skippy the bush kangaroo: we're all ver-klimt

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

we're all ver-klimt

it's not too often that mr. and mrs. skippy get to see a work of art on two different continents, and especially when that same piece of art was owned by two different entities at those various times.

but that's exactly what happened during their trip to paris last november, and then just yesterday at the los angeles county museum of art.

gustav klimt's portrait of adele bloch-bauer i, a long long name for a very famous and equally beautiful painting, has been at the center of a controversy of ownership since world war ii. and now, the heir to the estee lauder fortune paid a record $135 million for the honor of owning it.

Example

chinadaily.com

the washpost:

it has been a long journey for the lustrous and mysterious portrait in gold of the viennese jewish society lady adele bloch-bauer -- a work at the center of one of the most sensational nazi art theft cases ever -- but now the 1907 gustav klimt painting has found a permanent home.

"it was important to the heirs and to my aunt adele that the painting be in a museum," and not in a private collection, said bloch-bauer's niece maria altmann, the 90-year-old former dress saleslady in l.a. who is among five heirs who will share the record-breaking $135 million that billionaire cosmetics magnate ronald s. lauder and others reportedly paid for the painting.

the work, titled "adele bloch-bauer i," will become the centerpiece of lauder's neue galerie in new york, a small museum with a small collection of 166 works devoted to the art of germany and austria from 1890 to 1940. neue means new in german, and the gallery traces the rise of modernism in painting and the decorative arts in middle europe.

when the skippy's first saw the gold (and it's real gold) covered vision, it was at the grand palaise, a wonderful museum in paris that was built for the 1900 world expo.

when the skippy's first met adele, she was still owned by the austrian government, but was lent out for a traveling show about the vienna secession, an art movement which paralleled the dadaists in other parts of europe. gustav klimt was the premier raconteur of the vienna secession, and his erotic portraits of the wives and daughters of the upper class of that austrian city were not only scandalous, for the time, but startling in their combinaiton of the representative and abstract.

as the washpost tells us, the portrait of adele then had a tumultous and dark history with the coming of the nazi's:

klimt spent three years painting the portrait of bloch-bauer, which was commissioned by her husband, ferdinand. after the work was completed it hung on the walls of the couple's mansion in vienna. klimt died in 1918. before adele died of meningitis in 1925, she wrote of her intention that the klimt paintings be donated to an austrian museum after she and ferdinand were gone. but adele could not have known of the rise of hilter, the nazi annexation of austria and the holocaust. after ferdinand fled to switzerland, where he died in 1945, he changed his wills, but by then the nazis had already seized the couple's home, the sugar factory, their porcelain collection and the klimts, which ended up at the austrian gallery of the belvedere palace in vienna, near another famous klimt painting, "the kiss."

a change in austrian law making it possible for art seized by the nazis to be returned, and a u.s. supreme court decision that would have let maria altmann and the heirs sue for the paintings in this country, led to the case being heard in vienna, where an arbitration panel ruled in january that the paintings were inappropriately acquired and should be returned.

austria could have sought to purchase the five works, but with a value of some $300 million, the austrian culture minister, elisabeth gehrer, said the country couldn't afford them. yesterday, viennese art fanciers mourned the sale and criticized authorities for failing to keep the works. said rudolf leopold, director of a large modern-art museum there, "mr. lauder paid too much."

before traveling to their permanent home in new york, the portrait of adele, along with another portrait of adele (klimt really liked adele, if you know what we mean) and three rather unremarkable landscapes (in skippy's opinion) were on display at lacma, where the skippy's just viewed them.

you may not be familiar with klimt's name, but anyone who took drugs and stared at rock concert posters in the 60's is very familiar with his work, which was often reproduced and copied, because he was one of the grandfathers of modern art.

even if you only see it on one continent, the portrait of adele is mesmerizing.

posted by skippy at 12:13 AM |