23- A Nervous State of Affairs: Art in Vienna 1880-1938
On Campus
Course 23 – Summer School On Campus
Monday 13 – Friday 17 July 2026
Dr Niccola Shearman
£695
Course Description
As a tottering Austro-Hungarian Empire worked at its decorative façade and high society waltzed on regardless, new impulses were simmering beneath the surface in fin-de-siècle Vienna. And we are not only referring here to Sigmund Freud: from Gustav Klimt’s thinly-veiled symbols of sexual energy and sinewy mortality to the angst-ridden art of Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele; from the theatrical splendour of institutional architecture to the clean lines of the sanatorium, there is plenty to analyse in the visual culture of early twentieth-century Vienna.
Alongside the art of key individuals, this critical introduction takes in major collectives including the Vienna Secession, the applied arts of the Viennese Workshops, and the social housing of ‘Red Vienna’. It attends to wider cultural currents in the famous café circles: interdisciplinary talking shop of writers and intellectuals, composers, patrons, and critics, many of Jewish heritage. And it explores the influence of women – beyond the ‘muse’ depicted as alternately decorative and dangerous. Could one actually live in a Gesamtkunstwerk? Where is the line between the avant-garde embrace of modernity and an indulgent retreat from the real world? How far could such keen observers foresee the ultimate collapse of their small but vibrant artistic universe? All to be considered in a series of lectures, discussions and visits to London collections dedicated to this febrile period of cultural experiment.
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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. She has published various articles have focused on German printmaking and its reception, as well as contributions to the catalogue for Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and the Blue Rider (Tate, 2024), and is co-editor of the forthcoming volume German Art in an Expanded Field, essays in honour of Shulamith Behr (2026). In 2025, together with Dr Emily Christensen she curated the Courtauld Gallery exhibition entitled With Graphic Intent.