20th-century art — Golden bars of heaven
May 29th 2008 – From The Economist print edition
The ostentation and eroticism of Gustav Klimt make him as much a painter of this century as he was of his own time, a new exhibition shows
Belvedere, Vienna
GUSTAV KLIMT was a great portrait painter whose subjects were the prosperous Viennese bourgeoisie at the start of the 20th century. His supporters were mostly young, progressive and Jewish. Together they celebrated the “ennoblement of luxury”. Now Klimt has become the flavour of this decade, not least because his work reflects another period of great prosperity in which ostentation and wealth came back in fashion. For example, a portrait from his golden period of Adele Bloch-Bauer, which is literally decorated with gold leaf and silver, is one of the costliest paintings ever sold. Ronald Lauder, a cosmetics heir and former American ambassador to Austria, is believed to have paid $135m when he bought it for his little Neue Galerie in New York in 2006.
In Britain the Tate Gallery’s Liverpool outpost has chosen Klimt for its big show while the city is the 2008 European capital of culture. This is the first, and maybe the last, major Klimt show in Britain. “It’s proved much more difficult than we expected it to be,” says Christoph Grunenberg, director of the Liverpool gallery and co-curator of the exhibition. To mount it was a bold decision that caused him sleepless nights. They were worth it.
Klimt was a leader in the revolt against the Vienna art establishment known as the Secession. The idea was to combine painting, design, architecture and music in a Gesamtkunstwerk or “total work of art”. The finest example is the “Beethoven Frieze” from the Secession show of 1902. Gustav Mahler provided the musical accompaniment for Klimt’s visual representation of Beethoven’s ninth symphony. A careful reconstruction of the frieze is a persuasive reason for visiting Liverpool.
It is a monumental piece on three walls, painted on heavy plasterboard, and it tells a simple story of good overcoming evil. A virtuous, gold-plated knight challenges the villainous Typhon, an ape-like figure who is fawned upon by fairly repulsive but beautifully painted women representing sickness, madness and death (Typhon’s daughters), and temptations such as lewdness, lust and excess. The style is reminiscent of the Jugendstil—or art nouveau—but the decoration comes directly from the Secession itself, for Klimt applies real gilt, coloured glass, curtain rings and mother-of-pearl as well as paint.
The last image is inspired by Friedrich Schiller’s “Ode to Joy”, which is also the basis for the last movement of Beethoven’s ninth symphony. “The iconography of that climax is complex,” says Mr Grunenberg. Some critics have suggested that the naked figures of a man and woman (pictured above) surrounded by a choir of angels signify the nations of Europe coming together. It actually looks like a more human version of the same thing.
The frieze was to be destroyed at the end of the 1902 exhibition, but it was stored instead, in a shed next to a tram track where it was damaged before its restoration in the 1970s. This version was made in 1984, using Klimt’s own techniques and materials. It is a copy, but Mr Grunenberg is unapologetic: “This reproduction is absolutely justifiable because it is of such high quality.” (To see the original requires a journey to Vienna.)
The focus of the show is on Klimt, but the exhibition spreads through galleries designed to illustrate other examples of total works of art. Klimt painted the wives of clients who did up their houses with furniture and decoration made by his friends at the Wiener Werkstätte, who were, in turn, heavily influenced by the British arts and crafts movement. No detail was omitted, down to the lavatory-paper holder and the coal scuttle.
None of the works from Klimt’s golden period has travelled to Liverpool, but there are excellent examples of earlier, somewhat less extravagant domestic portraits. The last gallery in the show is titled “The World in Female Form”; it includes his Salome, high-cheeked, black-haired and utterly ruthless, and his Eve, with broad hips, chunky thighs and an expectant smile. In a small room off this gallery are examples of his easy, realistic eroticism. Klimt himself appears in various photographs, wearing a smock and a pointed beard. Although he lived with his mother and two sisters throughout his adult life, when he died there were 14 outstanding paternity suits against him, which might explain his Mephistophelean smile.