Gustav Klimt, The Kiss - Humanities, Arts Video Lecture - Humanities/Arts

[MUSIC PLAYING]
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: We're
in the Belvedere in Vienna,
and we're looking at Gustav
Klimt's The Kiss from 1908.
Probably the most famous
Klimt, and actually,
I have to admit that I had
forgotten that the painting was
almost a perfect square, because
I've seen in so many posters
where it's been cut down
and made into a rectangle.
DR: BETH HARRIS: It's
a very large painting
and there's so much
gold that it's hard
not to think of
a religious icon.
And I think in
some ways Klimt was
trying to create a modern
icon-- something that
suggested a sense
of transcendence.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Well there's
no question that the gold here
makes you think of the
Byzantine tradition,
maybe some of the
tile work at Ravenna.
There is a way that the
patterning, especially
around the faces, becomes
a kind of halo, as well.
You have Klimt
building up the gold.
He's got those gold
circles, they actually
rise off the surface
of the canvas.
DR: BETH HARRIS: And catch
the light, much the way
that the gold was tooled
in medieval paintings.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
There is this sense
of the male figure
of patterns that
are direct of linear in
contrast to the curvilinear
to the circles and
the ovals that we
seen in the female form.
But the point that you
made about the sense
of the spiritual is so
powerful in this painting.
I think we forget that that
darker gold ground seems
so much as if the figures
are somehow being dissipated
into the cosmos,
that there are so
lost in the intensity,
the eternity of that kiss.
DR: BETH HARRIS: And all
removed from the everyday world.
I mean, we have to
remember that this
is a time of incredible
modernization in Vienna.
The city of Vienna has been
transformed in the previous 30
years into a modern city.
Here Klimt is abstracting
a universal experience
from the trauma,
the difficulties,
the anxieties of everyday life.
I think it's also important
to see this in relationship
to Klimt's Beethoven Frieze,
where the figures confront
evil forces-- these mythic
figures-- and in the end,
there's this embrace, this
kiss, this emergence from evil
into fulfillment and perfection.
A minute ago, we were looking
at the painting by Egon Schiele
called The Embrace, but
there there was so much more
of a sense of the
physicality, of the body's.
The way that the bodies
really aren't present here
and are cloaked in
these decorative forms,
reminds us how much Klimt,
although he was exploring
this kind of sensuality, was
also disguising it, or covering
it with a kind of
decorative patterning.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: And
that's absolutely right,
with the exception of the faces.
And here, this is where the
entire painting changes.
The female figure is completely
full frontal but horizontal.
So that there's this beautiful
sense of here passivity
receiving that kiss,
but also a kind
of deep interior feeling
with her eyes closed.
Her fingers just
delicately touching his
as he holds her head and his
neck reaches out and round,
and you get a sense
of his physical power
through the strength
of that neck,
but also the intensity
of his desire.
And of course,
they're both crowned.
As on his head you can see
a wreath of leaves, on hers
almost as if they were
the stars of the heavens.
DR: BETH HARRIS:
Schiele gives us
an image of a couple
that's electrified
by kind of agitated outlines.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Schiele
is showing us a kind of truth
through the energy
of the moment.
Whereas Klimt seems
to be reaching out
to a truth that is for all
time, that is so aestheticized
it feels as if it has a
degree of absolute permanence.
[MUSIC PLAYING]