1895 Viennese Archetype Images

I recently posted a collection of archetypal images from 1895 to the CAPL web site. These images were drawings by Ferdninand Wüst as ‘figural compositions’, or images that symbolically tell a story from “everyday life”. These specific images were of the archetypal variety, meant to highlight easily recognizable universal ideals through the variety of different aspects in each drawing.

They are images meant to awaken the instinctive understanding of the viewer. Since they come from 1895 Vienna, the instinctive ability of the modern viewer may be limited, or may allow for a peek into the mind of the past. The image of electricity is most compelling, although I personally don’t recognize every aspect of that drawing. These images can be a puzzle, with many pieces combined to form a greater whole. The image marked ’empire’ has a number of turn of the century themes combined to show the hope for a Western European Empire: medicine, industry, foreign goods, a connected postal system, etc. And then, there are the beer and wine images.

All of the drawings are provided in high quality with a friendly CC 3.0 license. Prost!