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All Art is Erotic
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Gustav Klimt |
"The first ornament that was ever born, the cross, was erotic in
origin. The first work of art. the first artistic deed which the
first artist smeared on the wall in order to work off his excess. A
horizontal line: recumbent woman. A vertical line: man penetrating
her... But man of our time, following an inner compulsion to smear
the walls with erotic symbols, is criminal or degenerate... Since
ornament is no longer a coherent organic part of our culture, it can
no longer be an expression of our culture."
Thus wrote Adolf Loos in his article "Ornament and Crime", which
begins with the famous sentence: "All art is erotic". The intention
behind the article was to stigmatise the "erotic insalubrity" of
Klimt and the other artists of the Wiener Werkstatten. Klimt,
laughing at this new Savonarola of art, gave his reply in the form
of the Self-portrait with Genitals, which is at once a caricature
and a confession of faith.
If there is any artist whose "whole art is indeed erotic", then that
artist is Gustav Klimt. Woman is his all-absorbing theme: he paints
her naked or gloriously adorned, moving, sitting, standing, lying,
in all poses, with all gestures, even the most intimate... Ready to
kiss and be kissed, in ecstasy, in voluptuous expectation... Like
Rodin, with whom he shares this passion to portray woman in all her
moods, he always needs two or three naked models in his studio when
he is working, even if he does not paint them. An intensive voyeur,
a draughtsman not unlike a tabloid journalist, he catches woman in
the pose that excites him and moving in a way that stirs his libido.
And as we observe the result of his work, the body of a female on a
couch with all her natural sensuality and secret activities
revealed, we too become voyeurs; he makes us his accomplices.
More than 3000 of Klimt's drawings have survived. For a long time
they were neglected, but now they are regarded as an essential
supplement to his paintings. The drawings indeed show Klimt's
paintings in the making, reflecting his daily striving to grasp
reality, the planning of his compositions and their variant forms.
As with Japanese art, the erotic tension which grips the viewer
arises from the interrelation between that which is revealed and
that which is concealed. The close relationship between artist and
model is often so apparent that viewing Klimt's drawings seems an
indiscretion, an intrusion: one feels oneself becoming a voyeur. But
is this not precisely what the rogue intended, he who said of his
drawings that they were a homage to "the naive and lascivious race
of the hypersensitive", to which he himself belonged?
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Klimt's drawings are the quintessence of voluptuousness. They do
not have the aggressiveness and despair of Schiele's drawings, the
cynicism of Picasso, the frenzy of Toulouse-Lautrec. He is closer to
the refined and elegant eroticism of Ingres or Matisse. His
sensuousness attests to his taste for decadent aestheticism, which
cannot be taken from him or forbidden, as Loos would have liked.
This combination of the erotic and the aesthetic persists even in
the depiction of the most daring and provocative poses and in the
detailed reproduction of the body's erogenous zones. Although he has
been charged with pornography, Klimt is never cruel or vulgar. Klimt
the draughtsman always seems to be flirting with his subject. The
drawings are those of an observant lover, gently caressing the body
he loves so as to arouse it in every pose, and striving to capture a
moment of ecstasy, to make of it an atom of eternity. One steps into
this world as into a temple, where the pillars are women's thighs
through which one passes in order to ascend to heaven.
Klimt, life's great voyeur and seer, lover of woman and servant of
Eros, prefered to multiply the bodies of his fleshly creations and
portray the love of women, as in Water Serpents I and
II and,
shortly before his death, The Girl-Friends, rather than
admit man to his paintings. When he did admit him, it was as if with
pity, as for instance in the unfinished Adam and Eve.
Even here man is an accessory, and not the chief figure in the
picture.
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The Girl-Friends
1916-17
Klimt was so attached to women, and to
painting pictures of women, that he did not hesitate to depict
women's love;
he had already done so in Water Serpents. When
painting men he seemed to do so reluctantly,
and only when the
occasion demanded it.
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Adam and Eve
1917-18
Not even Klimt can treat the
subject of "Adam and Eve" without the presence of the male. Yet he
succeeds in making him a kind of decorative accessory. Using a
technique observed in ancient vase painting, he paints him darker
than the triumphant figure of Eve, the alluring carnal Viennese with
her gently rounded flesh, the obvious star of the picture.
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The emphasis is on Eve, curvaceous, like a well-nourished girl from Vienna. Even the flesh tones are
different in the male and female figures, following a technique
which the artist adopted from antique vase painting. The style is
less dense; photographically faithful reproduction has given way to
a compromise between planar and spatial representation. The femme
fatale has become more approachable, she is more biddable, she is
waiting...
Klimt's death in February 1918, following a stroke, prevented him
from finishing such works as the Portrait of Johanna Staude and the famous
Bride. Their unfinished state allows
us to gain entry to Klimt's world; as he went, he left a door open
for us. One sees that the drawing is like a print in the developing
tray, before the picture fully emerges. The nude drawing in all its
intimacy is gradually bewitched or shamed into colour as it
develops.
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Portrait of Johanna Staude
1917-18
To what new development in his work might
Klimt have led us? Would he have yielded even
more to the influence of Schiele, with an even
more savage eroticism? His uncompleted works
leave the question unanswered.
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Portrait of a Lady, en face
1917-18
This unfinished portrait from
the last year of Klimt's life makes it possible to see something of
his working methods. When the outline of the figure is in place, the
face is worked on first; then comes the accompanying decor.
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Klimt's whole work demonstrates the veracity of the first words in
Loos's essay -
"All art is erotic"
- but it entirely disproves the second observation, that "ornament has no connection with civilisation".
On the contrary: decorative luxuriance signified for Klimt an
enrichment of reality, a means of letting the unconscious penetrate
conscious life, as with the Freudian dream cherished later by the
Surrealists. The beauty of woman, magnified by the golden splendour
of aestheticism and its colours, allowed Klimt to recreate the glory
of a lost paradise where man, condemned to a transient flowering,
can experience moments of supreme bliss before he fade-, once more
in nature's eternal cycle.
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Lovers, drawn from the right
1914
As in the erotic art of Japan,
tension is created by the interplay between what is revealed and
what is concealed.
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Semi-nude lying, drawn from the right
1914-15
Is it not Klimt's
avowed aim to make voyeurs of us all. wanting us to share his
emotions? Does he not say that his drawings of women are a homage to
"the naive and lascivious race of the hypersensitive", to which he
himself belongs?
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Semi-nude seated, with closed eyes
1913
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Semi-nude seated, reclining
1913
So close is the intimacy between Klimt and his models,
always at hand, naked, in his studio,
that the
viewer almost feels an intruder. |
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Woman seated with thighs apart
1916
Klimt's drawings give expression to the close
contact between his model and himself. Before
concealing her in his paintings beneath sparkling
ornaments, he likes to capture her most intimate
and secret moments.
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Semi-nude
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Nude
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Nude
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Nude
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Dues Amies
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Nude
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Nude
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Nude
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Nude
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Nudes
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Nude
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Nude
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Nude
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Nude
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Nude
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Nude
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Klimt's studio, with the pictures on which he
was working at the end, shows us more about the w ay in which he
worked.
He always worked on several canvases at once, covering them gradually with
shapes and colours.
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