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ISBN: 978-1-78160-599-8
‘I am not interested in myself as a subject for painting, but in others, particularly women...’
Beautiful, senuous and above all erotic, Gustav Klimt’s paintings speak of a world of opulence and leisure, which seems aeons away from the harsh, post-modern environment we live in now. The subjects he treats - allegories, portraits, landscapes and erotic figures - contain virtually no reference to external events, but strive rather to create a world where beauty, above everything else, is dominant.
His use of colour and pattern, profoundly influenced by the art of Japan, ancient Egypt, and Byzantine Ravenna, the flat, two-dimensional perspective of his paintings, and the frequently stylized quality of his images form an oeuvre imbued with a profound sensuality and one where the figure of woman, above all, reigns supreme.
Beginnings
Klimt’s very first works brought him success at an unusually early age. He came from a poor family where his father, a goldsmith and engraver, could scarcely maintain his wife and family of seven children.
Gustav, born in 1862, obtained a state grant to study at the Kunstgewerbeschule (the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts) at the age of 14. His talents as a draughtsman and painter were quickly noticed, and in 1879 he formed the Künstlercompagnie (Artists’ Company) with his brother Ernst and another student, Franz Matsch.
The latter part of the nineteenth century was a period of great architectural activity in Vienna. In 1857, the Emperor Franz Joseph had ordered the destruction of the fortifications that had surrounded the medieval city centre.
The Ringstrasse was the result, a budding new district with magnificent buildings and beautiful parks, all paid for by public expenses.
Therefore, the young Klimt and his partners had ample opportunities to show their talents and they received early commissions to contribute to the decorations for the pageant organized to celebrate the silver wedding of the Emperor Franz Joseph and the Empress Elisabeth.
In the following year, they were commissioned to produce a ceiling painting for the Thermal Baths in Carlsbad. Other public commissions soon followed.
When one examines these early works, such as Fable (p. 4), The Idyll (p. 7), or indeed one of Klimt’s earliest drawings, Male Nude (p. 8), it is clear that he is a painter of great skill and promise, but remains entirely within the accepted contemporary norms in his depiction of academic and allegorical subjects.
The women in Fable and Idyll are plump, adroitly draped in plain textiles, their hair smoothly pulled back behind the neck.
Neither would look out of place in the eighteenth or even seventeenth century. Their sensuality is matronly, motherly, their nudity decorous rather than exciting.
In the past, pubic hair had - if this part of the body was revealed at all - traditionally been glossed over into a smooth and unsuggestive ‘v’ reminiscent of modern-day children’s dolls.
The woman gazes directly at the viewer, standing as if caught naked in her bedroom doorway, summoning the viewer to caress her.
The painting, by contrast, has reverted to a more traditional style: gone the frontal stance, back the classical sculptural pose. Up goes the hair and the pubic hair disappears.
