The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer [Kindle Edition]

Anne-Marie O'Connor (Author)

Book Description

Winner of the Marfield Prize National Award for Arts Writing
 Finalist for the California Book Awards
 Library Journal Top 10 Book of 2012 
 Christian Science Monitor Top 15 Nonfiction of 2012
 Top 12 Nonfiction 2012 of Examiner.com

The spellbinding story, part fairy tale, part suspense, of Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, one of the most emblematic portraits of its time; of the beautiful, seductive Viennese Jewish salon hostess who sat for it; the notorious artist who painted it; the now vanished turn-of-the-century Vienna that shaped it; and the strange twisted fate that befell it.
 
The Lady in Gold, considered an unforgettable masterpiece, one of the twentieth century's most recognizable paintings, made headlines all over the world when Ronald Lauder bought it for $135 million a century after Klimt, the most famous Austrian painter of his time, completed the society portrait.
 
Anne-Marie O'Connor, writer for The Washington Post, formerly of the Los Angeles Times, tells the galvanizing story of the Lady in Gold, Adele Bloch-Bauer, a dazzling Viennese Jewish society figure; daughter of the head of one of the largest banks in the Hapsburg Empire, head of the Oriental Railway, whose Orient Express went from Berlin to Constantinople; wife of Ferdinand Bauer, sugar-beet baron.
 
The Bloch-Bauers were art patrons, and Adele herself was considered a rebel of fin de siècle Vienna (she wanted to be educated, a notion considered "degenerate" in a society that believed women being out in the world went against their feminine "nature"). The author describes how Adele inspired the portrait and how Klimt made more than a hundred sketches of her--simple pencil drawings on thin manila paper.
 
And O'Connor writes of Klimt himself, son of a failed gold engraver, shunned by arts bureaucrats, called an artistic heretic in his time, a genius in ours.
 
She writes of the Nazis confiscating the portrait of Adele from the Bloch-Bauers' grand palais; of the Austrian government putting the painting on display, stripping Adele's Jewish surname from it so that no clues to her identity (nor any hint of her Jewish origins) would be revealed. Nazi officials called the painting, The Lady in Gold and proudly exhibited it in Vienna's Baroque Belvedere Palace, consecrated in the 1930s as a Nazi institution.
 
The author writes of the painting, inspired by the Byzantine mosaics Klimt had studied in Italy, with their exotic symbols and swirls, the subject an idol in a golden shrine.
 
We see how, sixty years after it was stolen by the Nazis, the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer became the subject of a decade-long litigation between the Austrian government and the Bloch-Bauer heirs, how and why the U.S. Supreme Court became involved in the case, and how the Court's decision had profound ramifications in the art world.
 
A riveting social history; an illuminating and haunting look at turn-of-the-century Vienna; a brilliant portrait of the evolution of a painter; a masterfully told tale of suspense. And at the heart of it, the Lady in Gold--the shimmering painting, and its equally irresistible subject, the fate of each forever intertwined.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“O’Connor . . . skillfully navigates the bizarre orbit of Klimt’s masterpiece . . . with depth of insight and righteous indignation. Whether or not you’ve marveled at Klimt’s shimmering portrait before, you won’t look at it the same way again.”
—Washingtonian
 
“Fascinating, ambitious, exhaustively researched . . . A mesmerizing tale of art and the Holocaust.”
—The Washington Post
 
“Writing with a novelist's dynamism, O'Connor resurrects fascinating individuals and tells a many-faceted, intensely affecting, and profoundly revelatory tale of the inciting power of art and the unending need for justice.”
—Booklist (starred review)
 
“Part history and part mystery, The Lady in Gold is a striking tale.”
—BookPage

“The dazzling, nearly surreal ‘Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I’ is about a lot more than just art. O'Connor captures the whole story.”
—Library Journal

“Every stolen painting has a story. The tale behind this one is epic.”
—Christian Science Monitor

“A fascinating book.”
—Dallas Morning News

“[An] evocation of a beautiful, vanished world.”
—Women's Wear Daily

“Fascinating tale of beauty, terror, loss and remembrance reveals a deeper truth beneath the golden surface.”
—Jonathan Lopez, Associated Press

“O'Connor has told an important story.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“Lusciously detailed.”
—Kirkus

“Encapsulates a fascinating, complicated cultural history of fin-de-siècle Vienna, its Jewish intelligentsia, and their near complete destruction by the Nazis....vividly evokes... how she became entwined with the charismatic, sexually charged, and irreverent Klimt...poignant and convincing...”
—Publisher’s Weekly

“Ignites many a startling flashpoint in the moral history of our time—a taut, rich, tangy and instructive read.”
—Frederic Morton

“Gripping in details and drama.”
—The Los Angeles Times

“Intricately webbed and shocking tale of this iconic work.”
—Donna Seaman

From the Author

 Facebook at The Lady in Gold     annemarieoconnor.com     Twitter @theladyingold
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See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• File Size: 3287 KB
• Print Length: 370 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0307265641
• Publisher: Knopf (February 7, 2012)
• Sold by: Random House Digital, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0050DIWGQ
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #13,557 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Arts & Photography > Art > Art History > Schools, Periods & Styles > Modern
  • #16 in Books > Arts & Photography > Individual Artists
  • #20 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > History > World > Jewish

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

72 of 73 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Lady in Gold February 18, 2012

By Susie N.

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is the story of Adele Bloch-Bauer and Gustav Klimt's portraits of her in fin de siècle Vienna, which were looted by the Nazis, taken by Austria, and returned to Bloch-Bauer's heirs in the 21st century.

The book captures the richness and liveliness of the lives of wealthy and cultured Jews of Vienna,as O'Connor calls it, the "equivalent of a 1960s happening." The cast of characters wandering through the story includes Arnold Schoenberg, Alma Mahler, Gustav Mahler, Oskar Kokoschka and even Freud. Bloch-Bauer, the self-proclaimed atheist and socialist resides in the middle of this privileged life smoking cigarettes and spending long periods posing for Klimt. The exquisite painting, The Lady in Gold was created in those sittings.

This Utopia is shattered by Hitler's march into Vienna and although both Klimt and Adele are dead, their friends and relatives are confronted with a dystopia no one could imagine. As various Bloch-Bauer relatives are escaping, hiding or dying, the Nazis are looting massive amounts of art, homes, businesses and personal possessions, including The Lady In Gold.

Adele's niece, Maria Altmann, comes onto the scene as a Holocaust survivor from Vienna, a dress shop owner in Beverly Hills and one of the real heirs to the Klimt paintings. Next, Randol Shoenberg enters the picture as Maria Altmann's lawyer who fights to get the paintings returned. Skillful writing makes the transition from cultured and wealthy Vienna, to the Holocaust, to new life in California surprisingly smooth and it seems perfectly natural that another generation of Schoenbergs and Bloch-Bauers from another country and another century figure into this well researched history.

The lawsuit to get the paintings returned to the surviving Bloch-Bauers seems unwinnable, but together Schoenberg and Altmann can seemingly move mountains -- at least mountains of artwork. Somehow, O'Connor quietly and seamlessly threads herself through the story as the journalist that she is, which makes it even more interesting.

This is a richly composed work - not least for the affection and easy fellowship O'Connor seems to feel for her characters. She clearly found Maria Altmann delightful, and her affinity for Adele is palpable. O'Connor has a deeply layered understanding of her subject and that always makes for a good read.

37 of 39 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Who knew art history could be so sexy? February 10, 2012

By George Lewis

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Like the intricate mosaic patterns on Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, this is a complex, absorbing tale of the painting, its subject, its artist and the turbulent and tragic events that surrounded them. From libertine turn-of-the-century Vienna, to the descent into the Nazi horrors of World War II, to the collective denial about those horrors that the Austrians embraced, this is a sweeping story laced with sensuality and sorrow. Anne-Marie O'Connor has done her homework well; this thoroughly-researched book takes us on an enlightening and compelling ride through the best of times and the worst of times in Vienna. And in the end, we learn that justice prevails and that a work of art can illuminate the dark corners of our history.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I am overwhelmed by this book March 5, 2012

By Cape Pug

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

I want to thank the author for writing this book because it has taught me so much, opened my eyes, and enriched my experience of Klimt's work and of the splendor and loss that was Vienna. I have seen this painting in three very different places. I flew to Vienna just to see it. Then I saw it when it was in Los Angeles. Then once again in New York where I visit it every time I am there.

This book was well written. Had so much new information and made so many meaningful connections for me. When I read about Austria turning the painting over to the heirs, I cried even though I obviously knew the outcome.

So, Thank You Ms. O'Connor from a Secessionist obsessed never quite made it art historian. You gave me a great week of reading.

More About the Author

Anne-Marie O'Connor is a veteran foreign correspondent, war reporter and culture writer who has covered everything from post-Soviet Cuba to American artists and intellectuals. O'Connor attended Vassar and the San Francisco Art Institute and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, where she and fellow students co-created an award-winning documentary on the repression of mural artists after the 1973 military coup in Chile. She covered the wars in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala as a Reuters bureau chief in Central America; the Shining Path guerrillas in Peru, coups in Haiti and U.S. interventions in Haiti and Panama; and covered Cuba and Haiti for a newspaper chain. At the Los Angeles Times she chronicled the violence of Mexico's Arellano-Felix drug cartel, U.S. political convention; and profiled such figures as Nelson Mandela, George Soros, Joan Didion, John McCain, and Maya Lin. Her story on Maria Altmann's effort to recover the family Klimt collection appeared in the Los Angeles Times Magazine in 2001. She has written for Esquire, The Nation, and The Christian Science Monitor. She currently writes for The Washington Post from Mexico City.​
www.annemarieoconnor.com www.theladyingold.com