Customer Reviews

Klimt (The Post-Impressionists)

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This work says Klimt moved from naturalism to post-impressionism. The work will make you think about re-invention. Everything But the Girl moved from jazz to house music. The Eurythmics moved from abstract electronics to mainstream pop. If I recall correctly, Mondrian changed styles as well.

The work states that Austrian secessionists broke off from that country's art establishment just as the Impressionists broke away from the Salon before. However, this work only mentions Klimt's admiration of Toulouse-Lautrec years after he painted most of his work. Klimt's oeuvre seems basically separate from Cezanne, Gauguin, and their lot. This was not a case of France starts and the world follows.

Like Pacino, Souter, and Delacroix, Klimt was a heterosexual bachelor who never married, though he had female lovers. The work keeps repeating that his artistic focus on women was "ambiguous." They mean his women could be seen as either erotic or non-erotic. I find this term surprising as no one ever says his work degrades women. None of the pieces shown seems to condemn them. Their use of "ambiguous" doesn't refer to pro-feminism versus misogyny. The work states that Austria was scandalized that he painted a woman with pubic hair, rather than painting her in the classical style without it. Hello! Adult women have secondary sex characteristics. Why should a painter be punished for producing something that occurs in real life?! Ooh, times have changed.

The work only has two interviewees, rather than several. Instead of showing cheesy reenactments done in video, the makers blur the reenactments and thus it seems less cheesy. Sadly, the work also says several Klimt works were destroyed in the 1940s.

This is a joy to review the works of an interesting and innovative artist.
As a home disc, I can really learn about him and his work.