From The Kiss to the Commission: How Europe Regulates Its Aesthetics

Last week, I stood before Gustav Klimt's The Kiss (Der Kuss)  in Vienna's Belvedere Museum. Gold leaf shimmered across the canvas, two figures locked in an embrace, wrapped in ornament that seemed to exist outside time. The painting hung in a climate-controlled room, protected by museum guards and a carefully maintained distance from the crowd pressing forward to photograph it. In 1908, the Austrian government purchased this work before the Kunstschau Wien exhibition had even closed. Officials deemed it a matter of public interest. The state intervened to preserve beauty, to claim it as public patrimony, to ensure this painting wouldn't disappear into a private collection. A century and seventeen years later, another European institution intervened in luxury. The European Commission fined Gucci, Chloé, and Loewe a combined €157.4 million. The three fashion houses had systematically fixed retail prices across the European Economic Area. For nearly eight years, they capped discounts, dictated when sales could occur, and monitored retailers who dared to undercut their "recommended" prices. Brussels called this illegal. The brands called it protecting their heritage. Both moments reveal the same tension. When beauty becomes power, who disciplines it? When aesthetics justify control, where does autonomy end and abuse begin?

April 3, 1897. Gustav Klimt, then 34 years old and already recognized for decorating Vienna's grand Ringstrasse buildings, led nineteen artists out of the Künstlerhaus—the city's official art association. They called themselves the Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs, the Association of Austrian Artists. History knows them as the Vienna Secession. The name referenced secessio plebis—the plebeian revolt against patrician power in ancient Rome. This wasn't subtle. The Secessionists were breaking from Vienna's artistic establishment, which favored neo-classical historicism and excluded modern European movements. Above the entrance to their new exhibition hall, designed by Joseph Maria Olbrich and completed in 1898, they inscribed a motto in German: "Der Zeit ihre Kunst. Der Kunst ihre Freiheit." To every age its art. To every art its freedom. This was their manifesto. Art would define itself on contemporary terms. No more recycling classical styles. No more submission to academic committees or conservative salon juries. The Secession would create a space (physical and conceptual) where painting, architecture, sculpture, and decorative arts could develop freely, in dialogue with international movements. But freedom required funding. The Secession's first exhibition in March 1898 drew 57,000 visitors, including Emperor Franz Joseph himself, remarkable for a brand-new organization challenging the establishment. The financial success allowed them to build their permanent hall. Yet the Secession always depended on wealthy patrons, government support, and elite buyers. Consider The Kiss. Klimt exhibited it at the Kunstschau Wien 1908, an exposition he organized after leaving the Secession in 1905 (more on that split shortly). The Austrian state purchased it immediately, before the exhibition closed. The painting represented "publiv interest" too culturally significant to risk losing. So art claimed autonomy from commerce, but commerce funded that autonomy. The Secession wanted freedom from institutional control, but institutions provided the resources. They sought to democratize beauty, to make art accessible rather than elitist. Still, their work primarily served Vienna's upper bourgeoisie. This wasn't unique to Vienna. Art Nouveau across Europe (Paris, Brussels, Glasgow) faced the same contradiction. Movements rejecting aristocratic historicism couldn't escape dependence on wealth. By 1905, the Secession itself split. The conflict centered on the Galerie Miethke, a prominent Vienna gallery. Carl Moll, a Secession member and the gallery's artistic consultant, proposed that the organization purchase the gallery as a commercial outlet for members' work. Klimt supported this. Others saw it as commercialization, exactly what the Secession had opposed. The vote was close. Klimt's faction lost. On June 14, 1905, Klimt resigned. Josef Hoffmann, Koloman Moser, and other prominent members followed. The "Klimtgruppe" left the Secession Building behind **the most valuable physical asset** and formed a new group, the Kunstschau. The irony cuts deep. A movement founded to escape institutional constraints fractured over how to relate to the market. Art needed autonomy, but autonomy needed infrastructure. Infrastructure needed money. Money brought control. Control threatened freedom. Vienna had invented modern aesthetic autonomy and discovered it couldn't be sustained without compromise.

Fast-forward to October 14, 2025. The European Commission fined Gucci, Chloé, and Loewe a combined €157.4 million for fixing retail prices across Europe. Gucci paid €119.7 million, Chloé €19.7 million, Loewe €18 million. All reduced because the brands cooperated and admitted wrongdoing. The charge was resale price maintenance, which sounds technical but isn't. For nearly eight years, these houses told independent retailers exactly how to price their goods. They capped discounts, dictated when sales could run, banned markdowns during certain periods, and monitored compliance like hawks. If a boutique in Milan dared offer 30 percent off a handbag, brand representatives intervened. This wasn't occasional or accidental. Gucci and Loewe did it from 2015 to 2023, Chloé from 2019 to 2023, stopping only when EU investigators raided their offices in April 2023. Many retailers carried all three brands, so the restrictions compounded. Prices looked uniform not because of market forces but because of coordination. The brands' logic, though they'd never state it publicly, is clear: price is part of the product. A €2,000 Gucci bag discounted to €1,400 loses its aura, threatens the fiction of exclusivity, cheapens the heritage. Controlling price isn't greed, they'd argue. It's discipline, aesthetic coherence, the same logic the Secession used. If beauty requires totality, every element must align: store design, packaging, and yes, pricing. For luxury executives, this isn't market manipulation; it's protecting a Gesamtmarke, a total brand environment where fragmentation destroys meaning. Brussels disagreed decisively. “By enforcing resale prices across their retail partners, these companies effectively eliminated price competition,” said Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President for Competition. “This behavior undermines both consumer choice and market fairness.” The ruling cited Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and Article 53 of the EEA Agreement, both of which prohibit agreements that restrict competition. The message was blunt: cultural heritage doesn’t grant legal immunity. Brand integrity doesn’t override market law. You may cultivate aura, but not through coercion. The fines themselves matter less than the signal. Brussels warns luxury that its traditional tools (controlled distribution, curated scarcity, uniform pricing) now collide with Europe's regulatory values. The EU isn't rejecting luxury; it's marking boundaries. You can make beautiful things, charge premium prices, tell heritage stories, but you cannot cartelize pricing to kill competition. What the Secession controlled for beauty's sake, luxury brands control for profit's sake, and Brussels has decided to strip the ornament and call it what it is: a cartel in couture. The irony is sharp. Europe invented the idea that beauty transcends markets, built billion-dollar industries monetizing that idea, and now regulates those industries when aesthetics become abuse. Vienna's problem, how to reconcile beauty with access, remains unsolved, but at least Brussels refuses one brazen answer.

I came to Berlin to learn German, but I can’t escape Europe’s grammar of beauty and control. The words I memorize in class, Ordnung, Freiheit, Verantwortung, echo far beyond the classroom. In museums, in shop windows, and now in EU rulings. Standing before The Kiss in Vienna, then reading about Brussels fining Gucci, I realized Europe perpetually conjugates the same verbs it invented in 1897. To create. To constrain. To preserve. Language, like law and art, disciplines what a culture loves. That might capture Europe's quiet philosophy, an elegance of limits. For an American raised on scale and speed, the idea that even freedom needs form feels almost radical.