Gustav Klimt- Understanding Modern Art

by the first decade of the 20th century some pretty major changes were taking place in european art inspired by the works of the french avant-garde and driven by the process of modernization that was reshaping society artists increasingly began to reject the styles and conventions of old in their place these artists proposed a new kind of art one that was more expressive individualistic and often a whole lot more confusing than welcome before this era which saw more change in a few decades than most of europe had seen in centuries was the birth of what we now call modern art our subject today the austrian painter gustav klimt is an artist whose work exemplifies the changes of this period his stylish and decorative golden paintings are quite unlike anything else in the history of art before them and his unabashed depictions of previously taboo topics such as sexuality point to larger cultural changes that would lead artists to portray the human form in new never-before-seen ways to really understand klimt however we need to look not only to his works but also to the environment that produced them turn of the century vienna a city torn between the past and the present despite being home to a strictly conservative society so repressive it makes victorian england look like burning man vienna was also the birthplace of many new ideas that would shape the 20th century from the psychoanalysis of sigmund freud to the seeds of what would eventually become fascism this strange culture which the writer carol krause famously described as the laboratory of the apocalypse which shaped the course of both modern history and modern art so today let's take a look at the life and works of gustav klimt vienna's most famous son at least so far's painting is concerned to see what was really going on at the birth of modern art klimt was born in 1862 to a large middle-class family in baumgarten near vienna in an example of foreshadowing even i find heavy-handed his father was a goldsmith and the young claim to learn many of the techniques that would much later become synonymous with his work from the family trade he also displayed a keen ability to draw and so was enrolled alongside his similarly gifted brother ernst in the consquerbescule the viennese academy of applied art there he learned his trade in the traditional manner not all that dissimilar from how painters of the past would have learning technical skills and historical methods that despite being quite old were still very much in style in vienna upon graduating in 1883 klimt found there was no shortage of work for him the ce was in the process of remodeling as it modernized and many of its newly renovated cultural buildings were in need of murals for their walls the most famous of these early commissions is the works klimt created alongside ernst and their compatriot franz matched for the berg theater which depicts scenes from famous plays and the history of theater these works give us a great example of the kind of art that was prepared in vienna at the time the style can loosely be termed historicism their austere classical surfaces and baroque details echoes the air of prior centuries rather than their own which was quite okay with the viennese nobility who were similarly fixated on days gone by as a result the murals were very well received and the trio of young painters were even awarded the golden cross for their achievement by then emperor and human walrus hybrid franz joseph while there are passages in these works by klimt that anticipate his later interests overall these paintings are like the society that produced them staunchly traditional and perhaps even stuck in the past this was not a culture that embraced the new the viennese aristocracy had trouble with many modern notions like basic human rights and women's suffrage so it's not surprising they weren't exactly on board for the whole modern air thing yet despite its rising popularity in other parts of europe as the 20th century drew closer however vienna would be faced with a younger generation who are often less concerned with the past and more concerned with the modern day this would lead to rising cultural tensions and eventually cause for change aided in no small part about a slew of influential figures who called the ce home in those days from modernist composers like schumer and mahler to revolutionary doctors like carol van rockettansky and joseph skoda not to mention that during this period hitler stalin trotsky t.o and freud all lived in the city within a few miles of each other and even frequented the same coffee shops in what i can only imagine was a much more entertaining version of friends out of all these figures the one who would have the biggest influence on klimt and modern art in general is cocaine enthusiast and father of psychoanalysis sigmund freud his delving into the depths of the unconscious study of dreams and obsession with suspiciously phallic objects would inspire many artists to make work that didn't just focus on mimicking the appearance of reality but instead explored the inner workings of the human mind in addition to this the process of psychoanalysis itself would also become crucial to modern art as a kind of lens through which critics artists and the public themselves could view and interpret the new art seeing it variously as a vision of the artist or their subject's inner world or a way in which we can analyze the workings of our own minds through the analysis of art now these days many of freud's ideas are questionable to say the least turns out basing your theories of the workings of the human mind solely on the study of hyper-oppressed anally fixated austrian aristocrats might not be the best idea but people at the time didn't know that and so freud's influence on earth for better or worse will be widely felt and both he and his family will be coming up again and again from his nephew eddie bernays the best descriptive term for whom would be total bastard to his grandson lucian who was himself a painter of somerpute freud's psychoanalysis was of course just one of many new ideas doing the rounds at a time that would influence klimt's work in addition there was also artistic movements such as the post-impressionists of france and the never-ending flow of japanese art that influenced pretty much everyone in addition there was also a new style known quite appropriately as art nouveau having emerged from the arts and crafts movement in england and attained near universal popularity in both public and private spaces art nouveau or jungensteel youth style as it was known in germany was interestingly not based in the past but in the present instead it even sought to remove the distinctions between higher and low the flowing whiplash lines characteristic of the style and its love of natural motifs inspired by nature were applied in mediums across the board from so-called low ones such as poster design furniture crafting and jewelry production to those high arts of painting and sculpture that wouldn't have been caught dead associated with the likes of furniture designers mere decades before these new styles and concepts must have been a breath of fresh air declined to have been stuck working in traditional and by this point near outmoded methods up till now and it wasn't just him that felt this way either there were plenty of other artists architects and designers in vienna who like klimt were looking for something new as a result in 1897 clinton would find himself the head of a group who declared they were sick of the historicism that dominated viennese art and as such were seceding from the viennese art establishment the vienna secession as it fittingly came to be known is one of the first major formalized breaks of the academic system where artists themselves chose to exert control and create a distinctly new kind of modern art the secessionists published their own journal fair sacrum which offered artworks and riding discussing the new art they also built their own headquarters the secession hall which served as gallery meeting place and an artwork in its own right where much like inert nouveau they attempted to break down the barriers between higher and low through the combination of art forms working in tandem from architecture to painting to furniture design all in pursuit of what they termed a guess gazonte kunstwork or a total work of art the secessionist motto inscribed on the secession hall succinctly describes their goals and their opposition to the air of the past that they rejected to every ages art to every art it's freedom now for all the high-minded ideals this session is held the actual realities of their endeavors don't really match up they quickly resegregate it between those deemed craft people and those considered proper artists for whatever that means and there's more than a few head cases involved that may require a closer look but for now let's examine how the succession would mark a huge change in the work of klimt we can see this influence in many works from around this time such as the famous beethoven freeze a gigantic mural designed for the secession hall in much the same way klim's early commissions were for other public buildings this piece however was designed to work in tandem with other artworks and even the architecture of the building all of which is in line with the secessionist belief in different art forms working in tandem the freeze also contains many modern elements in its design that set it apart from claims earlier works the art nouveau influence is apparent as clint now paints his figures in a stylistic rather than realistic fashion and gives large parts of the work over to decorative patterns and flights of fancy that rather than mimicking reality instead evoke the complexities of life through allegory this sasquatch looking chap here for example is typhon a mythological beast that in this case is said to represent typhoid a major problem for vienna at the time the rest of the figures hold similar allegorical meanings from disease to lust to voluptuousness if that is indeed a concept requiring allegory to convey all told the work seeks to convey many complex aspects of the human condition from the search for happiness to the fear of death the academics of vienna were however outraged by this piece it wasn't so much the strange style or the unusual composition that got them but rather the presence of pubic hair and some of the figures which should give you some idea of the screwed up priorities that led to the secession in the first place another secession-related work by klimt is this one palace athena an unusual depiction of the greek goddess of both war and wisdom which bears many traits that set it apart from other mythological works firstly athena is presented as quite androgynous her armor spear and staring accusatory gaze convey martial power rather than the saw femininity traditionally associated with depictions of goddesses her decorative armor with its golden patterns evoke art nouveau while the flat cartoon-like designs in the background and medusa head and her chestplate create a connection to the art of ancient greece lastly the soft edges and hazy quality create a dreamlike texture that seems in line with the ideas of freud who as we may recall taught that dreams express our inner desires the desire clint is expressing in this case perhaps being summarized by the tiny figure athena halls which symbolizes nike the goddess of victory and in more recent times child labour and signifies klim's desire for the victory of the secessionists over the academics such visions may have been optimistic however and it wouldn't be long before they got claimed in trouble as was the case with this set of paintings commissioned by the university of vienna from him and franz mact in 1900 the theme the university wanted for these works was the typically nerdy enlightenment motif of light emerging from darkness conveyed through paintings of the university's most important subjects philosophy law and medicine what they expected was something along the lines of berg theater works what they got was something quite different the trouble began as it so often does with philosophy instead of delivering some school of athens style philosophical fan art klimt gives us this mysterious image on the left we see a column of figures ranging from children to the top to elderly at the bottom their twisting contorted forms don't exactly evoke knowledge or rationality instead they seem anguished confused and lost these figures are contrasted with a void on the right comprised of more decorative brushwork and a sphinx style face which symbolizes the pursuit of knowledge at the bottom another face stares at us eyes wide perhaps evoking the clarity of knowledge or maybe a medusa-like paralysis that the pursuit of that knowledge may bring all in all this piece is quite ambiguous unlike past depictions of philosophy its figures have no clear-cut meaning their allegories are vague and uncertain there's not even any lads in togas they're all just floating around in the nip rather than glorifying the philosophers and their rational pursuit of knowledge this work seems instead to be critical of them pointing out the irrational and ultimately unknowable nature of the world philosophers spend their careers trying to categorize naturally they hated it and an open letter signed by the heads of the department was circulated officially refusing the work despite the negative response klimt unveiled the next part the following year medicine here we see more floating figures this time representing the flow of life from birth to death which we can see from the presence of adults children a pregnant woman and a skeleton on the left a female figure is drifting away from the stream symbolizing death her arm the one reaching out to her symbolized the efforts of medicine to preserve life at the bottom the figure draped in dark lines and holding a cup and a snake represents hygiena daughter of the god of medicine with her back turned to the flow she seems rather ambivalent about the mass of teeming humanity behind her and its endless course towards death as you can imagine the doctors were just as i ray as the philosophers to them this work seem derogatory of their advances for rather than showing the healing of the sick it dwells on the inevitability of death and seems to imply the limitations of medicine rather than its advances this led to another uproar and you would think that clint would have learned his lesson by now but after a good long break in 1907 he finally presented the final part of his trilogy juris prudence the most outright confrontational image of the tree the male figure in the center stands accused his contorted pose signifies castration internment and a loss of freedom the octopus that holds him and the three female figures representing the furies of greek mythology seem to suggest there is no way out the portrayal of the three furies is interesting as they all betray behaviors we would not like to see in those tasks of dolling out justice one seems to be asleep on the job while another stares with a vengeful expression the third seems to be winking perhaps indicating some sort of under-the-table deal not something we typically draw attention to in high-minded depictions of justice above it all and fair move from the act of punishment itself are three figures who represent the concepts of truth justice and law their distance and aloofness from the sentencing evokes ideas of justice that are once again less than flattering now you may have noticed something of a theme emerging here all three of these paintings instead of proclaiming how great these institutions are as was the job of artists and such matters for centuries seemed instead to be dead set on criticizing them what's more their dream lifestyle decorative brushwork and unusual depictions of the human form all evoked scorn from their audiences for their ambiguity these weren't clear-cut images proclaiming the truth of the university studies they were instead critical and probing they sought to challenge rather than reassure and so naturally the university refused all three decrying their criticality and their unabashed depictions of non-classical nudity as degenerate meanwhile poor l franz mact who'd been tasked with the subject of theology for his own work was painting some lovely angels and probably just wanted to get paid due to all the controversy klimt had to return his own fee and narrowly avoided a sticky financial situation when some of his private patrons offered to buy the rejected works for their own collections there they remained until their destruction during world war ii which is why we're looking at black and white photos of them now the whole thing was quite damaging to klimt professionally though he didn't seem all that bothered as we can see in this piece he painted in response to what would become known as the university affair no title goldfish its initial name was to my critics this kind of attitude would have been professional suicide in previous eras but klimt was actually pretty secure thanks to a network of new wealthy patrons who far from being scandalized by his works were actually big fans of them these patrons many of whom were jewish businessmen or more specifically their wives were drawn to klim's works as an alternative to the traditional high culture of the era which they were often forbidden from participating in their support would allow klimt to continue painting in his ever more modern style and caused him to move away from creating public artworks in favor of private commissions instead no longer bound by paycheck or public taste klimt's later works would fully indulge in his love of patterns increasingly brazen depictions of sexuality and perhaps most famously of all his inclination for gold gold held a special significance for klimt his father had been a goldsmith and he was familiar with the material but it also evoked connections to the gold leaf of religious icons and decorative byzantine mosaics his clients many of whom were themselves nouveau riche recent additions to the ruling class were similarly enamored with the metal its shiny surface having long held connotations of wealth and alchemic transformation from a lower form to a higher one encouraged by this shared fascination klimt would lash on the gold in these later pieces leading to some of his most iconic works in every sense of the word a well-known example of this is this full-length portrait of adele block bauer prominent fixture of the vienna social scene and longtime patron of klimt who in addition to funding his works also frequently posed for them in this painting we see her seated against a flat golden background and sporting an expression so subtle and enigmatic that it has been compared to the mona lisa the only visible parts painted in oil are her face arms and shoulders with everything else subsumed beneath the overwhelming gold its opulence evokes wealth power and beauty as well as drawing parallels with those religious icons of old framing adele with the sort of importance that was previously reserved only for saints all that gold however also does something else to the image its shiny surface makes creating realistic space and shadow nigh on impossible and so klimt doesn't even bother to suggest them instead he embraces the flat and decorative qualities of his materials over the surface appearance of reality this leaves klimt with a lot more room for his patterns which fill much of this flattened space swirls curves lines and squares even a few triangles and some eyes that will no doubt get the conspiracy theorists going these patterns in addition to being aesthetically pleasing also have a symbolic weight all their own alluding as they often do to clinch other great interests besides called sex and eroticism these patterns and their contrasting round and angular shapes carry illusions to ideas of gender sexuality conception and pregnancy topics which are still very much taboo for art at the time but which clint was nonetheless fascinated by their presence in many of his works covering figures who rumor has if he often painted naked first further implies this meaning not to mention there at times suspicious similarity to medical drawings from the time of the human reproductive system sexuality and in particular female sexuality is what you might politely call a central theme for klimt which can get him into a bit of trouble today as many of his works can seem to be typical male gaze style fantasies the female body rendered for a male viewer's enjoyment this is of course true klimt was indeed a big fan of the female form the trail of suspiciously hairy babies he left in his wake attest to that there may however be more to these works than we might at first assume as there are for the time scandalous subjects often reflect the influence of new emerging ideas of individualism sexuality and the psychological understanding of it that would go on to reshape our conceptions of what it is to be human in the coming century nude figures in earth were of course nothing new that wasn't really the issue the demure classical nudes of the bird theater murals for example have been quite alright by the standards of the day whereas by contrast the unusual twisting forms of the university paintings and the mere presence of pubic hair in the beethoven freeze had elicited shock from klim's critics so imagine the reaction to works like this one titled ania which depicts the once again mythological subject of the daughter of the king of aragos in the middle of a coil moment with zeus here depicted as a long block from tetris this subject no doubt appealed to klimt due to the unfortunately termed golden shower which zeus took the form of a part of the myth which gives him a chance to once again incorporate his favorite material while the scene may be clothed as it were in the trappings of greek myth its depiction of taniya is anything but traditional unlike the muted reclining figures of past representations of this story klimt's version unambiguously places the emphasis on denia herself and the sexuality that is central to the tale rather than applying it through allegory or the tasteful arrangement of angels as past versions have done this work puts the theme of sexuality front and center by close cropping the composition around dania herself to draw emphasis klim's art nouveau-inspired stylized figure drawing also helps differentiate this work from her pose to her expression to her exaggerated proportions i'll show an abandonment of the traditionally acceptable methods of painting the human form in favor of something that is much more expressive and despite its stylization in some ways more real this is because unlike most of v society which regarded women as second-class citizens at best and the existence of their sexuality is something unfit for public acknowledgement clinton instead sees it as a vital part of being human as such his depictions of the subject frequently evoke psychological depth to his figures that was severely lacking in the representations of previous heiress by embracing the aspects of the human mind that our oppressive culture like that of vienna refused to acknowledge klimt's work displays a greater depth of emotion and expression than was possible before we can also see a similar effect in many of his less explicit works too such as the many portraits of his patrons whom he depicts in strikingly modern ways placing them front and center on the canvas and using their body language and facial expressions to convey to us subtleties of their inner lives that academic approaches often quite literally glossed over partially responsible for all of this is freud who despite holding many insane ideas about women sex and just about everything else had inadvertently kicked off much discussion of these topics in the drawing rooms and parlors of vienna which klimt himself would probably have been privy to this includes not just issues of sexuality and suffrage but also how artists were to properly represent them and saw many of vienna's austere mustachio gentlemen taking the position that works such as klimts were dangerous to traditional structures of power for in their eyes they gave emphasis to the feminine over the masculine claimed for his part said little but painted much when it came to these topics though his enthusiastic adoption of modernism and role in the succession suggests he held no particular fondness for the old hierarchies his works were seen as going against these images are of course complicated and they have many aspects both positive and negative that are worthy of discussion but i mention all of this not to defend or condemn but to widen the context and to show that these works are more complicated than we may at first assume they reflect social trends and new ideas that had their genesis in vienna at the time and would have big implications for modern art and the modern world to finish up let's take a look at one last work by klimt that demonstrates the complex depiction of sexuality in his works probably the most famous piece by klimt the kiss an iconic symbol of love that may upon closer inspection be anything but this well-known golden period work contains two figures a large male who was wearing the face off a smaller female figure entangled in his grasp while this is often taken to be a demonstration of reciprocal affection by greeting card companies and the like if we look closer the figures contain some hints of a less than desirable exchange occurring the man's head extends and cranes into the woman's face in a manner that looks a little bit distorted and perhaps even disturbing meanwhile the receiver of his affections betrays signs that she may not be so welcoming of his embrace her curled fingers and tensed toes betray her discomfort both figures are draped in clint's symbolic language evoking conception and the strange composition with the phallic shape they form would no doubt have appealed to freud but the subtext of the work is much more complicated than a simple expression of love it could just as easily be an expression of an unwanted advance as a welcome one this ambiguity seems intentional claim to us as we have seen well able to portray such subject matter clearly and yet in this most famous work he doesn't instead it's somewhat sinister or undercurrent seems to imply a psychological approach that is more concerned with the subtext than the surface appearance this approach prefigures much of what is to come in modern art as depictions of the human form and just about everything else become more nuanced inscrutable and twistingly complex in tandem with the modern world itself which perhaps explains why this work has become such an icon of modern art many aspects of klim's works from his art nouveau-inspired decoration to his unflinching depictions of sexuality to his love of gold are indeed quite iconic and i mean that in every sense of the word most crucially in terms of their frequent resemblance to religious icons of old that comprise so much of european art history for centuries golden images of christ the saints and anyone with enough money and power really comprised much of the art production of the continent and while this is not surprising considering the church were the ones footing the bill for it all it also points to where the cultural power lay with the bishops cardinals and popes by klimt's time as we saw this was more or less no longer the case he couldn't get a university to buy his work never mind the vatican the church like the aristocratic circles of all vienna were not interested in these non-traditional works but luckily for klimt there was some people who were interested mainly those new wealthy patrons like adele these patrons many of whom came from families who had made their money not in the wars of centuries past but in the new though often no less ignoble pursuits of industry business and banking were by no means religious but they did understand the power of the image and the symbolism of gold in klimt's paintings the signifiers of power previously reserved for religious subjects are for the first time transferred to this new class of people the wealthy urban bourgeois who were rapidly rising to power and replacing the old patronage systems of church and state in the coming decades this new system of patronage from wealthy individuals would become the norm eventually leading us to the creation of the art market as we know it today and the reimagining of the artwork itself as a new kind of secular icon and more importantly as a commodity one that would in part come to replace the very gold that klimt had used klimt didn't live to see any of this however he died in 1918 from an indeterminate combination of spanish flu and a stroke having spent the last years of his life reducing the ornate pattern of his golden period and focusing more on anatomical studies of the human form no power of which he deemed off limits and which predictably saw him label as a pornographer by his critics in fairness to these critics showing some of these works would probably get me kicked off youtube so they may not have been exaggerating in those final years klimt had taken to mentoring young painters who inspired by his works and the secessionist movement came to see him as the leading figure of the viennese avant-garde legend has it that one day while sitting in his garden claimed a surprise to be confronted by one of these artists a spindly young man with a somewhat anxious air who broke into the older painter's home to ask him a simple yet desperate question common to many young artists which was do i have any talent klim's answer must have been yes as the young man egon sheila will become his protege and the works he produced during his short and difficult life which lead us to the birth of expressionism will be the subject of our next video so i hope you'll join me then and thanks for watching