Diadem of the Attersee
Climbing the footpath that winds up the hill from the promenade of Lake Atter – the Attersee – you enter the verdant grounds of the Villa Paulick through a carved, wooden gate. The lofty towers and spires cast deep shade, stretching down to the clear waters of the Attersee. The villa is a masterpiece of [...]
Book Review: Paul H. Simpson’s Flöge and Klimt – A Family Affair
Who Was Emilie Flöge? So much has been written and said in this 150th anniversary year of Gustav Klimt’s birth that another book could easily test the endurance of even the most ardent Klimt follower. Still, an important part of the story has long remained untold: that of Emilie Flöge, the woman who is generally [...]
The Artist Unrevealed
“Gustav Klimt? Cash Cow!” declares a video reporter on the Leopold Museum’s home page for its exhibition Klimt persönlich (Klimt: Up Close and Personal). “Every museum is going to be milking it,” he says, in this 150th birthday year – he only hopes there’ll be something new to discover. Klimt persönlich supposedly casts “a new [...]
Gustav Klimt: Breaking the Mold
In his time, many people didn’t know what to make of Gustav Klimt: To the romantics he was trapped in ornamentation, to the purists in symbols. He was called a “purveyor of perversities,” yet also “provincial”. Traditionalists dismissed him as decadent, once naturalist described him as merely “irritating”. But to a small circle of progressive [...]
Kos on Vienna
In a recent interview with Director Wolfgang Kos in the Wien Museum – the museum of the history of the City of Vienna – one couldn’t help being curious about his personal take on the city he spends his life trying to interpret. A man who knows the city so well must have some favourite [...]
