In 1900 Vienna was the glittering hub
of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire and the world capital of
Fin-de-siecle culture. Tradition reigned supreme in the city of
waltzes and coffeehouses. Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, the immortal
three in music, had lived here. Since the Habsburgs had made it their
capital centuries before, all the currents of European culture and
civilisation converged in Vienna. A harmony of contrasts, ''It was lovely
to live here", wrote Stefan Zweig, "for, unconsciously, every person in
the city became a sophisticate, a cosmopolitan". The charm of
turn-of-the-century Vienna worked its magic on poets and authors,
musicians and artists; the city was full of famous faces such as Hugo von
Hofmannsthal, Arnold Schonberg and Gustav Mahler, who all adored it. Yet,
an era was drawing to a close, overshadowed by the decline of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. Still elegant, the boulevards of Vienna were
growing shabby. The clouds of war were gathering on the horizon. The
flower of Viennese Jugendstil was in late bloom and the golden age was
fading.
Gustav
Klimt
was regarded as the leading Viennese painter of his day. A goldsmith's
son, he founded the "Vienna Secession" in defiance of academic painting.
As eclectic as the city itself,
Klimt's
aesthetic embraced such superficially disparate elements as
jin-ie-swclt elegance and sensuousness and Byzantine icons and
mosaics. Moreover, he incorporated elements of East Asian and ancient
Egyptian art in his work. He lavishly bestowed symbolic ornament and
decoration on his works, making the surfaces of his pictures glitter with
the colours of jewels — cornflower sapphires and amethysts, alexandntes
and pearls on a rich gold ground.
Influenced by the writings of his fellow Viennese,
Sigmund Freud,
Klimt
painted sensuous and sumptuous pictures, which aroused the ire of the
critics. His work was condemned as "obscene", yet, all he did was revel in
luxury and beauty with a suggestion of the physical pleasures in life,
freed from the constraints of nineteenth-century inhibitions. His
masterpiece, The Kiss, is a celebration of beauty and
eroticism. Some might view it as a manifesto of decadence. In retrospect,
Klimt's
oeuvre seems to reflect one of the last dreams of innocence before the
horrors of war set in.
