Klimt And The Golden Art Of Vienna

One Man's Romantic Vision Of The Modern Age

(CBS)  Klimt never married but is said to have fathered more than a dozen children. His one constant companion was Emilie Floge, a dress designer. They spent summers together on the Attersee. Here, he painted his only landscapes.

But his abiding subject was women: beautiful women, wealthy women like Adele Bloch Bauer, a Viennese patron and socialite. Klimt produced over 100 sketches of her in numerous sittings that culminated in the portrait completed in 1907.

She is the star of the show and the centerpiece of the collection. After a six-year restitution battle, the Austrian government returned the painting to the remnants of the family in 2006. It is now owned by the museum.

"It's really the quintessence of Klimt's golden style," said Price. "You have this very refined woman looking out. And you have this interplay between the softness of her flesh and then all the ornament which is abstract and she is surrounded by a halo and all these swirls and scrolls. And of course the gold and you can see her initials embedded throughout as sort of a secret or semi-secret symbol."

It is Klimt's most formidable painting, next to "The Kiss," his most famous, which is not in the show. Some say that painting is a portrait of Klimt and his beloved companion, Emilie Floge.

Safer asked Price if the work caused a sensation at the time.

"'The Kiss' was endorsed by the state because as soon as it was exhibited it was acquired by the museum in Vienna," she said.

"So somebody was paying attention," remarked Safer.

"Yes," Price agreed. "And 'The Kiss' of course passed the censors because those two are cloaked and so it was just a highly decorated, romantic vision."

But it's his drawings that are the most literally revealing.

Safer and Price looked at the drawings in one gallery that especially gave a sense of Klimt's obsession or love for the female form, many of which can't be shown on camera.

"They're beautiful, sinuous, erotic drawings," the curator observed. "And they're all very clean, like in their features. They're slender and elegant creatures."

"Who happen to have no clothes on," noted Safer.

"Just an accident!" laughed Price.

Klimt produced hundreds of sketches of women not meant for the public: young, old, pregnant, dressed and naked, alone, asleep, lost in thought. It is a private glimpse of a master at work.

"One critic that was a friend of his, Berta Zuckerkandl said, 'It was like a virtuoso practicing scales,'" said Price. "He would just keep drawing, drawing, drawing, drawing, throwing them on the floor. They were piled up several feet high."

"What's interesting about so many of the drawings," Safer observed, "whether they're gorgeous young women or very important patrons or dare I say it, old hags, there is a real affection in those drawings for the subject, yes?"

"Yes," said Price, "and I think he conveyed that very well."

In 1908, Klimt exhibited "The Kiss" and his portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer at the Kunstschau - an art show in Vienna, but by 1910, his golden gilded age was over. He continued to paint, but in seclusion.

Essentially the last part of the show is a series of studies of a baby. Safer asked Price why she made that choice.

"Well, it's a symbol of renewal. It's also of course a study for the painting 'Baby Cradle' which is from 1917, and I actually paired it with the portrait of Charlotte Pulitzer from about 1915 - I love to pair this as sort of, you know, like for Klimt, he was always reminded of mortality and renewal."

The year he died, 1918, mortality seemed the rule, with little hope of renewal. Fifteen million died in the slaughter of World War One, and Klimt's beloved empire died with it. But his art and the humanity it embodies lives on. It is, really, one man's immortality - and for the rest of us, a constant renewal.

[carsonbumann]

"Morley Safer''s comment referring to an old woman in a Gustav Klimt drawing as an "old hag" struck me as gratuitous, misogynistic and ageist, not at all what I expected to hear from a journalist I have heretofore admired. "Dare I say" indeed. No sir, you do not. Yours, Mary Bumann, 2009 Kendall Avenue, Madison, WI 53726"

[carsonbumann]

"Morley Safer''s comment referring to an old woman in a Gustav Klimt drawing as an "old hag" struck meas gratuitous, misogynistic and ageist, not at all what I expected to hear from a journalist I have heretofore admired. "Dare I say" indeed. No sir, you do not. Yours, Mary Bumann, 2009 Kendall Avenue, Madison, WI 53726"

[sanfelz]

I have seen this exhibit and was fascinated by the multitude of influences on Klimt. As an example, compare the featured painting with those crafted in Japan of geisha girls. I go to such exhibits so that I am not obssessed with the inequities of the tax system, and to enjoy an artist''s perpective and talent.

[calco3]

I was truly excited to see the report this morning on Gustav Klimt. I discovered Klimt''s work in 1973 and became a fan. For years few people I meet had ever heard of him. I bought a print at a department store of "Water Serpents I" that was displayed horizontally instead of vertically as meant. They didn''t know or care. The coffee table book I bought in 1973 is well worn. I never saw Klimt anywhere else. Then in 2004 New York''s Museum of Modern Art sent its collection to the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, and in it was a painting by Klimt, that I had never seen a picture of called "Hope". To see an actual painting was an emotional event for me. Since the return of the Bauer portrait many more are learning about Klimt. www.olvastewartpharo.com/LKlimtKlopL.jpg

[calco3]

I was truly excited to see the report this morning on Gustav Klimt. I discovered Klimt''s work in 1973 and became a fan. For years few people I meet had ever heard of him. I bought a print at a department store of "Water Serpents I" that was displayed horizontally instead of vertically as meant. They didn''t know or care. The coffee table book I bought in 1973 is well worn. I never saw Klimt anywhere else. Then in 2004 New York''s Museum of Modern Art sent its collection to the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, and in it was a painting by Klimt, that I had never seen a picture of called "Hope". To see an actual painting was an emotional event for me. Since the return of the Bauer portrait many more are learning about Klimt. www.olvastewartpharo.com/LKlimtKlopL.jpg

[calco3]

I was truly excited to see the report this morning on Gustav Klimt. I discovered Klimt''s work in 1973 and became a fan. For years few people I meet had ever heard of him. I bought a print at a department store of "Water Serpents I" that was displayed horizontally instead of vertically as meant. They didn''t know or care. The coffee table book I bought in 1973 is well worn. I never saw Klimt anywhere else. Then in 2004 New York''s Museum of Modern Art sent its collection to the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, and in it was a painting by Klimt, that I had never seen a picture of called "Hope". To see an actual painting was an emotional event for me. Since the return of the Bauer portrait many more are learning about Klimt. www.olvastewartpharo.com/LKlimtKlopL.jpg

[myshiba]

Why did Safer get to call the older women that Klimt painted "old hags" on national TV (very offensive)?

[myshiba]

why did he get to call the older women that Klint painted "old hags" on national TV (very offensive)?

[teachstrange]

For the many years watching this show-for the many years without a written comment--this was one of the most poorly reported. I cannot imagine what went through the producer''s mind to have Morly Safer, a reporter whose time left around 1970--ok-maybe 1980.
Mr. Safer never reports on the subject of women without feeling the sound of nails on a blackboard. Was there no one else in the office that day to report on this wonderful art eye candy?

There is no rule that says you have to use one of the reporters--afterall, the end of your program is silent with wonderful photographs of nature--perhaps just the commentary of Madame Price would have sufficed.

Sometimes you have to be told when to say enough is enough--Morly--let it go and retire.

[teachstrange]

For the many years watching this show-for the many years without a written comment--this was one of the most poorly reported. I cannot imagine what went through the producer''s mind to have Morly Safer, a reporter whose time left around 1970--ok-maybe 1980.
Mr. Safer never reports on the subject of women without feeling the sound of nails on a blackboard. Was there no one else in the office that day to report on this wonderful art eye candy?

There is no rule that says you have to use one of the reporters--afterall, the end of your program is silent with wonderful photographs of nature--perhaps just the commentary of Madame Price would have sufficed.

Sometimes you have to be told when to say enough is enough--Morly--let it go and retire.

[kevzgrl]

So, this was all a big tax dodge for Mr. Lauder, right? IRS, are you listening??? (or reading?) Of course not, they only listen in on things that might be terror related, not a bold faced screw-ing of the tax system/payers. If they did away with the tax system and replaced it with a flat sales tax, wonder what he would have done? My bet is, not buy the painting......

[spiro_sperat]

I also want to point out that not only Mr. Lauder save $40 million in taxes by giving the Klimt portrait to his own museum the Neue Gallerie, but that this not-for-profit museum charges the public at least $15 when they visit to see the painting. I also wonder how much the publicity that Mr. Lauder has received from his important purchase is worth monetarilly? (Priceless, I imagine.)

[spiro_sperat]

Instead of making Lauder seem like a hero for buying the Klimt painting of Adele Bloch, you need to point out that this purchase which was give as charitable deducation actually saved Mr Lauder at least 40 million in taxes over the years. It is time that the American public starts to understand our incredibly discriminatory tax system in its various permutations.

[the zak]

Many Klimt fans would like the work of Stefan Barton of Cambridge Massachusetts!