Monday, September 24, 2012

ART EXHIBIT: Gustav Klimpt at the Getty Museum


The Beethoven Frieze -  The Hostile Forces, 1902
I’ve read a biography of Klimpt which focussed on his erotic nature and its expression, and his mature work - I don’t recall it included so much about his early developmental period of Art Nouveau -historicism-realistic-Academic style.  It is simply, unsurpassingly magnificent.  More lush, more poignant than David, more sympathetic.  What a leap the Vienna Secession truly made into modernity - in some ways more astonishing than the French Moderns; its natural energy was tragically cut by World War I, the flu epidemic, and the economic and political destruction suffered in the ensuing years.  
Klimpt was a decorative graphic designer mural artist with the soul of a German romantic expressionist.  In him, the element of line has an apogee that perhaps hasn’t been matched, though much emulated.  It combines with elegance, modern psychological insights, and a tragic view of humans always suffering, with little respite.





 portrait of a Lady with Cape and Hat, 1897-1898, Gustav Klimt. Black and red crayon. Albertina, Vienna (from Getty website)


One of Klimpt’s early  charcoal works - the elegantly languid, moody and remote Viennese women he loved to draw and paint.







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