The Neue Galerie, NY. Klimt and the Woman in Gold.

The Neue Galerie, NY.

Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) was a central figure in the cultural life of Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century, and provided a crucial link between nineteenth-century Symbolism and the beginning of Modernism.

The show includes a unique historical reproduction (1951) of the mid-sixth century mosaic of Empress Theodora (  the wife of the ruler Emperor Justinian I of an Byzantine Empire) from the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy, which provided Klimt with an important point of inspiration for the first portrait of his patron Adele Bloch-Bauer.

Basilica of San Vitale is popular for Byzantine art and architecture in the whole Western Europe. The monument is one of the eight Ravenna structures which are listed in UNESCO world heritage. Basilica of San Vitale is famous for its wealth of Byzantine Mosaics and almost preserved from the period of Emperor Justinian.

 Bloch-Bauer was born Adele Bauer in Vienna in 1881. The daughter of a bank and railway director, she led a privilege, cultured childhood; at 19, she married Ferdinand Bloch, a sugar magnate 17 years her senior. Ferdinand adorned the young woman, enough to make her last name part of his own (both become Bloch-Bauers; their siblings married each other, too, making for two couples with same hyphenated last name). The families were avid (to be very interested) art patrons, not only collecting but also commissioning (to request to do some special piece of work) paintings – and the maverick (a person who act and think in independent way) , kaftan-clad (dressed) Gustav Klimt was one of their favorite artists.

1910.

Portrait of Adele 1 set a record when it was sold at auction in 2006.

The first portrait of Adele was originally discussed in a letter the then 22-year-old Adele wrote to Klimt in 1903. Ferdinand commissioned it as a gift for Adele’s parent’s anniversary a few years after Klimt co-founded the Vienna Secession (known as The Union of Austrian Artists), and not long after his scandalous, allegedly pornographic murals saw the University of Vienna blacklist the painter from state commissions.

Adele Bloch-Bauer I was first publicly displayed in 1907: a stunning scene in oil and gold leaf; it shows a flushed, bare-shouldered Adele in a stylised throne, gazing at the viewer with both vulnerability (able to be physically or emotionally or mentally hurt)   and pride (a feeling of a pleasure and satisfaction because you or people connected with you have done something good), her hands oddly clasped in the foreground – one of her fingers was deformed, which she often attempted to conceal in her many sittings with the artist, who created some 200 studies for the portrait. The painting’s background is a lush (has a lot) riot of glittering Oriental and erotic symbolism – triangles, eyes, eggs.  

   “The golden image of Adele Bloch-Bauer I cast a spell (to cause or indicate) over me even as an art history student,” says Tobias Natter, a Vienna-based historian and curator of the Neue Galerie exhibition. “For me it’s a symphony in gold, a unique emblematic triumph.” It is considered an Art Nouveau masterpiece. 

In postwar Vienna her image became a symbol of Austrian culture – Adele Bloch-Bauer I was long called ‘the Austrian Mona Lisa’. The painting later became an icon of justice – the 2015 film Woman in Gold is the Hollywood version of the tale of the painting’s confiscation from the Jewish Bloch-Bauer family during World War Two and the long but ultimately successful struggle for restitution by Bloch-Bauer’s niece Maria Altmann.