Visionaries, alleged pornographers, artists of enduring repute -- Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele both died in 1918. With them ended the first flowering of the Vienna Secession, an artistic movement that declared war on the Establishment in the cause of liberty and modernity. "Der Zeit ihre Kunst (Art for the Era)," proclaimed the group, which formed in the then Austro-Hungarian capital in 1897. "Der Kunst ihre Freiheit (Freedom in Art)," it demanded.
As if to vindicate the Secessionists' call for artistic liberty, the authorities moved swiftly to censor the neo-Mycenaean poster designed by Klimt to advertise the group's debut exhibition in 1898. The stylized composition featured a lean -- and naked -- Theseus, his sword poised to run through the cowering Minotaur. The censor demanded that the hero's genitalia be concealed, and Klimt reluctantly interposed two trees, their trailing branches resembling spilled ink, defacing the original design.
Side by side, the before-and-after posters hang at the start of "The Vienna Secession 1898-1918," a comprehensive and attractively staged exhibition on display at the Bunkamura Museum of Art in Shibuya till Feb. 24.