Klimt’s Death and Life: Mystery and Sadness

Gustav Klimt (1862 – 1918) is one of the most important representatives of Art Nouveau in the half of the 19th century. He is also the most controversial artist and his artistic expression is the most complex. He is the leader of Vienna Secession in symbolist paintings.
The so-called " Art Nouveau" is an international movement and style of art, architecture and applied art – especially the decorative arts – which peaked from the second half of the 19th century to the First World War. A highly decorative idiom, Art Nouveau typically employed intricate curvilinear patterns of sinuous asymetrical lines, often based on plant-forms (sometimes derived from La Tene forms of Celtic art). Floral and other plant-inspired motifs are popular Art Nouveau designs, as are female silhouettes and forms. Nowadays, art nouveau is viewed as an important bridge between Neoclassicism and modernism. The new art in Austria is the Vienna Secession of Symbolism. Vienna Secession emphasizes on the originality of art, the strong expressive function of art, the distinctive, individual characteristics of art, as well as the combination of art and life. The most important representative of Vienna Secession is Klimt, who was always in pursuit of the philosophical content of the paintings, the symbolism of artistic techniques, a unique form of artistic expression and the practical decorative function of the paintings. He was most interested in people's mental and physical conflicts and suffering, life, reproduction, growth and death which are the fundamental issues of the abstract and mysterious essence of people. He manifested these philosophical things through painting which made his artistic style was a challenge and betrayal to the traditional art. " Death and Life" is an perfect example of it.
This is one of Klimt's central themes, central also to his time and to his contemporaries, among them Edvard Munch and Egon Schiele. Klimt makes of it a modern dance of death, but, unlike Schiele, he introduces a note of hope and reconciliation: instead of feeling threatened by the figure of death, his human beings seem to disregard it. The young girl in “Death and Life” seems to express the words of Sissy, Elisabeth of Austria: "The thought of death is purifying; it has the same effect as a gardener has, pulling the weeds out of his garden. But this garden always wants to be alone, and it becomes angry when curious people look over its walls. In the same way, I hide my face behind my parasol and my fan so that the thought of death can take effect in me peacefully."
Klimt was born in Baumgarten near Vienna, a family engaging in gold engraving, and attended the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts as a teenager, received training as an architectural painter. He had a good study in architectural decoration, Fresco paintings and mosaics, and particularly skilled in mosaics which had a great influence on the style his oil paintings, creating a unique glittering decorative effect and strong graphic sense. In 1885, Klimt and his companions were commissioned to decorate the Empress Elizabeth's country retreat, the Villa Hermes near Vienna (Midsummer Night's Dream). In 1886, the painters were asked to decorate the Viennese Burgtheater, effectively recognizing them as the foremost of decorators of Austria. Works that Klimt painted for this project include the “Cart of Thespis”, the “Altars of Dionysosand Apollo” and the” Theater at Taormina”, as well as scenes from the Shakespearean Globe Theater.
At the completion of the work in 1888, the painters were awarded the Golden Service Cross (Verdienstkreuz), and Klimt was commissioned to paint the Auditorium of the “Old Burgtheater”, the work that would bring him to the height of his fame. But after 1897, his painting style changed greatly. He created Symbolism artworks "Philosophy", "Medicine", "Juriprudence" in the early 1900s which were criticized severely for their radical style. The critics said that his work was “disaster", “pornography”. Gradually, people come to understand the artist's exploration has a certain aesthetic significance and sharp feature of the age, and set a high value on his sad and mysterious symbolism.
“For the sumptuous surface of Klimt's work is by no means carefree. Its decorative tracery expresses a constant tension between ecstasy and terror, life and death. Even the portraits, with their timeless aspect, may be perceived as defying fate.... Klimt's works, although they do not explicitly speak of impending doom, constitute a sort of testament in which the desires and anxieties of an age, its aspiration to happiness and to eternity, receive definitive expression. For the striking two-dimensionality with which Klimt surrounds his figures evokes the gold ground of Byzantine art, a ground that, in negating space, may be regarded as negating time -- and thus creating a figure of eternity. Yet in Klimt's painting, it is not the austere foursquare figures of Byzantine art that confront us, but ecstatically intertwined bodies whose flesh seems the more real for their iconical setting of gold.” (Gibson)

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