The women in painting—by Gustav Klimt

Portrait of Baroness Elisabeth Bachofen (1914)

                       Mäda Primavesi (1912)

Lady with Fan (1917)

         The Dancer (1916 - 1918)

 

The women in painting whose expression are calm, perhaps, are a little

bit delighted but are not too much, they seem to think something when

we stare at their eyes.  Klimt set up those women in two different worlds,

one is real, the other is fantastic.  Women were draw realistically, but the

backgrounds were arranged as a fictitious world, through such composition,

women did not exist alone in the painting, there was a bustling world

around her.  The women and their backgrounds seem to be not correlate,

but they set off each other via contrast.

 

Looking at these paintings, they inspire me to think of the “Art Deco” and

“Mix and Match” even if I know Klimt did not has any relation with those

design movements.  I wonder why Klimt utilized the Oriental objects (such as

Chinese opera characters, phoenix) to decorate the Western women portraits,

supposedly, this kind of arrangement might make the painting to be odd,

however, after his deliberate and painstaking drawing, those portraits were

presented in very unique and aesthetic feel.