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拍品專文
Entitled Movement study, Koppitz’s impactful and most celebrated image, certainly suggests, in the elegant lines of the naked central figure and her three draped attendant figures, a moment from the choreography of a modern dance – though of course the medium of photography has stilled and frozen the moment forever. This image attracted considerable attention in its day and fine prints were exhibited in photo-salons all over the world. Such attention was well deserved, as is the esteem in which the subject is still held by historians and collectors. For, beyond the immediate appeal of its enigmatic, haunting character, its dark and mystical eroticism, the image remains powerfully emblematic of a time and place, of the cultural mood of Vienna in the 1920s, in a way that resonates through the decades.
‘Movement study’ evokes important strands of the Austrian psyche at a time of political upheaval and uncertainty that led to the unraveling of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the redrawing of the map of Austria. We are reminded of the mood of angst and melancholia of much secessionist art, of the birth of modern psychoanalysis in the researches of Sigmund Freud, and of the search for the elements of a renewed sense of national identity. This search manifested itself in a celebration of the landscape, and of traditional national costume and archetypes. Romanticized mountainscapes, folk costume, and historic ritual became popular themes, not least in Koppitz’s oeuvre. In a self-portrait, from 1923, he cast himself as ‘Der Alpenwanderer’, the Alpine wanderer, seeking solace in nature. And central to the imagery of this search for identity was ‘Nacktkultur’, the celebration of the naked body, most usually in the landscape. Koppitz himself posed naked against the sky in deeply symbolic pictures that illustrate this widespread and deep-felt psychological need, as if for a rebirth. Such was the climate in which he conceived and executed his memorable Movement study.
‘Movement study’ evokes important strands of the Austrian psyche at a time of political upheaval and uncertainty that led to the unraveling of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the redrawing of the map of Austria. We are reminded of the mood of angst and melancholia of much secessionist art, of the birth of modern psychoanalysis in the researches of Sigmund Freud, and of the search for the elements of a renewed sense of national identity. This search manifested itself in a celebration of the landscape, and of traditional national costume and archetypes. Romanticized mountainscapes, folk costume, and historic ritual became popular themes, not least in Koppitz’s oeuvre. In a self-portrait, from 1923, he cast himself as ‘Der Alpenwanderer’, the Alpine wanderer, seeking solace in nature. And central to the imagery of this search for identity was ‘Nacktkultur’, the celebration of the naked body, most usually in the landscape. Koppitz himself posed naked against the sky in deeply symbolic pictures that illustrate this widespread and deep-felt psychological need, as if for a rebirth. Such was the climate in which he conceived and executed his memorable Movement study.