The Vitality of Viennese Art Nouveau

The article develops the problem of vitality in art on the basis of the so-called Viennese Art Nouveau, in particular on the basis of the works of Arthur Schnitzler, Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser and critical works of Hermann Bahr. The concept of vitality is seen as the foundation of that artistic anthropology, which united all types of art within the framework of Viennese Art Nouveau, giving them a single intention. The heightened interest in Man as a psychophysiological phenomenon, in the instinctive nature of man and the chaos of his inner — mental — life, in the borderline states of human existence in the space of the eternal antinomy of Eros and Thanatos — all this led to the unprecedented originality of the art of Vienna at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries.