Gustav Klimt

Amidst the expected, punning advertisements for data companies lining the drive into San Francisco, one passes a lone cultural billboard depicting Klimt’s The Virgin (1913). The image advertises Klimt & Rodin: An Artistic Encounter at the Legion of Honor. Below the image of entwined pale, female flesh against a tapestry of vibrant color are the words: “Gives off seriously sexual vibes,” excerpted from a review in San Francisco Magazine. Klimt & Rodin showcases the two male artists’ interest in depicting the white female subject, an art historical mainstay since the splash of Praxiteles’s naked Aphrodite of Knidos. Vibrant colors and gilt dominates the non-figural spaces of Klimt’s canvases, but not the subjects’ bodies, which are rendered in light flesh tones, highlighted with pale yellows and pinks. Rodin’s sculptures, in contrast, are hewn from monochrome materials—marble, bronze, clay—with no surface treatments. If the “seriously sexual vibes” advertised on the billboard come from the expected space of white female (and feminized) subjectivity, the “artistic encounter” on display is one of medium—of painting’s uncontested polychrome in contrast to the insistent monochrome of modern sculpture.

Анализ эволюции образа Афины на материале литературной (О. Уайльд, Вл. Соловьев, А. Блок) и иконографической (Э. Берн-Джонс, Ф. Штук, Г. Климт, К. Мозер и др.) традиции модерна позволяет наметить этапы происхождения и развития специфической для этой эпохи трактовки образа. Если в ранних произведениях модерна художники, чувствуя двойственную природу Афины, представляют богиню разума коррелятом Горгоны, то позднее внимание уделяется символическому прочтению различных форм изображения богини, от андрогинного до гипертрофированно женственного. Анализ канонических атрибутов Афины позволяет делать вывод о двуприродности восприятия богини в модерне. Сложившийся в итоге образ стал отрицанием разума и гармонии в том виде, в каком они дошли из античности, отражая видение разума глазами нового века — разверзшейся бездны, познать которую способен только взгляд Горгоны.

Il Nobel per la medicina mette di fronte la mente umana e l’ambiente intellettuale viennese fra 1889 e 1914, tracciando un ritratto stimolante dell’intensa simbiosi che si viene a determinare. Le prime tracce della possibilità di comprendere la mente in termini biologici cominciano a diffondersi proprio in quella città di due milioni d’abitanti, incrocio fra una quindicina di nazionalità e decine di lingue e dialetti, fulcro di splendore e decadenza dell’Impero più antico d’Europa ancora in vita nel 1900 – anche se si tratta ormai di sopravvivenza. Chiedersi come ricordiamo, impariamo, percepiamo e darsi risposte attendibili sul piano scientifico è consentito dalla fine del secolo scorso grazie alla fusione fra psicologia cognitiva (scienza della mente) e scienza del cervello (neuroscienza). Ma il punto d’arrivo, costituito dalla possibilità stessa d’indagare i processi neurologici di formazione di fenomeni come empatia e pensiero, coscienza e giudizio estetico, questo punto parte da artisti e scienziati che Kandel identifica in specie nei cinque protagonisti delle sue pagine.

Analyse littéraire et thématique des sept phases de l'amour entre Charles Swann et Odette de Crécy dans le deuxième chapitre de "Du côté de chez Swann", de Marcel Proust.

Analyse de l'influence des toiles qui aparaissent dans "Un amour de Swann", dont Marcel Proust fait référence dans son oeuvre, lesquelles representent le mieux chacune des sept phases d'un amour qui ne serait jamais possible sans l'élan pour l'ideal introuvable qui caractérise l'éxistence humaine.

A great number of researchers have already written on Stoclet House. This
essay is about its garden and provides a way of analyzing the whole ensemble from a
‘garden viewpoint’. As will be shown, the following characteristic features of
Hoffmann’s architecture are all well known in garden design: the inscription of
the site within an urban context, the strong link between a building and its garden
— between the interior and the exterior — the importance of the visitor’s own
movement to the experience of spaces or optical sensations, or Hoffmann’s
different ways of taking into account the changing light within a day, a season or
a weather change. Therefore the author decided to take the reader on a kind of
‘promenade’ through the ensemble and through a lost world of utopian ideals that
had been developed around 1900. Sometimes exhaustive in its descriptive details,
this essay is meant as a kind of archeology of a ‘hidden garden’ whose opening to
the public might take another decade or more.

During the late 1800’s, a transformation began in Vienna, Austria that not only catapulted the development of new social perspectives but it also completely changed the direction of art. There was a transition from academic art to a free and psychologically based art. Inspired by the changing structures of Vienna, these artists created work that now ranks among the most important modern art of all time.

This paper develops an exhaustive analysis of the Japanese animation series «Elfen Lied» (2004) and its opening song, "Lilium", which is an exceptional case within its field of production because its lyrics are written in Latin. The purpose of my analysis is to determine if "Lilium" and its visual presentation really have something to do (thematically and stylistically) with the series it presents, or not. My hypothesis is that "Lilium", both in its musical level and in its visual presentation, fulfils all the formal characteristics of both a lied and an overture; and, given the latter, anticipates core thematic and stylistic elements of the work it precedes. Moreover, it even subtly anticipates the ideological content of the series, which consists of a critical reading of gender roles and feminism in contemporary Japanese and global society. To demonstrate these hypotheses, I made a detailed analysis of «Elfen Lied», paying special attention to its animated adaptation but not ignoring its original manga version; and then I analyzed "Lilium" in its three aspects: its visual presentation, its lyric and its musical score. I have analyzed and emphasized how the abundant intertextualities present in "Lilium" were productive for creating music and for transmitting the artistic and ideological content present in the series. The paper adopts an interdisciplinary perspective, and uses theoretical tools from the fields of semiotics, intertextuality, and reception theory.

At its height in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Japonisme had a tremendous impact on Western art. In this publication, author Ricard Bru approaches the cultural phenomenon of Japonisme from an innovative standpoint. He presents an in-depth discussion of the influence of Japanese printed erotic imagery by ukiyo-e masters such as Kitagawa Utamaro and Katsushika Hokusai on European artists, including Edgar Degas, Auguste Rodin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Gustav Klimt and Pablo Picasso, as well as writers, critics, and collectors, such as Edmond de Goncourt, Joris-Karl Huysmans, and Émile Zola. With over 160 color illustrations sourced from public and private collections, Erotic Japonisme demonstrates the rich artistic dialogue that existed between Europe and Japan.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Japonisme—an artistic lingua franca—became one of the most organic, overarching components of Gustav Klimt’s new art. This paper draws parallels between Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Sonja Knips and Itō Jakuchū’s print Golden Pheasant and Bamboo in Snow. The discovery of an unexpectedly close dialogue between Klimt and Jakuchū and the striking similarity of the formal language of the two works supports the paper’s thesis that Itō Jakuchū’s print is the primary source of influence behind the conception and execution of the portrait and, by extension, that Klimt’s engagement with Japanese stimuli is one of the main engines behind his creative pursuit, starting at the end of the 1890s. This discovery challenges preconceived notions and existing concepts and illustrates the impossibility of understanding Klimt’s heritage comprehensively and adequately without examining the role of Japonisme in it.

You can find a limited (though lengthy) preview here on Google Books:
https://books.google.com/books?id=H0ElDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA61&lpg=PA61&dq=schiele+hysteria&source=bl&ots=HLw31o7SJa&sig=ACfU3U09NSs3wrxdlE_XkRYv5iP7hK346w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj4rs-vkJjoAhVwdt8KHexVA-UQ6AEwCHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

Analysis of two ways of approaching the classics, apparently different but with underlying aspects in common, respectively in the fields of literature and visual art. In his lyric O Reginella (Myricae 2 , 1892) Giovanni Pascoli uses the techniques of the Hellenistic and Roman poets, contaminating his literary sources and reusing epic models to describe the humble life of his rural characters: adopting the role of Odysseus in Od. VI, and combining fragments from three different passages (vv. 25-30, 62-65, 154-159), he addresses his makarismos to a girl (a new Nausicaa) who has stretched out her white laundry in the meadows.

Arguably one of Vienna's most celebrated artists, Gustav Klimt both sketched and painted a remarkable number of artworks during his lifetime. Most of his figurative works, if not all, focus on the female body and various issues of womanhood, more specifically how these issues fit into a quickly developing society. Similar to many other major European cities, Vienna at the fin-de-séicle was rife with political, social, and cultural change. Specific aspects included Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis, the emergence of the New Woman, Bohemian art collectives reacting against strict academic traditions, and a younger generation refusing the rigid Victorian ideals. Klimt construed these ideas and philosophies in some of his allegorical portrait paintings of archetypal women, either from classical mythology or biblical stories. By including known classical and religious iconography, Klimt is speaking to the collective unconscious of all mankind and exploring inner conflicts, focusing specifically on sexuality. These paintings were executed in a style referred to as "mythico-symbolist art," since there exists a combination of both mysticism and visual poetry, lending a sense of lyrical beauty to each. 1 His depictions of females range across powerful heroines, goddesses, femme fatales, erotic nudes, and ancient priestesses. Klimt's attitude towards women remains controversial. It was recorded by Franz Servois upon visiting his studio that he always kept a "harem" of nude models lounging around 1 Gabriella Belli, Gustav Klimt: Masterpieces (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990), 7.

Johannes Wieninger “There’s a Chinese vase standing in the bookcase” East Asian elements in the late work of Gustav Klimt

in: Sandra Tretter und Peter Weinhäupl (Hrsg): Gustav Klimt -  Atelier Feldmühlgasse 1911-1918. (Reihe Edition Klimt) Wien 2014.

English edition 2016/17, new edition in preperation for autumn 2020


In 1913 the Japanese artist and journalist Kijiro Ohta (1883–1951) visited Vienna with the aim of writing an article on Gustav Klimt for the art magazine Bijutsushinpo (News from the World of Art). He managed to get a recommendation only with the greatest difficulty but in the end succeeded in surmounting the arduous journey to the suburb of Hietzing, several kilometres further west of Schönbrunn, where Klimt had had his studio since 1911. ...

Kunstformen der Natur in 1899 he culminated nearly forty years of scientific endeavors by colonizing the disciplines of aesthetics, religion, and philosophy, and presenting evolution as a world view capable of answering metaphysical questions. In Die Welträtsel Haeckel fully elaborated his concept of monism as a pantheistic religion of nature predicated on the most recent discoveries of biology, physics and chemistry.

Gustav Klimt's unique, iconic style was the cusp that connected the academic, historicist tradition of the past to the abstract, inward-looking, symbolic, convoluted and expressive forms of the future. However, the blossoming of Klimt's art was only possible in the particular context of fin de siècle Vienna and thus, Vienna made Klimt just as much as Klimt made Vienna. Klimt is commonly perceived as a visionary, a rebel and a genius ahead of his time. The truth of the matter is that every genius who has been ahead of his time has also been, ironically, a product of his time. Compared to his mature and later period paintings, Klimt's early work was unabashedly academic and heavily influenced by historicism. Although Klimt's oeuvre was shaped by various influences which included artists, art works, objects and styles from beyond the Austro-Hungarian Empire as well as influences from his various trips abroad, as a young man Klimt was certainly more influenced by his immediate context and people. One of the most potent, early influences was the pedagogy, curriculum and vision of his alma mater, the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts). A deeper understanding of this institution and its influence on Klimt during his formative years as an artist undoubtedly sheds light on his early work. It also brings into focus some of the issues faced by such institutions as they tried to break away from the traditions of the art academies, which they viewed as a vestige of the past, in order to pave the way for a new kind of art that was more relevant to the present and hopefully to the future as well. This article aims to understand the circumstances that led to the establishment of the Kunstgewerbeschule and also to understand its curriculum, syllabus and pedagogy. Finally, it aims to understand the influence of the Kunstgewerbeschule on the early art of Gustav Klimt by analyzing selected works.

Die vorliegende Hausarbeit soll hauptsächlich über das Leben und die Tätigkeit von Gustav Klimt informieren. Die Arbeit besteht aus zwei Kapiteln, die Klimts Biographie und künstlerische Tätigkeit erleuchten. Das erste Kapitel beschreibt Klimts Leben, Ausbildung und die Umstände, die seine Tätigkeit beeinflussten. Da werden auch die wichtigsten Phasen seiner Kunst aufgewiesen, die uns die Vorstellung der lebenslangen geistigen Entwicklung des Künstlers geben. Desweiteren werden die Besonderheiten und die Hauptthemen und -gattungen Klimts Kunst erläutert. Anschließend wird über sein berühmtestes Gemälde Der Kuss informiert, das die wichtigsten Tendenzen und Themen seiner Malerei beinhaltet.

The group of Austrian artists that emerged by the mid-1960s, shocking the bourgeois public with their radical events or so-called aktions, have become the second most prominent and significant phenomenon in the art life of 20th-century Austria, after Austrian expressionism. Despite the fact that the Viennese Actionists worked in a completely different environment (formally speaking even in another country), we can draw many parallels between their artistic oeuvre and that of early 20th century Expressionism — both conceptually, and on the level of aesthetically formalized aspects...

Resumen: El tratamiento del cuerpo femenino en las obras pictóricas de Egon
Schiele y Gustav Klimt proyecta dos concepciones de la mujer distintas. En la
pintura de Klimt, la mujer se entiende como una fuerza opuesta al hombre. Por
el contrario, en la obra de Schiele apenas cabe hablar de hombres y mujeres,
sino de figuras. Estableciendo paralelismos con la obra de Schopenhauer y
Kraus por un lado y con la de Weininger, Wittgenstein y Trakl por otro, este
artículo compara las vienesas de carne y hueso de Klimt con las artificiosas
figuras bisexuales de Schiele, entendiéndolas, a su vez, como dos apuestas
antropológicas antagónicas.
Palabras-clave: Klimt, Schiele, Wittgenstein, mujer, antropología.

Abstract: The treatment of the female body in Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt’s
oeuvres reveals two different conceptions of women. In Klimt’s oeuvre, women
are understood as a force in opposition to man. However, one almost cannot
differentiate between men and women in Schiele’s oeuvre, where there are only
figures. Building parallelisms between Klimt, Schopenhauer and Kraus on the
one hand and Schiele, Wittgenstein, Trakl and Weininger on the other, this
article compares the Viennese women of flesh and bone of Klimt to the artificial
bisexual figures of Schiele, while understanding them as two antagonistic
anthropological positions.
Key-words: Klimt, Schiele, Wittgenstein, woman, anthropology.

The following article will explore “one of the greatest scandals
in art circles in Vienna around 1900,” and a defining experience for a dominant figure in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: the affair around Gustav Klimt’s rejected University Paintings (1900–1905). Numerous authors have applied the trope of the misunderstood genius to Klimt, due
to this affair. In this contribution, I will demonstrate that this narrative mythologises and distorts a much more complex and nuanced debate. I argue that the University Paintings affair was not a clash between the prudes of the ‘Establishment’ and a heroic, unflinching artist and his unusually open-minded supporters. Rather, the scandal revolves around much more nuanced – and a lot less sensationalist – questions about the freedom and constraints of applied works of art.

En el presente ensayo intentaré considerar un aspecto de la phrónesis aristotélica en su articulación con la experiencia de lo simbólico en algunas obras de arte que la representan. Siguiendo aquella rehabilitación de la filosofía práctica aristotélica, iniciada por Heidegger a comienzos del S. XX, Gadamer utiliza a la phrónesis aristotélica como el paradigma de un nuevo tipo de racionalidad, y a su vez, da cuenta de un tipo particular de imágenes que nos guían en el campo moral, llamadas por él Leitbilder. Mi intención es mostrar cómo estas imágenes-directrices se pueden complementar con la experiencia del arte, descubriendo así en algunas obras, como las alegorías de la prudencia de Macchietti, Vouet y Ticiano, el momento normativo que en ellas nos interpela.