In Salome and John the Baptist (after it was reframed by Moreau and Oscar Wilde), Salome is the evil seductress, whose erotic dance is used to induce Herod to have the good person beheaded her joy is in having her own way, and in the martyrdom of a man who rebutted her advances.Īt the time, though, both stories were becoming blurred in a sequence of dance by a seductress leading to the beheading of their partner – far from the Biblical origin of either. In Judith and Holofernes, Judith is a good character who uses seduction as a means to a worthy end, and her joy is derived from her success in beheading the enemy general. In narrative terms, the confounding of these two stories may seem odd. This elevated view is a novel idea among paintings depicting Judith with the head of Holofernes, and her origins as a dancer are apparent here, blurring Judith with Salome and the beheading of John the Baptist. Klimt started work on a second version of Judith, for which he made this study in around 1908. Gustav Klimt (1862–1918), Study for Judith II (c 1908), media not known, 54.2 x 34.5 cm, Leopold Museum (Die Sammlung Leopold), Vienna, Austria. Although it had been expected to bring a storm of protest, that failed to materialise, and Kokoschka was so grateful that he dedicated a book to Klimt. With Klimt’s personal intervention, the work of the young artist Oskar Kokoschka was included in that first exhibition, helping to launch the latter’s career. It was purchased from there by the Ministry of Education for the nation’s Moderne Gallery. Showing a couple, widely rumoured to be Klimt and Emilie Flöge, in an embrace, he exhibited it as the centrepiece of sixteen of his works in the first exhibition of the new splinter group. Wikimedia Commons.Īnother of his major works, The Kiss (1907–08), is even more characteristic of his Golden Phase. Gustav Klimt (1862–1918), The Kiss (Der Kuß) (1907–08), oil on canvas, 180 × 180 cm, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, Austria. It is also decorated with many of the recurrent patterns and graphic elements which dominated his work in this period, such as the eye/corpuscle and small spirals like tendrils. His model for both paintings is thought to have been Herma, one of his favourites. The woman’s head is bowed and her eyes closed, which is echoed in the heads of three other women at the foot. As with his Hope I, it is a portrait of a woman who is heavily pregnant. Klimt still used precious metal leaf, including gold and platinum, in his Hope II (1907-08), originally titled Vision by the artist. Gustav Klimt (1862–1918), Hope II (1907-08), oil, gold, and platinum on canvas, 110.5 x 110.5, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. Later major artists associated with the Vienna Secession include Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka two of the great pioneers of expressionism.After the peak of Klimt’s Golden Phase in 1907-8, there was a decline in his use of gold leaf in his paintings, the relationship with his young protégé Egon Schiele developed, and he had separated from the Vienna Secession over its exclusion of crafts from its exhibitions. In 1903 a design company was founded called the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops), inspired by the English Arts and Crafts movement. There was a particular emphasis on architecture and design, and the Vienna Secession played a major part in the broader art nouveau movement and the beginnings of modern design. Over the following years the Vienna Secession held a series of exhibitions (several a year) that brought together a roll call of the international avant-garde. It also contains Klimt’s great mural the Beethoven Frieze. The result is a masterpiece of art nouveau architecture that remains one of the gems of Vienna. In 1898 the Secession commissioned the architect Joseph Olbrich to build an exhibition hall. It was led by one of the greatest of all symbolist painters, Gustav Klimt. The most famous secession group is the Vereinigung bildener Künstler Oesterreichs (Secession) founded in 1897 and generally known simply as the Vienna Secession. In the same year this was followed by the Berliner Secession, led by Max Liebermann and later Lovis Corinth, and in 1913 by the Freie Secession in which Max Beckmann and Ernst Barlach were involved. The word is originally German and its earliest appearance seems to be in the name of the Munich Secession group formed in 1892.
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