A Kiss for Infinite Years. Whereas Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is to the Louvre an icon, the Kiss painted by Gustav Klimt between 1908 and 1909 belongs to the Belvedere in Vienna. Set with a profusion of gold, it is a real ode to love, the fusional hug of a pair in love. Wearing a tunic with geometric designs, the man softly plants a cheek kiss on his friend. Surprisingly tall, the young woman is kneeling in front of him and leaves herself to him in a flash of calm joy. Nothing appears to throw off their ideal equilibrium.
Oil and gold leaf on canvas • 180 cm x 180 cm • Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna • © Wikimedia Commons
An autobiographical composition? Head of her own fashion firm, Emilie Flöge was a visionary designer who remarkably entered Gustav Klimt's 1891 artwork. The artist was totally committed in the Vienna Secession at that time, supporting a rebirth of the decorative arts and the eradication of the artistic hierarchy. Was his girlfriend likewise the inspiration for the painter? Their relationship's vague character has never been openly disclosed. Klimt created numerous portraits of the young woman, twelve years his junior in any case. Some reviewers of the period naturally felt they identified with the traits of Emilie Flöge in the lover in The Kiss.
A Jugendstil emblem Like his great Beethoven Frieze, 1902–1903, Klimt dreamed of a whole art that would merge painting, architecture, and even music (from then on established himself as a key figure of the Vienna Secession, an avant-garde movement he had just left when he created The Kiss). The geometric patterns of the man's tunic, which fit very well with the more organic ones of his lover's garment (these are reminiscent of Murano glass), clearly show the mark of Jugendstil - Viennese Art Nouveau. Here we acknowledge the influence of Emilie Flöge, whose designs—loose garments with Jugendstil prints—were likewise quite popular with Klimt!
A golden fantasy land. Separated from their surroundings, the pair seems to be placed in a golden background with little dots like a constellation of stars all over. Klimt, the son of a jeweler, was early affected by Byzantine art especially in terms of mosaics and icons. Like an alchemist of painting, he included gold into many of his works and dedicated a whole cycle to this brilliant color, known as the "Golden Cycle," from which The Kiss is, in a sense the apotheosis. Among the notable works of this "golden period" are also the well-known Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer (1907) and the friezes designed for the Stoclet Palace in Brussels.
Dizziness of love
Left in the arms of her lover, she is kneeling on a bed of flowers whose form reminds her of the millefiori designs of her garment. Klimt thus combines, in a kiss, the ornamental ideas of Jugendstil with those of nature, faithful to his aim to witness the birth of a comprehensive art. This ideal is fragile, though; the pair is really on the brink of what appears to be a precipice, to which the young woman's feet hold on to prevent falling. The Kiss is definitely a representation of pure love, but also of its limitless fragility.
Seen in France www.vwart.com
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