Cliche college posters aside, there is no doubting that Klimt is an exceptional painter, muralist, and sketcher. There have been whispers in the naysayers arena who purport Klimt's work is "superficial and merely demonstrative." Which can be true in many senses if you are looking primarily at his paintings like The Kiss (college room poster #1 and Danielle Steel book cover. yikes.) or Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (college room poster #2). But the Getty does a great job at steering away from his quintessential golden paintings and leave attendees with over 100 drawings on loan from the Albertina Museum in Vienna. Old characterizations of superficiality are thrown away and replaced with simplistic lines showing Klimt's uncanny ability to render his models as living and breathing creatures. One sketch that really encapsulates that last sentence is called Fishblood (shown below).
This sketch garnered a second look from me as I realized it was done on some sort of quasi cardboard box material. The backsides were folded and it actually appeared sloppily bent, save for the beautiful art work presented on the front. As I thoroughly scanned the painting (at one point my face almost fogging up the glass), I couldn't help but notice Klimt's perfectly intricate lines maneuvering their way across the canvas and the women floating across with this captured sexual abandon. I was immediately envious at Klimt's ability to draw with such profundity and precision as I am a person who can barely draw a stick figure without screwing up the triangle and box shaped outfits. As I sauntered from sketch to sketch there was no doubt a prevalent theme of angelic women floating in a dream state, lost in a current of autoeroticism. I then wondered to myself what his intentions were in drawing all these women in such positions. Were these femme fatales just a mere fantasy to Klimt whom he womanized and lusted over? Or were these women vessels in which a certain state of truth could be gleaned? Although Klimt rarely commented on his work and no real intention can be known, he did favor the epigram "Nudas Veritas" meaning "in nakedness is found truth." (Whereas I favor the epigram "In Vino Veritas" -- in wine [there is] truth. I think Klimt and I wouldv'e gotten along swimmingly). Klimt actually painted a beautiful golden spectacle of art titled "Nudas Veritas" and included a Freidrich Schiller quote alongside it: If you cannot please everyone with your deeds and your art, please a few. To please many is bad.
At the time Nudas Veritas was painted, nude pictures of red heads with snakes swirling around was highly shocking and perverse against other works of the time by Post Impressionist artists such as Van Gogh and Cezanne. If this painting didn't provoke a state of gross shock and awe.. and maybe a little electric current of appreciation then one would only have to read the quote and look in the mirror painted on the canvas to see that that's exactly what Klimt wanted and expected. No matter what expression of horror or excitement the painting yielded, Klimt was aware of it's precise job to please a few and maybe even preferred it that way. And I believe that goes for all this artwork. Looking at Klimt's work pitted against the Getty walls, I kept thinking of a sort of ephemeral truth and precise moment captured through the strokes of his pencil. He was able to draw a fleeting moment in a woman's life that only few witness and cemented it into the permanency of his canvas. I can understand how images like this can be overtly graphic and amass a few throat clearings and shakes of the head when they were first painted. Today, it seems like more than ever these paintings can be appreciated and idolized as representing the beauty of the human perspective and female figure.
 |
| Nudas Veritas |
On a side note, walking amongst all the nude pictures, the museum's ornate architecture, varnished hardwood floors and high ceilings began to remind me of Kubrick's last film, "Eyes Wide Shut." The entire place started to exude Kubrick's dreamy eroticism the more I thought of it. It wasn't until further research I found out how Klimt had been sketching around the same time Sigmund Freud had been developing his psychoanalysis from dreams and author Arthur Schnitzler (whom Freud was friends with) wrote his stories of sexual affairs in books like "Reigen." Schnitzler went on to write a novella about an erotic dream state, "Traumnovelle," which became the basis for Stanley Kubrick's 1999 film "Eyes Wide Shut." The whole erotic dream state became threefold from Klimt to Freud to Schnitzler (the 19th century men who had either repressed sexual thoughts or lascivious romps with women which eventually spilled over into their life's work). Schnitzler documented many of his orgasms in his diary, Klimt lived with his mom until mid age and fathered at least 30 children out of wedlock and well Freud doesn't really need an explanation surrounding his sexual escapades. All of this eventually trickled down to the Getty museum where thoughts of Kubrick's movie lingered around the room galvanizing my eyes to remain wide open.
No comments:
Post a Comment