Biedermeier: The Invention of Simplicity [Illustrated] [Hardcover]

Biedermeier art is poorly served by books in English. This book, therefore, has become by default so much more than a catalogue of the collaborative exhibition held in 2006 between the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Albertina in Vienna, and the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin. It's a hefty tome, whose initial pages provide full-page photographic details of some of the riches to be found within. Its wide-ranging compass covers furniture, porcelain, clothing, textiles, wallpaper, glass, metalwork, painting, and drawing. It is full of detail and wonder.

There are four opening essays. In `The Rediscovery of the Biedermeier Period', Laurie Winters deals with the vexed issue of definition: When was the Biedermeier period? What were its geographic limits? What indeed defines a Biedermeier work of art? She says the name was coined long after the period to which it was attached (since it made its first appearance in 1855, this is arguable), thereby "distorting all later interpretations of the era and the art." After reviewing the relevant literature and concisely assessing the impact of other twentieth-century exhibitions, Winters proclaims that, "Biedermeier is here interpreted not as a lowly product of bourgeois taste but rather as a highly cultivated and refined quest for simplicity and purity of form that has its roots in the late eighteenth century." In other words, Biedermeier is a new form of neoclassicism by another name.

Winters defines Biedermeier's hallmarks as "a purity of abstraction of form, brilliant colour, lack of superficial ornamentation, and a sensitive appreciation for and reliance on nature. The best examples date from the narrow period 1815-1825. The generation of artists working after 1835 was already producing something dramatically different in style and conception." This is important for potential readers, like myself, who define Biedermeier in different terms, for artist such as Peter Fendi, Albert Schindler, and the late works of Waldmuller and Friedrich von Amerling "are intentionally excluded ... Their works' pronounced sentimentality, nostalgia, and painterly bravura mark them as a product of a later generation driven by dramatically different aesthetic principles."

The second essay is by Hans Ottomeyer. He covers much of Winters's ground. He argues the term stylistically has become a bit of chimera, and historically it has been applied lazily as covering the period 1815-48, "connoting the cliché of a new bourgeois style". But his talk of reconsidering basic assumptions and discarding definitions leads one to wonder whether there could ever be a Biedermeier style qua style at all, especially when he talks of it sharing neoclassical roots with "historicist variations of neo-Renaissance, Gothic Revival, and early neo-Baroque". But he proposes that the fundamentality of Biedermeier is "grounded in reason". One can compare this with the British equivalent of, say `Regency' or `Victorian' style, impossible to pin down except by reference to its era but still possessing a fundamental stylistic essence.

The remaining bulk of his essay describes the elements of Biedermeier compared with its immediate past: lack of ornamentation, local sources, colour harmonies, simple forms. He proclaims that Biedermeier furniture, was expressive of the continental anglophilia that followed 1815, with even "certain aspects of manners and social life" originating from the `English style'.

`The Aesthetics of Biedermeier Furniture' is the title of the third essay (by Christian Witt-Dorring). He opens with the meditation that societies repeatedly subject past objects to modern purification. Thus the Biedermeier revival of 1900 was a reaction to Historicism. But, by the same token, was not Biedermeier a reaction to Empire? Not according to Witt-Dorring, who argues they had "simultaneous formal co-existence". Like his co-writers, he argues that Biedermeier was not a bourgeois style.

The final essay, `A Culture of Harmony and Memory', is by Laurie Stein, who reminds us that, "The standard aesthetic profile for Biedermeier as a style of uncluttered simplicity is a myth". With tables, shelves and walls covered with memorabilia, Stein argues that the simplicity of Biedermeier is one of lifestyle rather than decoration: it is "infused with the culture of memory, of longing for an idealized past."

So much for the essays, what about the catalogue? It is split into thirteen sections, from cabinet-making to painting. Each section has its own short introductory essay, the plates themselves forming the bulk of the book. Unfortunately, the text that accompanies the plates is relegated to a separate catalogue at the book's rear.

It's impossible here to give a full critique of the works displayed. But the first two sections, for example, demonstrate how modern some of the items of furniture look, with elements of art deco, and even modernism. Later, there is an extensive section of painted interior views, "mirrors into the world of Biedermeier culture". I was surprised and delighted to find a short section looking at Goethe's colour theory. But, for me, the best is kept until the end with extensive examples of northern and central European painting, including works by Waldmuller. The book's cover is a reproduction of Jacob von Alt's view out of his studio window.