#secession vase

[charlesreeza]

Monumental Art Nouveau vase with four flowering plants made at the Zsolnay Porcelain Manufactory in Pecs, Hungary for the sixth exhibition of the Vienna Secession in 1900

The vase is about four feet tall (1.25 meters)

[emerald-chylde]

[beautifulpoetryfest]

Eugene Grasset

[scotianostra]

The Scottish architect and designer  Charles Rennie Mackintosh died on Monday 10th December 1928, with a pencil in his hand. 

As the visionary architect responsible for its re-design and re-build, Mackintosh not only transformed The Glasgow School of Art into world-renowned academy, but also put Scotland firmly on the map as a center of creativity and hub for art and design.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh was born in Glasgow on 7th June 1868, the 4th child of a policeman, William, and his wife, Margaret Rennie. There were eventually 11 children born to the couple, though 4 of them died whilst still young. He was born with a contracted sinew in one foot, which made him limp as he grew older.

He first went to school at the age of 7 and after 2 years transferred to a private school for the children of artisans. He seems to have been fairly poor at traditional ‘reading, writing and arithmetic’, and suffered from dyslexia, leading to poor spelling, for which he became known in later life. He is thought however to have been good at art from an early stage.

While generally associated with the art nouveau style, Mackintosh rejected such comparisons and did not feel part of the 19th-century art nouveau European style represented by Guimard, Horta, van der Velde, or Gaudi, and little of their sinuous "whiplash" curvilinear expression is to be seen in Mackintosh's work. He sought to unite natural forms, especially those deriving from plants and flowers, with a new architectural and design vocabulary that set him well apart from the mainstream of architects who looked to Greece, Rome, and Egypt for inspiration from the antique. His marriage to a talented artist-designer, Margaret Macdonald (1864-1933), and the marriage of her sister, Frances, to Mackintosh's close friend Herbert McNair led to the formation of a brilliantly creative group, clearly led by Mackintosh, known variously as "The Four" or "The Spook School."

Considerable attention was focussed on the work of Mackintosh and the "Glasgow Style" artists and designers who had come from the School of Art. In 1900 Mackintosh and his friends were invited to create a room complete with furnishings at the Vienna Secession exhibition. This created huge interest, and the Mackintoshes were lionized when they went to Vienna. Their exhibition display had a direct influence on the development of the Wiener Werkstatte formed shortly thereafter by Josef Hoffmann. Hoffmann and Mackintosh were close friends, and Hoffmann visited Glasgow twice to see Mackintosh's work, as did the influential critic Hermann Muthesius and the Werkstatte's patron, Fritz Wärndorfer. "The Four" exhibited widely in Europe, both together and individually, and Mackintosh received commissions for furniture from patrons in Berlin, Vienna, and elsewhere in Europe.

In Glasgow Mackintosh's greatest public exposure was through the creation of a number of restaurants, the tea rooms of his most enduring patron, Kate Cranston. The tea rooms provided a wonderful opportunity for Mackintosh to put into practice his belief that the architect was responsible for every aspect of the commissioned work. At The Willow Tea Room (1903) he converted an existing interior into a remarkable dramatic and elegant series of contrasting interiors with furniture, carpet, wall decor, light fittings, menu, flower vases, cutlery, and waitresses' wear all designed by Mackintosh to create a harmonious whole, implementing the idea of totally integrated art-architecture. It is said that Mackintosh used to go to the Room de Luxe at The Willow just before it opened for morning coffee to arrange the flowers and ensure the perfection of his creation!

Surprisingly, despite Mackintosh's fame in Europe and the numerous articles in, for example, The Studio magazine devoted to his work, he never became a dominant force in Glasgow architecture. He created the private house Windyhill in 1901, a number of tea rooms, many works of decorative art and furniture, and other architectural conversions but never had the opportunity to create a second masterpiece after the School of Art and in the manner of Hoffmann's success with the Palais Stoclet in Brussels (1905) which owes so much to Mackintosh's influence. The dramatic designs for the huge International Exhibition in Glasgow in 1901 were rejected as too radical, and his entries for other competitions—for example, Liverpool Cathedral—were unsuccessful. His direct influence on European architecture came not by examples but by suggestions, notably the distribution of a full-color lithographic portfolio of "Designs for the House of an Art-Lover", which was never built.

The Hill House of 1902 is the best example of Mackintosh's domestic architectural style and interior and has survived virtually intact. The Mackintoshes' own house, complete with its furnishings, has been brilliantly recreated at the Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow , while his Glasgow School of Art has undergone extensive restoration of its interiors and collection 

Mackintosh left Glasgow in 1915 for reasons never exactly clear but associated with a notable lack of commissions and the general building slump occasioned by the onset of World War I. He moved to England and journeyed to France and created a sumptuous series of watercolors of the landscape and flowers. Opportunities for a stylized series of flower forms to become widely-distributed printed textiles failed to materialize.

The famous flowing white-on-white interiors of the Glasgow period were replaced by geometric black-on-black interiors which clearly anticipated Art Deco in his final architectural commissions: 78 Derngate, Northampton, England, in 1915/1916, and the "Dug-Out" additions to the Willow Tea Room in Glasgow.

Mackintosh was a visionary designer and architect who had a professional influence on the development of the Modern movement. Although prolific during the height of his most creative years, 1896-1916, much of his work has been lost and the remainder is essentially confined to the city of Glasgow and surrounding region. Although completely neglected and largely ignored in the middle decades of this century, he has now been the subject of intense scrutiny and rediscovery. 

His furniture and textile designs are being produced with notable success, and in 1979 a writing desk he designed in 1901 for his own use reached the then world record price paid at auction for any piece of 20th-century furniture, £89,200. 

Now much admired and copied, he is seen as a central figure in the development of integrated art-architecture at the turn of the century and a seminal influence on many architects and designers of the Post Modern movement in the 1970s and 1980s. 

Charles Rennie Mackintosh died in distressed circumstances in London on this day  in 1928.  Mackintosh sadly lost his power of speech and reportedly died holding a pencil in his hand

. . There was a small ceremony at Golders Green crematorium, and while there was no notice in the Scottish press, The Times of London did appropriately acknowledge that "the whole modern movement in Europe looks to him as one of its chief originators."

An obituary did howver appear in the Glasgow Herald on December 15, it was a sloppy peice, they couldn’t even get where he passed away correct,  nor the age of Mackintosh, but it does give an insight into the contemporary view of his talent.

[onlineantiques]

Antique Pair of Beautiful Decorative WMF Electro Plate Art Nouveau Vases eBay item number 234792518960 #artnouveau #art #architecture #artdeco #jugendstil #artnouveaustyle #vintage #artnouveaulovers #artnouveauarchitecture #antique #photo #s #design #modernismo #antiques #arte #artist #architecturephotography #illustration #artnouveaujewelry #secession #paris #liberty #artnouveaudotclub #interiordesign #artnouveaudesign #barcelona #theworldartnouveau #wmf #wmfartnouveau https://www.instagram.com/p/ClUQ4fTI-E3/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[pun-master-logan]

The Five Firsts Patton Had With Janus And The One First Janus Had With Patton

Summary: Janus is Patton’s first boyfriend and while Janus has been in plenty of relationships before, that doesn’t mean Patton can’t surprise him

Pairing: Moceit (romantic)

1. First Date

Janus was very experienced when it came to relationships. Patton on the other hand, had never even dated anyone, unless that boy he “dated” for one recess secession in third grade counted.

Patton felt very nervous about the whole thing. What was he suppose to say? How was he suppose to act? What if he messed up the date so badly that Janus didn’t even want to be his friend afterwards?

The noise polluting Patton’s head went quiet when his door bell rang. He took a deep breath, his heart pounding, and walked over to the door. Janus was waiting on the other side, looking absolutely gorgeous.

“You ready?” he asked.

“Oh, me, ready, yeah, of course, I’m ready, are you ready, because I’m definitely ready,” Patton stumbled.

Janus snickered. “Patton, relax, it’s just a date, it’s not like I’m taking your virginity or anything.”

Patton’s face turned beet red. “Can we just...um...get going before I pass out from embarrassment.”

“Yeah.” Janus reached out his hand and Patton took it. Janus pulled Patton close as they walked together. “You know, you’re cute when you’re embarrassed.”

Patton smiled. “Am I?”

“Extremely.”

Janus took Patton to the local mini golf course.

“It’s a little cheesy, I know, but-”

“I love mini golf! I call the cyan putter, cyan is my favorite color.”

“I don’t know if they have cyan here,” Janus said.

“They do, I’ve been here a gazillion times, they call it light blue, but it’s cyan.”

“Two?” the person behind the counter asked as they walked up.

“Yes,” Janus said, pulling out his wallet to pay.

The cashier took the cash and handed them two putters, one yellow, one orange.

“I want a cyan putter,” Janus said, handing back the orange.

“A what?” the cashier asked.

Janus rolled his eyes. “Light blue.”

“Whatever,” the cashier said, taking the orange putter and exchanging it.

Janus handed the cyan putter to Patton.

“Thank you,” Patton said.

“Anything for you.”

Patton blushed.

Janus tried to hide his smile. “Now, prepare to be destroyed at mini golf.”

2. First Kiss

Patton took things slow when it came to dating, very slow. It was all new territory for him, it made him nervous. Janus didn’t mind. He would go as slow as Patton wanted him to as long as he got to call Patton his boyfriend.

It was the end of their fifth date. They stood in front of Patton’s door. Despite the cold, Patton didn’t go in right away, instead he lingered, making small talk with Janus.

“Today was fun,” he said.

“It was,” Janus said.

“I, um, I like you, a lot.”

“I like you a lot too.”

Patton blushed. He looked at Janus nervously, biting his lip.

“Something on your mind Patton?” Janus asked.

Patton nodded slightly. He took a deep breath before leaning in and kissing Janus. They broke apart as quickly as they came together.

“Thank you,” Patton said.

“For what?” Janus asked.

“I know I’ve been making us take things slow, too slow, I mean we’re grown men and it took me five dates to kiss you. Thank you for being patient.”

Janus took Patton’s hand. “You aren’t making us go too slow, this is the pace you’re comfortable with and I’m comfortable with it too.”

“You are?”

“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”

3. First Valentine’s Day

Patton love Valentine’s Day. Every year he gave cards for his friends and spent the day enjoying the love that was in the air. This year was different though. This was his first Valentine’s Day with a boyfriend.

He still handed out cards to his friends, and wished them all a happy heart day, he would never stop doing that. Janus however, promised to surprise him with a Valentine’s Day treat that night.

Janus had insisted on no presents. Valentine’s Day presents are a social scheme, he said. That wasn’t going to stop Patton. He would just get creative.

Patton went over to Janus’ house, as requested. He rang the doorbell and stood there, anxiously waiting for the door to open.

“Happy Valentine’s Day!” he shouted when he saw Janus, shoving a bouquet of flowers in his face.

“I told you not to buy me anything,” Janus said, taking them.

Patton could see a hint of a smile on his face. “I didn’t, I picked these myself.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, I wanted to do something nice for you.”

“Well then, let’s get these into some water.”

Patton followed Janus inside and the most amazing aroma filled his nose. He placed his jacket in the closet as Janus went to find a vase.

“Is that-”

“No guessing,” Janus said from the other room. “You have to wait and see.”

Janus walked back out with the flowers in a yellow glass vase. Patton followed him as he walked into the dinning room and set the flowers on the table.

“Wait here,” Janus said, disappearing into the kitchen.

Patton took a seat at the table and absently played with his fork. Janus stepped back in a few moments later, carrying two of pasta in white sauce.

“Oh Janus, did you make this yourself?” Patton said, looking at the food with hunger.

“It’s nothing special, just box pasta and a jar of sauce.”

“It’s amazing Janus,” Patton said. “You’re amazing.”

Janus found it difficult to hide his blush.

4. First time Playing Hooky

“Don’t go,” Janus said, pulling Patton into another kiss.

Patton found him hard to resist. “I have to, I have work and so do you.”

“Call off,” Janus said, trailing his lips down Patton’s neck.

“Janus...”

“I want to spend the day with you,” Janus said. “What’s so bad about skipping one day of work?”

“I don’t want to lie to my boss,” Patton said.

“Then don’t, tell them you need a mental health day.” Janus started kissing Patton’s lips again.

“But I...mmm...I don’t...mmm...need...you’re a really good kisser.”

“Everyone needs a mental health day, and I need you.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll call off.”

“Good,” Janus said.

He kissed Patton deeply and slowly. Patton kissed back before pulling away.

“We still have to call off, silly.”

Janus groaned. “Fine, but make it quick.”

5. First anniversary

“Happy anniversary!” Patton shouted as Janus opened the door.

Patton stood in front of the door, holding a teddy bear with a little present in it’s little bear hands.

“Happy what?” Janus asked.

“Anniversary,” Patton said, handing Janus the bear. “A year ago today was our first date.”

“Right...right...”

“It’s okay that you forgot.”

“I didn’t forget!” Janus said. “I, have a surprise for you too, yeah, and you’re going to love it.”

“I know I will because it’s from you.”

“I...um...am taking you mini golfing because that’s where we had our first date you.”

“Aw, babe.” Patton wrapped Janus in a hug. “That’s so sweet.”

“It is? I mean of course it is, because I’m a sweet person.”

Patton smiled at Janus as they broke apart. “I love you. I love you so much.”

“I love you too.”

Janus kissed Patton.

“Now open your present.”

Janus took the little box out of the teddy bear’s hand. He opened it and stared, speechless.

“So you like it?” Patton asked eagerly.

Janus pulled out a golden bracelet that was shaped like a snake.

“I saw you admiring it a few weeks back and had to get it for you.”

“This is really expensive Patton, you didn’t have to get me something so nice.”

“I wanted to.”

+1. First I’m not leaving

“It’s the morality of it!” Patton shouted.

“Don’t lecture me on morality!” Janus shouted back.

“I can’t believe you would do something like that!”

“You judge everyone around you! I’m sick of it!”

“I’m sick of you thinking you’re above everyone somehow!”

Janus stormed out of Patton’s house, slamming Patton’s door in the process. Patton threw back open the door as Janus walking down the driveway.

“Don’t slam my door!”

“Don’t tell me what to do!”

Janus kept walking, not once looking back to keep Patton from seeing the tears running down his cheeks. Patton shut the door and sat down on the floor, sobbing hard.

The next day, there was a knock on Janus’ door.

“What are you doing here?” he asked when he saw Patton.

“I’m picking you up for our date,” Patton said.

“We don’t have a date,” Janus said.

“Yes we do, it’s Friday, we go to dinner every Friday.”

“I know you don’t have a lot of experience dating, but couples don’t usually go on a date after they break up.”

Patton’s face dropped. “Break up?”

“We had a huge fight.”

“So?”

“So?” Janus scoffed. “We’re over.”

“You’re, you’re breaking up with me because of one fight.”

“I’m not...couples break up after big fights Patton, that’s how it works.”

“No it isn’t,” Patton said.

“That’s how it always works,” Janus said.

“If you give up on a relationship after one big fight, you’re never going to have any kind of long term relationship.”

“You don’t get it Patton, just go.”

“No.”

“No?” Janus looked surprised at Patton’s response.

“I’m not leaving,” Patton said. “I love you and I taking you to a nice dinner.”

“But you said-”

“A lot of things a regret. The whole thing turned defensive, but we can discuss now, calmly, and actually listen to each other this time.”

Janus played with the snake bracelet hidden under his sleeve, thinking everything over.

“You still love me?”

“Janus,” Patton said, cupping his cheek. “I will always love you.”

***

I take constructive criticism

[blueiscoool]

Carl Moll’s Long Lost Painting White Interior Sells for $4.75 Million

On Tuesday, Philadelphia-based auction house Freeman’s sold Viennese artist Carl Moll’s White Interior (1905) for a record-breaking $4.75 million during its European art and Old Masters sale, which brought in a collective $6.4 million.

The result for the Moll painting marks the highest price achieved for a single lot in the house’s history, surpassing the $3.1 million paid for a Chinese vase in 2011, and Tuesday’s sale is now the biggest auction ever held at Freeman’s. White Interior also bested Moll’s previous record of $385,700, paid for a landscape by the artist at Austrian auction house Dorotheum in 2007.

The record-setting painting, which depicts art critic Berta Zuckerkandl-Szeps in her Döbling apartment in an all-white palette, surfaced on the market after more than a century of being held privately. It came from a German family collection, having passed through inheritance to the California-based heir of the original owners, where it has been since the 1970s, and it is the only figurative Moll painting ever sold at auction.

“Everyone thought it was lost, because it was only known through a black and white photograph from a show in 1905,” said Freeman’s European art and Old Masters specialist Raphaël Chatroux. “But in fact, we believe the work was bought directly by the family of our consignor. We don’t know if it was bought directly from the artist by them, but we think that it is highly possible it was bought right after it was shown in Vienna in 1908, because otherwise the artist would have continued to exhibit it.”

The painting was first exhibited in Berlin in 1905 and later at the Museum Folkwang in Essen the following year. It had last been shown publicly at Vienna’s Kunstschau in 1908, alongside Gustav Klimt’s iconic The Kiss (which is now held by the Belvedere Museum in Vienna).

Moll was one of the founding members of the Vienna Secession movement. With a market concentrated mainly in Europe, he is known for his idyllic domestic scenes. Moll, who supported Nazism, committed suicide in Vienna upon Germany’s defeat in 1945.

Part of White Interior‘s success owes to its subject—another Moll portrait of Zuckerkandl-Szeps is held in a private collection. According to Chatroux, Zuckerkandl-Szeps played a diplomatic role in maintaining artistic ties between French and Austrian artists during World War I. By World War II, the Jewish intellectual fled to Paris, then to the Maghreb (Northwest Africa). “She was very known for her modern and bold views because she used to write in newspapers to defend artists of the avant-garde,” said Chatroux. “She was a big Klimt supporter, especially when he was painting nudes that were considered a bit too realistic and graphic.”

After a protracted bidding period that lasted just under 10 minutes and involved a dozen parties, an American collector won the work. Following the sale, the auction house reported that the anonymous buyer was planning to exhibit the work at New York’s Neue Galerie, which houses the formidable German and Viennese art collection of New York investor Ronald Lauder. The Neue Galerie did not respond to a request for comment.

By Angelica Villa.

[moomindeco]

By Koloman Moser

[mia-decorative]

East Windsor side chair, Attributed to Timothy Loomis III, 1770-90, Minneapolis Institute of Art: Decorative Arts, Textiles and Sculpture

backrest has vase-like central element with heart cutout at center; two scalloped elements at top corners of backrest; three rounded lobes at top of backrest; straight back legs with square cross-sections; front legs are turned with pad-like feet; turned spindles--spindle at front has three large knobs at center, top spindles on sides have even beadlike patterning; woven plant fiber seat in trapezoidal shape This chair boasts some distinctive decoration. The vase-shaped splat, or center back section, has a cutout heart. The undulating top rail features a “pagoda” design at the center and carved “ears” on each side. The flat-bottomed, carved pad feet and curving back rail are the details of an ambitious craftsman, a third-generation joiner from the Connecticut River valley near Hartford. The chair’s original owner was David Ellsworth (1709–82), a selectman of his New England town. In 1745 he commanded a company on behalf of Britain at the siege of Louisbourg, on the French-held Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, in what is now Canada. This was a decisive British victory in what was known in the North American colonies as King George’s War, part of the War of the Austrian Secession, which raged nearly worldwide from 1740 to 1748. Size: 41 5/8 × 19 1/4 × 15 1/2 in. (105.73 × 48.9 × 39.37 cm) (approx.) Medium: Cherry, ash, pigment, plant fibers

https://collections.artsmia.org/art/120271/

[mermaidenmystic]

Fishblood ~ 1898 ~ brush and black ink, black chalk, heightened with white ~ Gustave Klimt (Austrian symbolist painter, 1862-1918)

“Klimt's talent as a graphic designer was especially evident in the early years of the Secession. He was then eschewing three-dimensional space and developing an increasingly linear and planar mode of representation, inspired by the linearity and raw power of Greek vase painting and Japanese woodcuts. 

Fish Blood is Klimt's greatest work of graphic design and a seminal artistic statement for him. Its imagery embodies Klimt's metaphysical view of life as endless floating form. Cropped on all four sides, the composition flows diagonally upward, having no beginning or end. The figures seem ethereal, with their long hair becoming one with their aqueous medium. The subject matter of erotic female nudes floating through water or space would remain a consuming interest for Klimt.”  ~ J. Paul Getty Museum

https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/klimt/secession.html

[ohyeahpop]

Rosenthal fast vase, porcelain. A mixture of collective memory and futuristic abstraction symbolises the cultural shift, triggered by digital technology: the speed of information processing, its obsolescence and its secession. The time-lapse effect is expressed by the metaphorical decoration of the vase, while on the other hand, displayed by high-tech tools, 500 years of human manufacture are grouped together.

[kazytka]

Affection in Affliction . Selapiel/No name

No name pointed a finger at the house upon a hill. Two stories tall not counting the attic. Brittle aged brick covered by  nearly tree thick branches of ivy . Like snakes they  warped around wooden ornaments, swallowed windows. And throttled the chimney . And jet there was a biter sweet to it all, as you came from the mist you cud hear the  green wall sing whit the sound of thousand of  bird voices. Crickets hummed and an occasional  orange butterfly  flirted thru the air. -This place seams...nice- Selapiel remarked looking a round, he walked hand in hand whit  no names  rigid un amused figure.  And just as he was a bout to take a step forward  and on to the house steps, a streak of  ivory white  flew past his face and splatted on to the ground whit a fleshy thud and a crack of bone. Warped in linens there lied a warp body of a new borne. -Indeed it is. Remarked no name politely. -what in fathers name is this?! Poor thing! -He bend down ans swiped the  limp human conglomeration into their arms , read tears  brimming, lips quivering reedy to give last rights. - It was to young to deserve this .- He remarked, and whit that as if on command the flesh warped and twisted in his hands like a particularity big maggot, joints and bones snapping together, until a healthy infant  gazed up at there hairy faces whit a gleeful  miaul, outstretching its hands. -its a millrace! - Selapiel moaned hugging the child that hugged back in an instant,  seemingly unfazed  by it’s  previous demise. No name coked his dear like head to the side observing it keenly.-its a lovely package but I wouldn't  call the content a miracle. -that's just the dipper smell. Children are the most innocent of all creatures. -the baby giggled at the compliment and subsequent  poking of its  fat belly. Then a voice wafted thru the air ‘my baby, my baby, oh where are you my baby!’ in a melodious voice. It came from the second floor,  from within the  only visible window in this whole house, open and gaping whit darkness. -is..is that the mom? - the baby  reached its hands to the window, and after a moment it gave clear singes it wishes to be put down. -Seams to be. Put the  beast down, perhaps it will  decide where to go.-  Reluctantly they did and the child that should all but flop on its chubby belly to young to even comprehend crawling on all fours. Took to a hardy crawl  bypassing  rocks, climbing up the initial steeps to the house and  waddling inside, the white  shroud  stained whit blood trailing behind him. -This is not safe. I’m going to follow him. 

-I was bout to suggest you do -no name nodded his head politely taking out  a pipe and some wed  from his coat pocket. -ill wait here. 

 -how so? 

- well unless you can convince the lady of the house to let me in, rules be rules. - doesn't sound that hard. They steeped on to the .threshold  

-Im positive shes a responsible individual trapped in a tragic  loop of events, ill talk her down  and  send them both in to  fathers waiting arms...so don’t get  to comfortable whit that  smelly thing - they pointed out as  no name took a comfy seat at an overgrown  bench  near the wall. -ill take it in to consideration, love - the deer mouthed whit a glint of Irish accent. Selapiels tail swished  the air as they rolled there ayes. The house must haw been quite well of in the day. As  faded rotten paintings in peeling gold frames  decorated the walls.Silver candelabra bloomed like tees whit  crowns of  silky cobwebs. And faded  flowers  whit heads hung low in shame  filled every precious porcelain vase in sight.  The  ground floor held no singes of life. Even do Selapiel took their time to asses the surrounding the baby made it merely half way up the stairs, fallowing a well worn patch on the  dirty  rug.  The song sounded again’ oh where is my baby, where is my baby, baby my dearest little angel  where are you?’  whit a soft smile Selapiel stepped forward, scoped the child in its arms and  proceeded  up the stairs and to where the  song led him. Tearing his way thru cobwebs and dust  they found themselves  next to a room whit a door cracked open. Inside sat a woman in a Victorian dress, fluffy and white like a weeding gown, cheeks unnaturally pink, contrasting whit her thin  long face and brownish blond hair.  this was the only place not doted by dust nor wear and tear in the house. Every inch or  secession art was glimmering and dripping whit lace, silk and  gold. Soft pinks and cream whites  decorated the room. One would think this is as close as  mortals would get to simulating  clouds and heaven . The woman danced round the room looking under covers, and behind stacks of toys piled up in the corners singing for her baby to come out. Oblivious to her new guest. Selapiel sighed and  banded down to allow the infant to just crawl out of its grasp and towards the woman.The moment it got a few steeps away  his mother seamed to spot it. There was a glimmer of something in her ayes , like a smile in a predators gaze  when they spot a bunny  leaving  the brush for an open field. Snatching the infant up  they laughed and coooed  dancing whit it  across the room, making sweeping gestures and  high leaps. The baby wobbled in her grasp depressingly  throwing its small head back. A few times even the woman knocked it  in to a decorative  poster of her bead. Selapiels fur bristle at the sight, but she was happy so perhaps...she was just inept? Needed to calm down , that's all. - my child..pleas ...-they started ‘oh my baby, oh my baby, your here, my baby boy, my angel ‘ The woman proceeded to dance. ‘my we little cherub, are you prepared to fly?’ she sung to the baby  dancing merrily and whit out a care, and as she sung the last tune  she flung the child whit full speed and clear intent  out the  open window. ‘Fly!’ she chanted as the body initially rose up it quickly fell . And so did the woman's face witch turned to horror. And whit a cry of despair and a hand to her brow, she fell on to the  soft plush  carpet and began to wail. - Fairies stole my baby boy!  My poor baby boy, somebody bring me back my baby boy!’ There were dark shadows looming over her as she vailled. Selapiel  ran to the window and looked outside. No name was smoking his pipe and a bloody  pulp on the pavement beloved close to him was already  twisting and forming a new and  right before his ayes he watch the infant form and start to crawl back up following its mothers voice.

-Why would you do that?! 

-Fairies stole my child, it wasn't me...oh where is my baby?! 

 -Why would you  say that!? -The woman gazed at the shadows. -I know my baby, my little angel. I birth and angel… -She looked at Selapiel for a brief second and that predatory gleam was back- So shouldn't it fly? 

 -How many angel did you haw? -They asked  horrified. 

-Enough to fill a choir. -she answered spreading her arms whit pride , before standing up and  singing ‘where is my baby, where is my baby, baby my dearies little angel  where are you?’ Selapiel tough  this is madness, and perhaps he wasn't that far off. They turned back and ran down the stairs garbing the crawling infant  on the way, wails and cries by dame it was not going back. As they sat on a bend outside whit the fussing red  yelling infant  in there lap they snatched the pipe from the  black paws of no name and took a hardy intake. -father up above you better haw a good reason to show me this... No name leaned forward and twisted his head to look at the  former angel 

 - whether a reason is good  or not is a point of debate. 

- I honestly think your trying to torture me at this point, gallivanting me  far and  near across this awful world just so I can talk whit ghosts and  mourning  spirits all day long. You surround me in misery I cant do thinning a bout.- They his teetering on a line of a sob you haw me smile and  lay to rests there worries so they can move on but  it never changes the tragedy...there tragedy, my tragedy. No mater what I do this child in my arms is and will be as cold as a lump of  soil on a rainy day. Why !?

 - Yes you made that complaint to me before. - No name  nodes his head 

 -...says a bunch a bout you and even more a bout me.

 -True, but this isn't a simple task like dealing whit somebody that had to maul over there grieves mistakes for a few  centuries. She is not a ghost. -Then what?  A manifestation of madness?

 -Nothing quite so crude, if she was an elemental showing her to you would haw no merit beyond watching a baboon throw his own excrement's , personally I can think of more pleasant things to do  than that. No, where you are now is the Mind of a currently living  woman, going mad.

 -...Wait what?

 -You heard me, this small stint you see here..this is a manifestation of an ailing mind fixated on infanticide. Fascinating no? -Selapiel just stared at them. No name grumbled and caught, expecting a more appreciative stance to what he considered a quiet thoughtful gift.-Point being, you wanted agency and a chance to change  bad faith. Consider this a token of my affections, in lieu  of a  rose a mind of madness you can do as you pleas whit. Perhaps  what you do whit this gift will tell you all you need to know bout  what you were and are. At this point its all I cant think to give...that isn't redundant that is. -He answers taking his pipe back from Selapiel and placing it in its mouth whit reverence. Sele just stared at him, then on the baby and the  green facade of the house. -What of this house? Are other  spirits attached to it?-I would think so...other spirits other minds, just like elements affect  a home , people and  events  effect us  botch on the outside levels and inside. If you chose to help, you will need to contend whit tows forces. And while nature is mostly uninterested in the state of a home...mortals more often than not are, especially when there is profit to be made.

 -So somebody wants her that way. Anything else you can tell me? 

-And spoil my gift? I think not. Talk to the woman. Jog that derelict brain of hers out of that place she decided to sequester herself in. Take pleasure  in unraveling the human mind and roads of free will in this , the most intimed of ways. Feel it, crack it open like an egg and indulge in it.

 -You make it sound unseemly. 

-Nobody goes mad from  innocents my dear. But enough talk...as is, its my  gift to give, and your choice what to do whit it. -Before he cud finish a screaming infant was placed tenderly in his care.- If I can prevent tragedy from happening than by god grace I will try. But I wont stand for  this conversation to be interrupted by the constant  throwing of an infant . I am nipping this decision of hers in the bud.- They announced, voice soft, silent but firm. Odd and unsuitable of a gift as this was it made them feel light inside. No name had offer them a wavered prayer and for a brief moment it was easy to forget the claws, the slithering tail and horns. They had a calling to attend to, and  it came whit a bit of selfish glee they accepted to be  an angel for a mad woman.  Berger’s cannot be choosers, even when there gifted whit mockery. And not even for a moment did it cross there mind they might be crossing   the grand plan in any way. 

[caveartfair]

What You Need to Know about Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt as an attendand of an party in the Primavesi-house, with a house-coat designed by Carl Otto Czeschka. Photo by Imagno/Getty Images.

Most of us know Gustav Klimt as the artist who painted The Kiss, that 1907 masterpiece in which two figures melt into each other in a hungry embrace. He binds their bodies together in the same cloth: a shimmering gold tapestry whose pattern references both intimacy and anatomy. The side covering the man is decorated with erect rectangles, while the woman’s is swathed with concentric circles.

Klimt, the leader of the Vienna Secession movement, was a master of symbolism. He embedded allusions to sexuality and the human psyche in the rich, lavishly decorated figures and patterns that populated his canvases, murals, and mosaics. Often, their messages—of pleasure, sexual liberation, and human suffering—were only thinly veiled. His more risqué pieces, depicting voluptuous nudes and piles of entwined bodies, scandalized the Viennese establishment.

Even so, the city’s elite adored his work and frequently commissioned him to paint their portraits. His artist peers were similarly enthralled with his style, recognizing Klimt’s groundbreaking injection of sexuality, atmosphere, and expression into figurative painting. When Auguste Rodin visited Klimt’s famed Beethoven Frieze (1902), part of the Viennese Secession’s 14th exhibition, he lauded the piece as “so tragic and so divine.” A younger generation of European Expressionists, including Egon Schiele, lionized Klimt and latched onto him as their hero.

Today, Klimt’s work still captivates us. Museums sell more color reproductions of Klimt’s paintings than those of any other artist. But there’s far more to the painter’s life and oeuvre than The Kiss.

Who was Gustav Klimt?

The Virgin, 1913. Gustav Klimt Legion of Honor

Klimt didn’t like to talk about his personal life or work. “I am convinced that I am not particularly interesting as a person. There is nothing special about me,” he once said. “I am a painter who paints day after day from morning until night.” But the details he did leave behind tell a different story. Klimt was an artist who passionately studied his craft and boldly rebelled against the establishment; who was shy but enchanting; who wore caftans when he painted; and who adored his pet cat, and—perhaps most of all—women. (Although Klimt never married, he fathered 14 children and was rumored to have numerous lovers.)

He was born in 1862 in Baumgarten, Austria, not far from Vienna. His father was a gold and silver engraver; like several of his seven siblings, Klimt followed in his father’s footsteps. By age 14, he had enrolled in Vienna’s School of Applied Arts where he studied a range of subjects, including fresco painting and mosaic.

He was a devoted student and spent hours in Vienna’s museums poring over antique vases and other treasures, and copying prize paintings like Titian’s Isabella d’Este (1534–36). He and his brother, Ernst, also showed early entrepreneurial instincts. They sold portraits painted from photographs and made technical drawings for an ear specialist. These projects contributed to Klimt’s early mastery of the human form.

Isabella d'Este, 1534-1536. Titian Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Judith and the Head of Holofernes, 1901. Gustav Klimt Belvedere Museum

Simultaneously, Klimt began to take on decorative commissions, such as elaborate murals and ceiling paintings for theaters and other public buildings. In the late 1880s, he populated them with classical themes and mythological figures executed so deftly that they caught the eye of Emperor Franz Josef, who awarded Klimt the Golden Order of Merit for his frescoes at the city’s Burgtheater.

Over time, a steady stream of decorative and portrait commissions—and his resulting financial independence and recognition—emboldened Klimt to take more creative risks. His erotic drawings of women from the early 1900s reveal a career-long interest in the human form and desire (more recently, these works have also been described at misogynistic, a reading bolstered by Klimt’s reputation as a Casanova). But on canvas, he had to be careful.

In some ways, Vienna was an intensely bohemian city during Klimt’s lifetime, filled with decadence and artistic experimentation. But the city’s government and traditional art establishment railed against this avant-garde cultural movement, which was propelled by young artists and intellectuals including Klimt, architect Otto Wagner, composers Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schönberg, and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.

It was in this paradoxical environment, which pitted Victorian repression against freedom of expression, that Klimt came of age. Soon, he began to channel his reflections on desire, dreams, and mortality through lush, symbol-laden paintings. “Whoever wants to know something about me,” Klimt once said, “ought to look carefully at my pictures and try to see in them what I am and what I want to do.”

What inspired him?

Kiss, 1907. Gustav Klimt Belvedere Museum

Medicine (Detail: Hygieia), 1900/07. Gustav Klimt Belvedere Museum

Early in his career, Klimt was enthralled with his predecessor Hans Makart’s elaborate history paintings. Klimt found that he could safely explore his interest in the human form through classical themes, like the trials and tribulations of Greek gods and mythological figures. In the Burgtheater mural, for instance, his nimble, dancing nudes in Theater in Taormina (1886–87) were palatable to an otherwise uptight society.

But after Klimt left school and entered his late twenties, he became increasingly influenced by the Viennese avant-garde. The decadence and intellectual rebelliousness of his peers enthralled him. The Jung-Wien group of writers reacted against moralistic 19th-century literature by exploring dreams and sexuality in their work, while Freud “saw no upright object without interpreting it as erectile, no orifice without potential penetration,” as historian Gilles Neret has pointed out.

Klimt began to reject more traditional approaches to painting that favored classicism, rationality, and naturalism. He started taking risks as early as 1890, when he was commissioned to paint a grand mural depicting the history of art for the Kunsthistorisches Museum. He chose to represent each stage, from Egypt to the Renaissance, through female figures. But unlike the historical and allegorical paintings made by Klimt’s predecessors, he represented his subjects with human, rather than godly, characteristics. In Ancient Greece II (Girl from Tanagra) (1890–91), Klimt’s subject resembles one of his bohemian peers—a living, breathing woman with a brooding air—rather than a serene, mythical being. She was the first of Klimt’s “femme fatales,” as Neret has called the artist’s female subjects—strong, expressive women capable of both seduction and destruction. This mural gave way to a period of mounting experimentation and rebelliousness in Klimt’s work, as he teetered on the edge of acceptability.

Mäda Primavesi (1903–2000), 1912–1913. Gustav Klimt The Metropolitan Museum of Art

A Field of Poppies, 1907. Gustav Klimt Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna

By 1897, Klimt and some of his more adventurous artist and designer friends broke from the Vienna Artists’ Association, a more traditional association of painters, to form a radical group called the Secession (named after an ancient Roman term meaning “revolt against ruling powers”). Klimt became the group’s president and its guiding spirit. A drawing he made for the first issue of the movement’s magazine, Ver Sacrum, shows a naked woman holding a mirror up to the audience—“as if to invite new inspiration, a new beginning,” writes historian Dr. Julia Kelly.

Increasingly, Klimt’s inspiration became the psychological inquiry and preoccupation with sexuality that pervaded the Viennese avant-garde. A favorite topic of the salons was the battles of the sexes—in particular, the domination of woman over man. Klimt’s early interest in the female form mingled with these themes, and he began to take more risks in his depictions of women. In works like Judith and the Head of Holofernes (1901), he presents a strong, sexualized Judith holding the head of her aggressor.

Women had always been Klimt’s favorite subjects. “I am less interested in myself as a subject for painting than I am in other people, above all women,” he once said. But by the early 1900s, his depictions of women became increasingly expressive of their personalities and desires—and of human emotion in general. Even his portraits of society women were rife with expressive features and gowns that looked as if they’d been woven from flowers newly bursting into bloom. This exemplifies an aspect of Klimt’s work in which “the anatomy of the models becomes ornamentation, and the ornamentation becomes anatomy,” as art historian Alessandra Comini has said.

Music (study), 1895. Gustav Klimt "Klimt and the Ringstrasse" at the Belvedere Museum, Vienna

The Viennese art establishment wasn’t pleased. While Klimt had won a commission for the University’s ceremonial hall, critics immediately objected to the painter’s newly “indefinite forms and ambiguous evocation of human relationships, suggestive of sexual liberation,” writes Kelly. In a sketch for one panel of the mural, Philosophy (1899–1905), naked bodies entangle and rise into the sky next to a whirl of stars.

Eventually, Klimt quit the project, but he wasn’t deterred from continuing in this vein. “Enough of censorship,” he said in response. “I want to get away.…I refuse every form of support from the state, I’ll do without all of it.” From 1901–02, he painted Goldfish, originally titled To My Critics. It shows a naked nymph sticking her rear in the direction of the viewer.

Not long after, Klimt took a trip to Ravenna, Italy, where he saw Byzantine art, shimmering with gilded details. It stuck with him, and his famed Gold Period ensued. For portrait commissions (when he was required to stay within the bounds of propriety), the clothing of his subjects became tapestries of abstract shapes rendered in rich golds, reds, blues, and greens. During this time, even paintings lacking human figures—like his landscapes or abstract friezes—were filled with organic forms: undulating spirals, rushing whirlpools, profusions of flowers.  

As Klimt edged closer to his untimely death at age 55 (the result of complications from a stroke), references to the life cycle also appear more frequently in his paintings. The Tree of Life (1905), for instance, becomes a recurring symbol in his late work. As Neret has suggested, the tree brings together a number of the artist’s favorite themes: flowers, women, and ever-changing seasons.

Why does his work matter?

Johanna Staude,, 1917-1917. Gustav Klimt Legion of Honor

Baby (Cradle), 1917/1918. Gustav Klimt National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Klimt’s work boldly broke from artistic convention. He ushered in a new period of figuration that jettisoned rigid tenets of naturalism and classicism. Instead, he favored expressive, virile, human figures who made their desires and emotions known. These inclinations paved the way for the Vienna Secession, of which Klimt was the fearless leader, and went on to influence Viennese Expressionism, a movement spearheaded by his pupil, Schiele. With Klimt as his inspiration, Schiele further unmasked the emotional and psychological inner workings of his sitters.  

What’s more, Klimt’s mural work pioneered the union of art and architecture that would later influence the Bauhaus and the Russian Constructivists. With Secessionist allies like architect Josef Hoffmann and designer Koloman Moser, Klimt expanded on the notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk, or total artwork. He conceived both his Beethoven Frieze and Stoclet Frieze (1905–11) so they would blend seamlessly with the architecture and furniture that surrounded them.

Later in his career, Klimt continued to prove influential: The paintings from his Gold Period, as well as structured landscapes he made just before his death, foreshadowed Art Nouveau and Cubism, respectively.

from Artsy News

[themuseumwithoutwalls]

MWW Artwork of the Day (4/8/19) Gustav Klimt (Austrian, 1862-1918) Die drei Lebensalter der Frau [The Three Stages of Woman](1905) Oil on canvas, 180 x 180 cm. Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome

Klimt seems to be more popular than ever these days. His paintings sell for record prices at auctions; one went for astounding $135 million four years ago. To judge by the sales figures of posters and postcards of his work he would seem to be the favorite artist of young college-educated females. There's even a Facebook group dedicated to him with thousands of members. His paintings -- with their elegant gold or colored decoration, spirals and swirls -- certainly have the look of uniqueness and originality, which may partly explain their current popularity, as also would their barely concealed eroticism and his focus on the female body. But, above all, the main source of his appeal may lie is the melding of Eastern and Western sensibilities in his work. Though his early portraits bear a resemblance to Whistler's and his drawings to those of Beardsley, his sources were eclectic and for inspiration he mainly looked eastward, as fellow painter Anton Faistener noted in 1923: "He is conceivable only in Vienna, better still in Budapest or Constantinople...His entire spirituality is Oriental. Eros plays a dominant role, his taste for women is almost Turkish...Persian vase decorations and Oriental rugs inspired him greatly...Klimt never looked westwards." That may also explain why he had no direct imitators.

"The Three Ages of Women" above, Klimt's most popular painting after "The Kiss (1907-08)," is a good example of his symbolic or allegorical work, and one which requires little explanation. The Old Woman is modeled after Auguste Rodin's "La Belle Heaulmiere" which the Vienna Secession group had exhibited in 1901 (and which you can view in the MWW Sculpture Garden).

[retrocollectsinteriors]

Copper Brass late 1800s Gebrüder Bing Jugendstil Secession Arts Crafts Handled small Vase Urn signed