It's OK To Admit You Like Klimt; I Do

To coincide with Tate Liverpool's exhibition Gustav Klimt: Painting, Design and Modern Life in Vienna 1900, Tate Etc. brings together Herbert Lachmayer, a cultural historian and founder/director of Da Ponte Institute in Vienna, and Alfred Weidinger, a Klimt specialist, "to debate how the man who remains one of the world’s most popular modern artists took voyeurism to new heights".

Bits from that exchange...

Alfred Weidinger:

The Pre-Raphaelite artists, such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, were a big influence on Klimt’s brother Ernst. When Ernst died Klimt finished his brother’s Pre-Raphaelite-inspired work. During his long depression he became very interested in these artists, and then painted what is for me the most important picture he did at this time – Portrait of Sonja Knips from 1898. Moll saw this Pre-Raphaelite influence and how Klimt could work with it to create a very particular Viennese art.

Herbert Lachmayer:

Yes, it is important to know that Viennese artists were able to avoid copying the melancholy of the Pre-Raphaelites because of their sense of irony and ambiguity. Depression was the most feared danger for a creative artist – ironical melancholy was the Viennese solution. In Klimt’s case, he transformed the rather boring aspects of the Pre-Raphaelites and injected “pornosophic fantasies” into his work. By pornosophic, I mean the way in which he presented his idea of erotic obsession as a life-long fetishistic love for the porno-details of the female body. Like Egon Schiele, he has been stigmatised as a pornographic artist, but in my understanding his erotic obsession was a pornosophia, just as philosophy is defined as a “love for wisdom”. Using the term “pornographic” regarding Klimt’s oeuvre reveals the petit bourgeois mentality of the person using it. He was a master of voyeuristic erotic stimulation and therefore produced his pornosophic fantasies in the head of the client – maybe encouraging him in an elegant way to have better sex at least. Even the way Klimt dressed was part of a “staging” of stimulation. In his studio he wore a long working dress – resembling a Moroccan jellaba – but he was completely naked underneath. He was a highly auto-erotic exhibitionist, using the ritual of professional distance from the model as a tool of auto-stimulating his erotic fantasies.

This next photo comes from the Tate article, but is for illustrative purposes of the models; it bears this notation: Anonymous photograph of a dancer taken at the studio of Madame d'Ora (Dora Philippine Kallmus) in Vienna (1923). Gelatin silver print © Ullstein bild - IMAGNO

ALFRED WEIDINGER We must not forget that Klimt had been used to working with nude models for a long time. Not only at art school, where they did nude studies every day, but also with his colleagues at the Künstlercompagnie. So he had fifteen or twenty years’ practice, and was fully sensitised to the female body and spirit. For me, it was very interesting to realise, in doing my research, that whereas most of the female figures featured in the Künstlercompagnie ceilings are clothed, in the studies they are all nude. You will not find many drawings where the models are dressed. He had to know what happened with the body, and then he dressed it.

HERBERT LACHMAYER So Klimt’s artistic production was almost like a drug – painting the nude increased the voyeuristic appeal.

ALFRED WEIDINGER In this respect the Beethoven Frieze became his masterwork, because it was the fulfillment of everything that he wanted to do at this time in 1902. The 14th Vienna Secessionist exhibition was designed to celebrate the life and philosophy of Beethoven with the theme based on Richard Wagner’s interpretation of the 9th Symphony, and each Secession artist contributed to it. Klimt’s idea was to do a 30ft fresco. You have to wonder why was he doing a fresco – and with such huge dimensions? It was unheard of to be creating such a piece in Europe, for a show that was going to be on for only two months.

HERBERT LACHMAYER It was like a Hollywood production…

ALFRED WEIDINGER Or like a show in Las Vegas. It really was a grand act. In the frieze Klimt knew he could more or less fulfil his wishes. He had the power to do something on this scale, and Moll gave him that power. The Beethoven Frieze didn’t cause a scandal, though. Of course there were always art critics who wrote bad reviews of Klimt, but there were some who wrote good ones. He and the Secession artists knew they needed a reason to put images of nude women on the wall, and in Beethoven they found it.

ALFRED WEIDINGER Another difference is that Klimt uses all kinds of women in his frieze – young girls, old girls, awful women, beautiful women, fat women, thin women. The whole world of women is in the Beethoven Frieze. There are also a lot of penises in the painting, which, because of the distance from the floor level, many people miss. I was there a few weeks ago because we had to do some restoration work and when you are level with it, there they are – lots of penises. He painted them as ornament, but this was also a very brave and risky thing to do. He was gambling with the visitors – he was having fun with them. It is important to know that side of him.

HERBERT LACHMAYER In this respect he was a professional voyeur and knew, of course, what unconscious effects his images would evoke in the minds of his male audience. Klimt had his own erotic theatre in his studio at home.

The whole article is worth reading in it's entirety; so do so.

For more on Gustav Klimt & his works, see:

The Kiss: Klimt's painting takes me on a journey of self-discovery

Bedazzled: the great and sometimes scandalous artist Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt at Tate Liverpool: If it's Klimt's gleaming beauties you're after you won't find many at Tate Liverpool. But the new show has its own riches

Gustav Klimt: is his art worth £135m?