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Gustav Klimt at Tate Liverpool

By thescian on June 14, 2008.

i-f3e130e5b063408b84665801ee52e3c2-3Ages.jpg Works by Austrian painter Gustav Klimt are at Tate Liverpool. Klimt is one of Vienna's famous sons (another is Freud). He was obsessed with Sex and Death and his distillation of these quintessential human experiences is extraordinarily powerful. Consider The Kiss. It is intoxicating. One could feel the tension, power (and perhaps, responsibility too?) embodied in the male figure. Of course, if one knows Klimt's life the paintings take on more meaning (he was uncommitted to any women all through life, however, he had many relationships and supposedly fathered more than a dozen children). The Kiss is iconic and has enthralled - and still does - generations of men and women, especially youth.

My personal favorite (since the birth of our daughter) is Three Ages of Women (shown here).

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csrster, I agree with the guardian comment. I am aware of the 'whole' painting. Not sure why I decided to show the 'clean' one. Maybe, it's just that the painting without the old lady looks a lot better on the blog post (IMO, others may not agree)... Anyway, I do hope, interested reader would dig deeper to know things for themselves. Klimt is certainly worth anyone's time.