Klimt: His Palette E-Book

Arron Adams

• Herausgeber: Arron Adams
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Gustav Klimt was an Austrian symbolist painter, whose primary subject was the female body. His paintings, murals, and sketches are marked by a sensual eroticism, which is especially apparent in his pencil drawings. He was Vienna's most famous advocator of Art Nouveau, or, as the style was identified in Germany, "youth style". He is remembered as one of the famous decorative artists of the 20 century, and he also created one of the century's most important examples of erotic art. Primarily flourishing as a conservative academic painter, his run into with more modern trends in European art encouraged him to build up his own free and frequently out of this world style. His place as the co-founder and first president of the Vienna Secession also ensured that this style would become broadly prominent - though Klimt's direct authority on other artists was partial. While some critics and historians contend that Klimt's work should not be incorporated in the canon of modern art, his work - particularly his paintings after 1900 - remains striking for its visual combinations of the old and the modern, the real and the abstract. Klimt shaped his greatest work during a time of change and radical ideas, and these traits are clearly marked in his paintings.

Leseprobe

Klimt

His Palette

By Arron Adams

First Edition

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Klimt: His Palette

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Copyright © 2016Arron Adams

Foreword

Gustav Klimt was an Austrian symbolist painter, whose primary subject was the female body. His paintings, murals, and sketches are marked by a sensual eroticism, which is especially apparent in his pencil drawings. He was Vienna's most famous advocator of Art Nouveau, or, as the style was identified in Germany, "youth style". He is remembered as one of the famous decorative artists of the 20 century, and he also created one of the century's most important examples of erotic art. Primarily flourishing as a conservative academic painter, his run into with more modern trends in European art encouraged him to build up his own free and frequently out of this world style. His place as the co-founder and first president of the Vienna Secession also ensured that this style would become broadly prominent - though Klimt's direct authority on other artists was partial.

Klimt attended the Vienna University of Arts and Crafts in 1876, and formed the “Company of Artists” with his two brothers and a friend, after which he was awarded the Golden Order of Merit from the Emperor of Vienna. In 1892, his father and one of his brothers died, leaving him responsible for their families. The family tragedy also affected his artistic vision, which helped him develop his own personal style.

Throughout his life, although he was a controversial painter due to his subject matter, he was made an honorary member of the Universities of Vienna and of Munich. He was also a founding member and president of the Vienna Secession, which sought to create a platform for new and unconventional artists, bring new artists to Vienna, and created a magazine to showcase its member’ work.

Klimt lived a simple, cloistered life, in which he avoided other artists and café society. He often wore a long robe, sandals, and no undergarments. He also had many discreet affairs with women, and fathered at least 14 children. This may be an indication of his passion for women, their form and sexuality, which was the main focus of many of his works. The majority of his paintings were characterized by golden or swirling designs, spirals, and phallic shapes, depicting dominant women in erotic positions.

Klimt died in the influenza epidemic of 1918, leaving behind a posthumous legacy that few artists can rival. His paintings have brought in the highest amounts ever paid at auction.

Drawings played a major role in Gustav Klimt's artistic development. From sketches and preparations for oil paintings, to erotic drawings and portraits, the present collection illustrates the full range and depth of Klimt's abilities as a draughtsman.

Klimt's talent and brilliance as a draughtsman, however, was widely recognized only after Klimt's death. During his lifetime, he hardly sold a drawing nor did he exhibit them. Although known for his perpetual sketching and drawing and his need for this essential activity, Klimt was astonishingly nonchalant about these works. The casualness with which he treated them shocked the critic Arthur Roessler when visiting Klimt: "As I rummaged around in a heap of hundreds of drawings, surrounded by eight or ten mewing and purring cats playfully chasing each other about and making sketches... fly... I asked in surprise why he put up with them ruining hundreds of the most beautiful drawings in this way.

With a smirk Klimt replied: 'It doesn't matter if they crumple or tear a few sheets - they piss on others, and, don't you know?, that's the best fixative". This visit took place before 1904 and it appears that Klimt grew more responsible about his graphic work around 1906. This is around the time when he started using the expensive simili-Japan paper and introduced color into his drawing.

The controversial faculty paintings for which he was commissioned in 1894 - Philosphy, Medicine, Jurisprudence and Law - give excellent examples of how Klimt expressed even the most abstract, and complex ideas through the means of a female body: "Woman is the major creation" he famously asserted.

Klimt, who executed his last male portrait in 1899, almost only painted women and displayed a voyeuristic fascination with woman as "the Other", which for him became the representation of life. Servaes recalled of his studio and working method: "Here he was surrounded by mysterious, naked female creatures, who while he stood silent in front of his easel, strolled around his studio, stretching themselves, laying around and making the best of the day - always ready for the command of the master obediently to stand still whenever he caught sight of a pose or a movement that appealed to his sense of beauty and that he would then capture in a rapid drawing."

"Klimt was conceivable only in Vienna (or) better still in Budapest or Constantinople ..." wrote the Austrian colleague Anton Faistauer after Klimt's death. "His entire spirituality is oriental. Eros plays a dominant role; his taste for women is almost Turkish... Klimt never looked westwards and with the exception of a journey to Spain and to Paris was never interested in Western culture... Klimt's personality was the same as his work... He loved the good life and peace and quiet like a true oriental and looked like one, too."

Gustav Klimt's drawings are among the finest creations in the artist's oeuvre. This is particularly true of Klimt's later years, when drawing became in many ways, the key area of his artistic exploration. From sketches and preparations for portraits, to erotic drawings and studies for many of Klimt's late masterpieces, the drawings in this collection illustrate the full range and depth of Klimt's outstanding ability as a draughtsman. As such they present a remarkable insight into the intimate world of drawing with which this enigmatic and brilliant artist surrounded himself.

Klimt's brilliance and originality as a draughtsman was only really recognized after the artist's death because during his lifetime Klimt hardly ever sold his drawings and never thought to exhibit them. For Klimt, his drawings represented a private world in which he increasingly explored his own obsession with the woman and his notions of femininity. Indeed, many of Klimt's drawings have still never been seen in public because they entered into a private collection directly from the artist and have remained there ever since.

Paintings

Girl’s Head Turned Left, 1880, oil on canvas

Detail

Egypt1890 – 1891,Interior decoration

The Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna openend to the public in 1891. Gustav Klimt, his younger brother Ernst, and Franz Matsch executed forty paintings to decorate the spaces between the columns and above the arcades along the walls of the KHM’s main staircase. Personifications symbolize different stylistic periods, regions or centers of art. All paintings were executed in oil on canvas in the Artists’ studio; in 1891, six months before the formal opening of the museum, they were glued to the walls of the main staircase. “Egypt” shows a female nude, standing before an ornamental background, which combines architectural motives, hieroglyphics, images of the gods Horus and Thoth, and the goddess Nekhbet’s vulture. Klimt deviated conspicuously from Egyptian convention, which with but few exceptions portrays only children or prisoners in the nude. In her right hand the female figure holds an ankh, which was also used in Egyptian hieroglyphics as the symbol of life. Between the columns on the right, i.e. in the “intercolumnar” area, Klimt depicts an uschabti box, statues of Isis and Ptah, who was the principal divinity of Memphis, a scribe, a wooden sarcophagus cover, and in the background, the capital of a Hathor column. None of these were based on objects from the imperial collections. Klimt integrates the animated female figure into the background and also cites her facial features in the sarcophagus cover, thus unifying different levels of reality with compositional virtuosity. This approach is followed throughout the spandrel and intercolumnar paintings in the staircase.

Detail