Crimson & Blue & Rose

Crimson is the Klimt drapery — the deep vivid crimson of the most characteristic draperies, robes, and symbolic elements in the paintings of Gustav Klimt (Gustav Klimt — July 14, 1862 – February 6, 1918 — the most celebrated and most internationally recognized Austrian painter, and the most famous member of the Vienna Secession). Klimt's crimson: in the Beethoven Frieze (1902 — the monumental fresco created for the 14th Vienna Secession exhibition — depicting the allegorical journey of humanity toward artistic transcendence through the music of Beethoven — the most ambitious and most symbolically complex single work in the entire Secession movement), the deep vivid crimson appears in the most dramatically charged symbolic figures — particularly the 'Hostile Powers' (Gorgons, Typhon, and the allegorical figures of Lust, Impurity, and Unchastity), where the vivid red-to-crimson skin tones, drapery, and symbolic elements represent the most viscerally passionate and most dangerously seductive aspects of the Secession's symbolist vocabulary. In the University of Vienna ceiling paintings (Medicine, Jurisprudence, Philosophy — 1900-1907 — Klimt's most ambitious and most publicly controversial commission, scandalizing Viennese academic opinion for their frank representation of the human body — ultimately rejected by the University and later destroyed in a fire in 1945 at Schloss Immendorf when retreating SS troops burned the castle to prevent its capture), the deep vivid crimson and gold of the allegorical figures created the most dramatically intense and most sensuously beautiful academic paintings of the Symbolist movement. Blue is the Danube — the pure electric blue of the Danube River (Donau — German; Дунав — Serbian; Дунăй — Ukrainian — the second-longest river in Europe at approximately 2,860 km from the Black Forest sources to the Black Sea delta — the most historically significant river in Central Europe, forming the most natural political frontier of the Roman Empire from Augustus through the late Empire, and the most important commercial route between Western and Eastern Europe from antiquity through the 20th century). The blue Danube in Viennese culture: the association of the Danube with the most vivid pure blue is primarily the creation of Johann Strauss II's famous waltz 'An der schönen blauen Donau' (On the Beautiful Blue Danube — Op. 314 — premiered February 15, 1867 — the most performed orchestral work in the entire history of the Vienna Philharmonic, traditionally opened and closed with in the New Year's Concert from Vienna). The Danube in Vienna: the actual Danube that flows past Vienna (specifically the Alte Donau — Old Danube — and the Neue Donau — New Danube — the two main channels of the Danube in the Viennese section) is not particularly blue in most conditions (it is typically grey-to-brown from silt and agricultural runoff) — the 'beautiful blue Danube' of Strauss's imagination is the idealized alpine-source Danube of the upper reaches, when the snow-melt river from the Austrian Alps carries its clearest and most purely blue glacial water in late spring. Rose is the Secession ornament — the vivid electric rose of the ornamental graphic elements in 'Ver Sacrum' (Ver Sacrum — 'Sacred Spring' — the magazine of the Vienna Secession, published 1898-1903 — the most elegantly and most inventively designed periodical in the history of European art magazines — each issue was designed as a Gesamtkunstwerk — a 'total work of art' — with the cover, typography, text layout, and images conceived as a unified aesthetic whole by a specific artist). The most characteristic ornamental element: the most celebrated graphic work of Koloman Moser (Kolo Moser — March 30, 1868 – October 18, 1918 — the most graphically inventive of all the Secession artists — whose flat, linear, highly saturated graphic designs for 'Ver Sacrum' are the most immediately recognizable and most internationally celebrated images of the Viennese Jugendstil) frequently uses the most vivid rose-to-hot-pink as the most dramatically accent color in the black-and-white or limited-color palette — the specific vivid electric rose appears in the most celebratory and most formally beautiful of the Secession poster and magazine designs.