A r t G a l l e r y
Young Italian artists in Australia
Klimt
Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862 – February 6, 1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt is noted for his paintings, murals, sketches, and other objects d'art. Klimt's primary subject was the female body,[1] and his works are marked by a frank eroticism. In addition to his figurative works, which include allegories and portraits, he painted landscapes. Among the artists of the Vienna Secession, Klimt was the most influenced by Japanese art and its methods.
Early in his artistic career he was a successful painter of architectural decorations in a conventional manner. As he developed a more personal style, his work was the subject of controversy that culminated when the paintings he completed around 1900 for the ceiling of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna were criticized as pornographic. He subsequently accepted no more public commissions, but achieved a new success with the paintings of his 'golden phase', many of which include gold leaf. Klimt's work was an important influence on his younger contemporary Egon Schiele.
The Kiss (Lovers) was painted by the Austrian Symbolist painter Gustav Klimt between 1908 and 1909, the highpoint of his "Golden Period", when he painted a number of works in a similar gilded style. A perfect square, the canvas depicts a couple embracing, their bodies entwined in elaborate robes decorated in a style influenced by both linear constructs of the contemporary Art Nouveau style and the organic forms of the earlier Arts and Crafts movement. The work is composed of oil paint with applied layers of gold leaf, an aspect that gives it its strikingly modern, yet evocative appearance. The painting is now in the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere museum in the Belvedere palace, Vienna, and is widely considered a masterpiece of the early modern period. It is a symbol of Vienna Jugendstil—Viennese Art Nouveau—and is considered Klimt's most popular work.
The maiden
I’ve already thought of everything possible, I’ve lived hundreds of lives with my thoughts.” Perhaps the central sleeping figure is fantasizing possibilities for her self in the six women surrounding her. This is one possible way to account for the cloud-like oval shaped constellation of women with organic patterned scarves and gowns that is the subject of this painting. It may be a complete world in female form and organic pattern. The virgin’s gown configured with many spirals metaphorically indicates fertility, continual change and the evolution of the universe.
Both during his lifetime and later, there have always been examples of an eroticizing aim to recreate his art or even go beyond it. Other authors have pointed out that the erotic could be regarded as a socio-political and culturally progressive force. Thus, Klimt is seen as an artist who contributed considerably to the emancipation of women and the rediscovery of the lost power of the erotic element, an artist who was critical of his time and its outmoded cultural morality. “Klimt’s permanent achievement,” wrote Han Bisanz in 1984, “is that he liberated the artistic depiction of human beings from the fetters of morality and opportunism and that he made visible by means of his style, the basic mental images of man’s inner life, images that point to a timeless element in the course of a person’s individual destiny.16 And finally, as the quoted passage seems to indicate, Klimt can be seen as a psychologist, as someone who analyzed psychological phenomena and who pursued similar aims to those of his great contemporary, Sigmund Freud.
Water Serpents
Klimt returned to the theme of 'sensual women in water' in two works know as Water Serpents I and Water Serpents II. Water Serpents I is not an oil painting, and its pale, unusual colouring is in part dictated by the medium used. It does not differ much from the preliminary drawings that Klimt used for reference, apart from the addition of the gold paint, and the green and gold-leaf thread entangled around the women's bodies. The unambiguously lesbian embrace of his models would perhaps have been unacceptable had it been presented as a straight portrait. However, by renaming the work and giving it an allegorical theme and by adding the fish-like serpent behind the bodies and adorning every surface with gold and pattern, Klimt was able to show the painting to Vienna without fear of censorship.
