Gustav Klimt

Austria’s most influential and revered artist at the beginning of the last century was Gustav Klimt (1862–1918). Master of three genres—allegory, portraiture, and landscape—his alluring imagery, decorative colors, and sinuous line seduce the eye and stir the mind. His landscapes are studded with opulent symbols of regeneration and fecundity, while his philosophical allegories enact and question the eternal recurrence of life and death. During an age of lingering societal repression, Klimt’s riveting, sumptuous portraits of society women delivered an unmistakable and urgent message of sensuality. In this landmark study of Klimt and the cultural climate of imperial Vienna, Comini discusses the “reverse” parallel between Freud’s revelation of the supposed erotic content of dream symbols and Klimt’s obscuring of the manifest content—the sexual imperative—through cumulative and symbolic ornament. Her text brings a startling new dimension to the compelling art of a very private man.