An intense study of sexual awakening
‘While he was clearly a highly eroticised man, Klimt seems to have remained nervous of intimacy’
As with many great artists, Gustav Klimt was not successful during his lifetime. His paintings repelled and offended the bourgeoisie in Vienna, a society riven by the fear that overt sexuality led to decadence. Considered possibly pornographic, Klimt’s work was so deeply unpopular that it wasn’t until the Fifties, when a sexual revolution swept the West, that his paintings were rediscovered. He was swiftly propelled to totemic status, one of the most highly regarded artists of the century.
Today, his paintings feature prominently on lists of works that have fetched the highest prices at auction: Portrait of Adele Blochbauer I (1907), for instance, sold for £101.6 million in 2006.
Klimt was a man who spoke very little about his paintings, simply suggesting that if you wanted to learn about him you could look at his work. He did offer one infamous insight: “All art is erotic.”
This viewpoint is particularly apt when studying The Virgins (also referred to as The Maiden), a scene of sexual awakening portrayed as a romantic transition into womanhood. Despite the young ladies pictured being cloaked in Klimt’s signature flowers and vibrant swirls of colour, its sexuality is intended to be overpowering.
He painted The Virgins, which is perhaps his most allegorical painting, in 1913, towards the end of his life. It was the climax of his preoccupation with female erotic dream states, which he explored in their various manifestations from virginity to maturity. In the painting, the central character sits among five other women who form a cloud-like constellation, seemingly suspended in space, a girlish contemplation of the future awaiting her.
The canvas is mostly taken up with the virgin’s gown, illustrated with spirals and blossoming flowers intended to indicate fertility, and rounded, undulating shapes synonymous with femininity. The central virgin is the epitome of burgeoning sexuality.
Klimt’s home life outside of the studio was comparatively straitlaced. He loved cats and lived with his mother and unmarried sister until his death in 1918, aged 55 – he wasn’t ready to sever the maternal bond. They doted on him, which perhaps contributed to his lack of any long-term relationships. Rather than being frustrated by his mother’s affections, Klimt was happy in his role, remaining a fully grown Peter Pan and content to be “Little Gustav” at home.
He was a founding member of the Secession movement, which, in 1897, broke away from established academies, claiming they were too conservative. Nevertheless, he was a loner in the artistic community, choosing not to socialise with other artists or engage in café society, and was soon to drift away from the other Secessionists.
In the studio, “Little Gustav” was no more. It was his kingdom, and his daily ritual was to dress in his favourite navy blue smock (wearing nothing underneath), before settling down to work. He didn’t paint in isolation – there were regularly several nude young models strewn about the studio, waiting to satisfy his every need, artistic or otherwise.
He had a fierce sexual appetite, surrounding himself with beautiful women, preferably redheads, who waited to be directed, instructed to hold a certain position if it inspired him artistically. He would make quick sketches of the girls as a break from painting, and amassed a collection of drawings that numbered into the hundreds.
He never married nor had any desire to have a family, but he did father at least three illegitimate children. After his death, a further 14 women lodged paternity suits against his estate, of which four were successful.
While he was clearly a highly eroticised man, Klimt seems to have remained nervous of intimacy. His paintings were perhaps a way of exploring romantic notions that he likely felt excluded from. Though now regarded as an artist who attempted to stir the emancipation of women (he wanted them to see themselves as sexual beings, with rights to their own pleasure), it is still argued by Klimt’s detractors that such emancipation was an accidental by-product of his highly erotic objectification of them – using mythology and allegory to thinly disguise his view that women are purely sexual playthings for men.
In Klimt’s lifetime, the Viennese were, at best, baffled by his paintings. The work he produced as a commission for the ceiling of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna, for example, was rejected by the patrons. They stated: “we are not against nakedness in art, we’re against ugliness in art,” suggesting that Klimt’s works were too realistic for the committee’s idealised view. Today, of course, the Klimt ceiling could have drawn thousands to visit Vienna.
Klimt will almost certainly be most acclaimed in future decades for the paintings he created during his Golden Phase. In the early 1900s, he made extensive use of ornamental gold leaf, reminiscent of Byzantine mosaic in its reliance on flat planes and two-dimensional perspective.
It is his strikingly emblematic female figures that are considered among Klimt’s greatest paintings of all. Judith (1901), Danae (1907), and
The Kiss (1908) are extraordinarily beautiful, but his most notable work is probably Adele Bloch-bauer
I. Seized by the Nazis during the Second World War from the wealthy industrialist who had commissioned the painting of his wife, it was finally released from the Austrian State Gallery to the niece of Bloch-bauer in 2000. It was Klimt’s favourite of his portraits, and he would be pleased that today it is one of the spectacular highlights of any art lover’s trip to New York, hanging serenely in the Neue Galerie.