Klimt's Jewish Subjects and the Birth of the Modern Woman
Dec. 16, 2016
By Laurie Lico Albanese
On the canvases of Gustav Klimt, the society painter to Vienna's powerful Jewish elite at the turn of the last century, the women's eyes burn with intensity, their dresses change from Victorian to flapper-length and from virginal white to energetic color. Their poses range from confident and challenging to seductive, playful and inviting. To stand in their midst is to have a sense of the kaleidoscopic birth of the modern woman before the First World War, and to understand how Klimt and his subjects contributed to that awakening.
His most famous subject, Adele Bloch-Bauer, patron of the arts and wife of sugar baron Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, was the only woman whose portrait Klimt painted twice. Today, the Neue Galerie in New York City is home to his iconic "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I," and host to a wonderful new exhibit “Klimt and the Women of Vienna's Golden Age, 1900-18," on display through Jan. 16, 2017.
Thanks to the emperor's 1782 Edict of Tolerance, Jewish subjects in Austria had, at least on paper, been granted religious tolerance and the right to own property and businesses. Jewish children could attend school and university. At the same time, Viennese women began organizing early salons, which allowed them to break free of gender limitations and expectations.
Over the next 125 years, women were cause and effect of the change they brought about — the >Storkfaktor der Gesellschaft (disruptive factor in society) as well as the symbols of the process and progress of modernism and liberation. Viewed through this lens, Klimt's paintings and sketches, unique in subject as well as execution, are rich in meaning. The demand to be recognized as autonomous and powerful may be seen in the frank, straight-on gaze of 9-year-old Mäda Primavesi in her portrait (seen in the show) perhaps even more than in the veiled, smoldering gaze of 25-year-old Adele. It is almost as if the freedoms that Adele longed for became an imperative for young Mäda.
Klimt's golden portrait of Adele is a companion to "The Kiss," and was the subject of the 2015 movie, "Woman in Gold," starring Helen Mirren. Completed in 1907, the painting came to represent the height of cultural and artistic Jewish Vienna in the early 20th century. When the Nazis took over Austria in 1938, they stole the portrait from the Bloch-Bauer palais, where it had hung for two decades. They stripped Adele's name from the painting and changed the name of the Secession gallery, which had been the epicenter of avant-garde art during Klimt and Adele's lifetimes.
After World War II, the golden image of Adele became a pawn in the struggle between the Jewish family that had been torn apart by the Nazis, and the post-war Austrian art world. That the painting was prized and jealously guarded is a testament to the importance of Klimt's portraits — and of the women themselves — in the personal, cultural and political sphere.
Adele Bloch-Bauer's niece, Maria Altmann, famously sued the Austrian government in the U.S. Supreme Court and had the painting restituted to her family in 2006. Today the portrait is an emblem of hope and survival. For the first time since 2006, it may be seen in this show alongside the second "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II."
Our foreknowledge of the horror to come in Vienna makes the show a bittersweet experience that is registered most profoundly when one walks among the paintings, sketches, jewelry and decorative artifacts that belonged to women who would live to see the destruction of their empire, their society and their families.
For me, the most poignant message is on the caption label that accompanies the "Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer." Elisabeth's mother and father were both Jewish and Hungarian. But when the Nazis confiscated the Lederer's business and property, Elisabeth's mother Szerena Lederer (whose portrait is also in the exhibit) signed an affidavit swearing that Elisabeth was not Lederer's daughter, but that she was the result of a sexual liaison with Gustav Klimt, and therefore only half Jewish. As a result, the Nazis let Elisabeth live freely in Vienna until her death in 1944. It is chilling to look from mother to daughter and to imagine the hidden passions in their lives.
The stories that Klim's women have to tell cannot merely be put into words. They must be seen, and felt, in all of their splendor, nostalgia and celebration. In this exhibit, the Neue Galerie gives us that chance.
Laurie Lico Albanese is the author of "Stolen Beauty" (coming in February 2017), a novel about Gustav Klimt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, Vienna's golden age and the terror and redemption that followed. With Dr. Laura Morowitz, she received an HBI Research Award in 2011 for research on Adele Block-Bauer and Gustav Klimt.