I’ve always been enthralled with Gustav Klimt’s work. He checks off a lot of boxes that make his work stand out, by being unafraid to explore themes like femininity, mortality, sensuality, etc. I think his work is also given more credence because of how he presented his style without restraint; a seemingly chaotic collage of doodles and highly detail. What has also stood out to me over the years, is how versatile he was across subject matter.
Klimt is best known for his golden phase, which began in the early 1890s and continued until the early 1900s. Around this time Klimt was incorporating gold leaf into his paintings, creating a decorative effect that we can now call luxurious as fuck! Some of his most famous works from this period include "The Kiss," "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I," and "Judith and the Head of Holofernes."
However, as with all great artists, Klimt’s lesser-known works offer an equally fascinating glimpse into the artist's mind, process, and evolution of his style. One example is his series of allegorical paintings titled "The Beethoven Frieze," which he created for the 14th Vienna Secessionist exhibition in 1902. This freaking massive work explores the full range of human emotion, and is essentially a testament to Klimt’s ability to tackle complex ideas through his art.
Klimt also explored landscapes and portraiture. Everybody knows him for his surrealist figurative work, but he went absolutely ham on both landscapes and portraits. He was busy digging into the lush and the verdant in nature, as well as leaning into colorful vibrancy in portraiture. It also drives me a little mad thinking about how fixated we get as a society on specific things that have had some success, not wanting to explore a little deeper, or go under the surface. There are depths of treasure in every artist’s mind, and their unseen work is usually a clue into that reality.
And guess what, that’s not all! He was also a mosaic artist. Don’t worry, I’m not about to spring some shit like “he was also the father of AI prompting,” on you. The point here is simply that unlike what most artists in the digital age think they need to do, Klimt was doing what we should all be striving to do as artists: whatever the fuck we feel like doing. There are so many mediums to explore, and so many ways to express ideas. Why shutter ourselves into any one thing?
Let’s see if tw embeds are working or not:
https://twitter.com/_iterative_/status/1647621712899461122
lol.
See you on Wednesday on my podcast with the amazing Dani Leoni!