The Early Life of Gustav Klimt
Once upon a time there were Austrians with taste, knowledge and intelligence
Letters from Vienna #62
The Early Life of Gustav Klimt
What I certainly didn’t miss during the lockdowns were gallery openings, which I’ve always gone to mainly for social reasons; I most assuredly have never gone on account of the quality of the art on display. And now that so many young artists, who, theoretically at least, ought to be intelligent, insightful and open-minded, have shown themselves to be blinkered, conformist zombies or ignorant fools, the social aspect has largely fallen away.
There are sound, sensitive and able young Austrian artists but one simply doesn’t or at best rarely sees their work in Vienna’s innumerable galleries or “off-spaces”; quality, as a rule, is banished far away while mediocrity, banality and the regurgitation of old, worn-out ideas hold sway.
In Austria “success” (whatever that curious word actually means) seems largely predicated on connections or one’s ability to access tax-payer’s money rather than any talent, ambition or vague desire for quality. Indeed, the whole attitude of the somewhat petit-bourgeois “art professionals”, and their obsession with pretentious, pseudo-intellectual nonsense, status, fame or money, is inimical to the creation of art. All the “art professionals” seem to want to do is pose, show-off their clothes, boast about their latest exhibition or trip to Paris, New York or LA. And now even they are absent from the scene; the last gallery opening I attended was a sad, sorry, lonely affair.
It was not always thus. In the past: skill, aptitude and intelligence counted for something; not anymore.
Baumgarten No. 4
In 1862 Gustav Klimt was born in Vienna’s 14th district, to be exact: in Baumgarten No. 4 (now Linzer Strasse 247). The house of his birth was torn down in 1966 to make space for an ugly block of flats. This fact alone speaks volumes; Klimt wasn’t regarded terribly highly at the time. It’s also of interest to note that his villa in Vienna’s 13th district (the better side of the tracks) is not that far removed from his place of birth. It too was all but forgotten until, that is, some Japanese tourists expressed a desire to view it.
“Gustav Klimt was six years old” Tobias G. Natter tells us, “when his parents enrolled him at the local elementary school at 61 Lerchenfelderstrasse in Vienna’s 7th district in 1868. The young Gustav Klimt displayed a pronounced talent for art even as a pupil, and his teacher suggested to his parents that they should send him to the Kunstgewerbeschule, the School of Applied Arts newly opened in 1867. The fact that his father, Ernst (1834-92), was an engraver undoubtedly helped foster Gustav’s creative leanings. It is a sign of his parents’ appreciation of natural talent that they paid for their sons to attend the School of Applied Arts rather than arranging for them to begin an apprenticeship right after elementary school. In October 1876 the fourteen-year-old Gustav passed the entrance examination to the School of Applied Arts – which involved copying an antique head – with top marks.”[1]
The School of Applied Arts
“The curriculum followed by Gustav and (his younger brother) Ernst led to a qualification as a drawing teacher: two years in the preparatory class and exams in the third year. As a candidate for the teaching profession, Gustav Klimt had to draw plaster casts in the morning, attend lectures in the afternoon and take life classes at night.”[2]
“In his third year at the School of Applied Arts, when Klimt had already passed the first round of exams and was studying under Michael Rieser for the State examination that would allow him to qualify as a drawing teacher, Rudolf von Eichelberger (the founder of the School of Applied Arts) paid a visit to the school studio. Rieser took the occasion to draw Eitelberger’s attention to the work of his gifted senior students, Gustav Klimt, Ernst Klimt and Franz Matsch. According to Matsch, Eitelberger exclaimed: “Drawing teachers…? You must become painters!” Eitelberger decided to award scholarships of twenty gulden a month to all three and invited them to join the painting and decorative class for a further two years of study. “The “Brothers Klimt and Matsch Company” was financed”, as Matsch wrote in his memoirs. Eitelberger recognized the young artists’ talent at a point when, with Vienna’s Ringstrasse in the grip of a construction boom, graduates of the class for painting and decorative art were in enormous demand.”[3]
“For Gustav and Ernst Klimt and Franz Matsch, their training under Ferdinand Laufberger was decisive for their future careers. Laufberger particularly encouraged the three students and would also procure them their first commissions…”
“…In Laufberger’s class, Klimt spent the mornings working first from life models and then from still lifes. He was also set compositional exercises that could vary from a design for an al fresco wall painting for a music room to a subject suitable as an illustration for a book. Here Klimt learned how to work on several commissions at once within a fixed time frame. Laufberger “made comments on all the designs after they had been submitted, mentioning the best works by name…Laufberger’s motto was: reproduce Nature as accurately as possible, with all her beauties and flaws…Laufberger would also often say: there is no boundary between art and applied art.” The academic drawings of male nudes that Gustav Klimt produced during Laufberger’s classes in 1879/80 show his intelligent absorption of his teacher’s ideas. Klimt’s enduring endeavor to capture the essence of the human figure in oil sketches, and his life-long practice of working from life models, both find their starting point here.”
“…Laufberger’s unflagging efforts to further the careers of his pupils also brought the two Klimts and Matsch their first commission as the Künstler-Compagnie, the “Artists’ Company” they formed in 1879. Through the recommendation of their esteemed teacher, they were engaged by Viennese imperial and royal court architect Johann Sturany to execute four paintings for the corners of the ceiling in the salon of his newly built mansion at 21 Schottenring.”[4] The rest, as they say, is history…
As in the case of the Klimt brothers, young artists today still need encouragement, money, a good education and also challenges, and that is exactly what is lacking in contemporary Vienna. Klimt also had a large portion of luck; at that time Austria had in positions of responsibility people with taste, knowledge and intelligence; today, that is sadly not the case.
[1] p.17 Gustav Klimt, Tobias G. Natter
[2] p.18 Ibid
[3] pp. 18-19 Ibid
[4] pp.19-21 Ibid