge EU participants their local VAT rate. VAT-inclusive prices for EU students will be displayed at check-out.
Please note that the minimum age for participation is 18. By booking you confirm that you are over 18.
If you have any questions please email us at short.courses@courtauld.ac.uk
Lecturer's biography
Dr Niccola Shearman is an independent historian of twentieth-century art, with a focus on Germany and Austria to 1945. She has held academic positions at the University of Manchester and at The Courtauld, and also contributes to the V&A Academy. Published articles have focused on German printmaking and its reception and in 2024 she contributed to the catalogue for Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and the Blue Rider (Tate). Current projects include the careers of German and Austrian artists in exile in the UK and an exhibition entitled With Graphic Intent for The Courtauld Gallery, 2025, co-curated with Dr Emily Christensen.