Primavera Klimt! Meisel y el rococó austríaco

Today we see in it the Byzantine luxuriance of form, the vivid juxtaposition of colors derived from the Austrian rococo

- aspects so markedly different from the clinical abruptness of Egon Schiele.

The coruscating sensuality of Klimt's work might seem in perfect accord with a society which recognized itself in those frivolous apotheoses of happiness and well-being, the operettas of Johann Strauss and Franz Léhar.

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.

Life's seductions are still more potent in the vicinity of death, and 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 (+Meisel) surrounds his figures evokes the gold ground of Byzantine art

a time that, in negating space, may be regarded as negating time - and thus creating a figure of eternity.


Steven Meisel for Vogue Italia Diciembre 08 + excerpta de Michael Gibson (Symbolism, Taschen)
mr Meisel vous êtes trés trés badass