art – No Bigons

The Kiss

I’ve recently been read Frank Whitford’s biography of the life and work of Gustav Klimt. There is little direct documentation of Klimt’s personal life and internal thought, aside from the paintings themselves. So instead the story is told through a lot of interesting social context of Austria, Vienna, and its arts scene. Because it is an art biography, there are also entirely necessary descriptions of paintings, and their virtues. Necessary though they might be, I often found them on the boundary of ridiculousness. Sometimes, even comic. Take, The Kiss which unsurprisingly gets much attention.

There is some speculation that Klimt’s masterpiece might be something of a response to, or at least inspired by, another work, also called The Kiss, by Constantin Brancusi, which I will let Whitford describe before revealing to you.

To compare them is to see instantly the differences between Klimt’s work and that of another, more completely modern artist. Both Klimt and Brancusi were attracted by various forms of primitive, exotic and folk art and both used them as a means of combating Naturalism and achieving formal and spiritual intensity. But whereas Brancusi simplifies, reduced and rarefies, Klimt complicates, allows his ornament to proliferate and adds layer after layer of effect and allusion.
Klimt, Frank Whitford, Ch7, pg118

So given the description of the differences that we might instantly detect between the two works, you might be intrigued, now, finally to see the other kiss.

Click for the grand reveal:

You might instantly notice some differences…

October 29, 2023

Vienna Diary, July 17th

The streets of Vienna are graced by the works of a particularly distinguished graffiti artist. Their work is immediately identifiable. It isn’t the usual typographical fare, nor the sweeping lines and sharp angles of spray can work, nor even the uniformity of stencils. With nothing more than a thick black permanent marker, the profile has become the stand out feature of the city floor gallery, with all the ligne claire flaire I’d hope for from a European.

I’ve been photographing as I stumble across them. The typical canvas is the metal cover of what I guess is electronic plumbing and possible electric meter in the entrance ways to apartment complexes. Two portraits I have found have had words put in their mouths: nicht unser kreig — not our war. Presumably a statement against European support and involvement in Ukraine. I don’t believe they were the sentiments of the original artist. Nor reflective of the general mood on the street. I saw plenty of Fuck Putin stenciled about.

October 14, 2023

Vienna Diary, July 15th

The big mistake I make when visiting large galleries of the type stuffed to the gills with Great Works is that I never spend long enough standing and just looking at the paintings. Or rather, standing long enough before a single individual painting that I can absorb what I’m seeing. There is some default setting I have been set to that has me move on like I’m scrolling down a feed on my phone fast enough that I don’t have to look at the ads.

The works I found at the Kunsthistorisches Museum were worth taking a moment to stare at. Just to take one example, consider The Miracles of St Ignatius of Loyola by Rubens:

Unfortunately, I lack any formal education in art history, but it is clear enough that what is depicted here is some real Q-anon shit. There are demons, cherubs, and what I think is an exorcism, but might be shapeshifters about to reveal their true lizard form. I don’t think I’m speculating too radically to say that the women at the bottom right are saying “Won’t somebody think of the children?” It is only a matter of time before the conspiracy theorists stop trying to find satanic symbols in corporate iconography and turn to this embarrassingly rich vein in European art. Dan Brown should have started a gold rush, but maybe, like me, your average conspiracy theorist lacks a liberal arts education and scrolls past this kind of content too quickly.

September 25, 2023

Vienna Diary, July 14th

Egon Shiele was born in 1890 and died of the Spanish flu in 1918. During his brief life he participated in the influential and controversial Vienna secessionist art movement, winning support and patronage for his work. A “controversial art movement” in this case means all to say that a gang of young artists who were expected to paint classical scenes in the style and manner that was expected of them, broke away from the institutions and did their own thing. Their own thing caused all manner of pearl clutching that, at least to me, today, in retrospect, seems non obvious in cause, involving fine distinctions and no small amount of biting-the-hand-that-fed. As I understand it, nudity in and of itself was hardly unprecedented in art, but the way that Gustav Klimt did nudity was deemed obviously very bad, and Schiele, who was something of his protege subsequently discovered his own variations on making nakedness indecent in some fresh way.

Walking through the Leopold museum, which houses the largest Schiele collection in the world, I took a strong draught of all the secessionist stuff, going between rooms dedicated to one painter or the other, thinking to myself thoughts as articulate and insightful as, “OK, this guy had a few ideas of his own”. But the Schiele rooms were a revelation, in that I had no prior exposure and his work immediately struck me as particularly good. They had a prophetic quality, if you are willing to accept prefiguring an art style that might one day appear in 2000AD as prophesy.

I also enjoyed this extract from a letter that Klimt wrote. Obviously at this period of life, Klimt did not practice “the grindset”. I suspect that enjoying this kind routine is the prize won through hard work, luck, and success in your youth.

September 22, 2023