Many people know of the Impressionist movement in France, but not many are aware of the artistic spiral that it influences. Germany was heavily influenced by French art in the 19th century. Some of Germany’s most notable artists were inspired by the Impressionist movement but took it one step further in the expressionist and symbolist period. Gustav Klimt was one of the most well-known symbolist artists of the 19th century in Germany. Many know him from his painting “The Kiss.”
Klimt was from an area near Vienna, Germany. Throughout his life, he often struggled financially and lived in poverty. He developed his artistic skills in the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts. Here he was trained to be an architectural painter. This became the reason for his artistic success later on in his career. Along with other artists, he formed the Vienna Secession group of symbolist artists. This group did not favor a specific painting style or genre but rather promoted the combination of various styles. A couple years after the Secession group formed, Klimt was commissioned to paint three murals on the ceiling of the Great Hall at the University of Vienna. Klimt was known for creating paintings that used vibrant unnatural colors. He challenged traditional artists by taking a raw human experience and giving it added layers of emotion. He used a lot of traditional shapes, such as cubes and circles, creating a simplistic yet intense image. His work makes the audience question their emotions and view nature from a new perspective.
His three murals did just that. The murals featured bright yellow colors and various nude women with classical Greek and Roman components, each representing various societal advancements and struggles. Many viewed his murals as being inappropriate, political, and even religious. The sensual nature of his paintings was new territory for German art, and many found it to be too extreme for the public. This was his last commissioned project but led to his artistic fame.
Klimt was known for being intrinsically motivated. His main goal was to express his own emotions and feelings that he felt could only be expressed through art. His one true moment of extrinsic motivation was in his commissioned mural, but even then, there are still traces of his intrinsic motivation in his designs. Culturally, Klimt’s art was revolutionary. While Germany can be argued to be a Western country, the artistic culture of the region had traces of eastern cultural characteristics. While the general style of his work was thought to break from traditional art, which is a characteristic of Western creative culture, it still aligns more with Eastern creative culture. Eastern creative culture is known for having a reinterpretation of ideas. Klimt aspired to take concepts people were familiar with and reinvent them creatively; Like his murals, sometimes that involved classical figures. Most notably, he built off of German traditions. Klimt was featured in an exhibit for creating a visual representation of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. It included light features and told a story of hardship and triumph. The frieze tells the story of a hero who defeats a monster and frees himself of his own constraint. In the end, he embraces his lover while surrounded by a choir, signifying the end of the Symphony where a choir being to sing. Klimt was able to take one form of art and make it accessible and relevant in a whole new way. Klimt continued to challenge artistic traditions and even went on to inspire musical composers, writers, and other painters to merge the arts and reinterpret older pieces and methods.
If interested, here is a 25-minute video of the Beethoven Frieze with Beethoven’s full 9th Symphony playing in the background following along:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1KXqTj6vYI
https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/gustav-klimt-painting-design-and-modern-life-vienna-1900/gustav-0
https://www.gustav-klimt.com/Beethoven-Frieze.jsp
https://www.klimtgallery.org/biography.html
I really enjoyed this post. Klimt is one of my favorite artists (a common statement). Many of the paintings shown in this post have a yellow-ish glow which is characteristic of his work. That brightness makes his paintings seem very romantic. My favorite of his is "Judith and the Head of Holofernes," which is also golden-toned, despite the violence depicted. I love that, personally, because I think it brings an angelic look to a powerful woman who has just decapitated a man to save her people. He has darker-toned works, as well, which I don't think are quite as popular (like "Death and Life"). His Beethoven-inspired frieze builds on the work of another prominent creative, while "Judith and the Head of Holofernes" is based on a bible story. His interpretations of such prominent creative works show his background in traditional European culture, while creating art in a very non-traditional style.
ReplyDeleteI love Gustav Klimt. I got a huge calendar full of his prints and put them around my room. I have a gold-embossed rendition of "The Kiss" in my room. Another one of my favorites is his "Tree of Life". The repetitive use of swirls make it so complex to look at, but weirdly reflects a lot of the emotions he tries to depict in the piece. His use of overlapping and clashing patterns are so unique and special. It really draws in the audience and it is a pretty impressionable technique in the realm of the art world. He also does a lot of work expressing divine femininity through his nude murals like you mentioned. A lot of pieces are empowering as they embrace femininity in its rawest form. I’m not surprised that he was chastised for this since he was introducing a shift in the depiction of societal and internal struggles among Greek and Roman societies. His artwork depicts pretty significant cultural implications of the century. I think culture defined his work in a lot of ways (seen in his piece "Judith and the Head of Holofernes" as it references the Bible). You can see nodes of European culture in his pieces, but his attempt to revolutionize boundaries in his work through his use of clashing patterns. At the start of his artistical endeavors, I’d consider him a Middle-C creative since his art was so different than other artists at the time, but didn’t exactly shift the realm of art at the time. Looking back now, I’d say his name and presence in the art community make him a Big-C creative since he has revolutionized many artistic methods within his work. I’m not surprised that he was intrinsically motivated like many artists at the time, but I wonder if he was influenced by any other artist’s work. I love how Beethoven used his art to bring his music to life. Such a great clash of two creatives and their products.
ReplyDeleteI love Klimt! I especially like the way he integrated Byzantine elements, like the gold mosaic backgrounds and elongated flat figures, into a much more moderns style. His paintings have such a unique look; I think his internal motivation gave him the freedom to achieve an aesthetic completely different from anything prior.
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