Chika Jenkins

Grant awarded Fall 2015

The generous grant from the Kossak Painting Program allowed me to travel to Vienna for 6 days in January 2016. I conducted a research on my MA thesis, tentatively titled, “Ornament as a Process: Possibility of Dialogue in Beethoven Exhibition,” supervised by Professors Braun and Avcioglu. In my thesis, I explore the different ways in which the Vienna Secession destabilized the dichotomy between ornament, i.e. attachment to the main object, and the substance, i.e. the main object, for their fourteenth exhibition, often called the Beethoven Exhibition (1902). While most of my research consists of reading different theories of ornament, both from 19th-century Vienna and current, travelling to Vienna prove to be extremely conductive in helping me gain fresh perspectives on the Secession’s undertaking. For example, the set of mural paintings that Gustav Klimt created for this exhibition is today in situ after an extensive restoration. Seeing them in the location where it was intended to be, in the very building the group designed as their exhibition space and holy temple, helped me see much better how the building and the paintings interact: they share similar ornamental motifs, both play with tactile and optical aspects of visual arts, and through such means, they invite an intense dialogue with the viewer. Moreover, there is a strong sense that the building itself stands in a dialogic, some might say confrontational, relationship with the surroundings.

I originally intended to focus more on how Secessionists communicated their idea of total artwork through their use of ornament, but seeing Secessions’ works in their context, the city of Vienna, encouraged me to think of ornament more in terms of a process that initiates a dialogue. It was an unexpected turn my research took, but I nonetheless embraced the shift, as a result of a dialogue between the wonderful city and me.

I am very grateful to the generosity of the Kossak family, and hope to complete my thesis that will make a small contribution to our understanding of this famed exhibition and of the potential of ornament.