The Kiss by Gustav Klimt

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Klimt's golden phase was marked by positive important reaction and success. Most of his paintings from this period used gold leaf. Prominent use of gold can first be tracked back to the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907) and The Kiss (1907–1908). Klimt didn’t travel a lot but trips to Venice and Ravenna most likely inspired his gold technique.

The Kiss (1907–1908)

In this painting Klimt shows the two locked in romance, while the other parts of the painting goes into shimmering and way extravagant flat patterns. At the same time the background arouses the conflict between two and three dimensions related to the work of Degas and other modernists. Paintings like The Kiss were visual manifestations of fin-de-siècle spirit as they captured a decadence portrayed by magnificent and appealing images. The incorporation of gold leaf brings back the memory of medieval gold ground works, illuminated manuscripts and earlier mosaics with spiral patterns in clothes recall Bronze Age art and the decorative tendrils observed in Western art way before classical times. The man's head ends close to the top of the canvas, an exit from traditional Western canons that reflect the influence of Japanese prints and their composition.

The two figures are situated at the corner of a patch of flowery meadow. The man done in a robe with black and white rectangles not well placed on gold leaf decorated with spirals. He wears a crown while the lady is shown in a tight fitted dress with flower-like oval motifs. This setting is on a parallel background of zigzag lines. The lady’s hair is spewed with flowers and is worn in a fashionable way. It forms a halo-like circle that highlights her face. This is continued under her chin by what seems to be a necklace made of flowers.

It is widely thought that Klimt and his companion Emilie Floge modeled for this painting[3] but there has been no clear proof on this. Most people feel that the lady was a model famously known as 'Red Hilda'. Klimt's choice of gold was motivated by a trip he made to Italy in 1903. It is believed that when he visited Ravenna he had seen the Byzantine mosaics in the Church of San Vitale. The level nature of the mosaics and their lack of perspective in depth further improved their golden brilliance. This led to his use of unprecedented gold and silver leaf in his art work.[4] For the sumptuous surface of Klimt's work is by no means careless. Its decorative tracery expresses a constant tension between ecstasy and terror that depicts mortality. The portraits with their timeless nature can also be perceived to defy fate.

Yet life's seductions are still more important in the environment of death. Klimt's art, though not explicitly speaking of impending doom, constitute of a sort of covenant in which the interests and anxiety of an age, its desire for happiness and immortality, receive a definite expression. Klimt’s use of two dimensional figures in the surroundings of his images brings out the gold ground of Byzantine art. This ground in a negative view, may be looked at as not valuing the aspect of time thus bringing up a figure that’s meant to be immortal. It’s to be noted that the observer of Klimt’s painting is not confronted by the austere foursquare figures of Byzantine art, but rather with the intertwined bodies whose skin appears to be more natural than their cylindrical setting of gold."[5]

Klimt’s works are some of the few paintings that have managed to be auctioned to willing buyers at highest prices ever recorded in the history of art works. The 1907 portrait, Adele Bloch-Bauer I, was purchased by Ronald Lauder for a whopping 135 million dollars. This surpassed Picasso's 1905 Boy with a Pipe which was sold in 2004 for 104 million dollars, as the highest reported price ever paid for a painting.

Bibliography

Schwartz, Agatha. Gender and Modernity in Central Europe. University of Ottawa Press, 2010.

Partsch, Susanna. Klimt: Life and Work. London, Bracken Books, 1989.

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