Enjoying the Culture 163contemporaries, he initially painted in the Historicist style.
His greatest desire was to be part of the great building frenzy
on the Ringstrasse. He worked on ceiling paintings at the
Burgtheater (National Theatre) and was also commissioned
to decorate the Kunsthistorisches (Art History) Museum.
Soon thereafter, changes in his style occurred and are best
viewed in his painting Schubert am Klavier. Here he departs
from the naturalist rendering of space and light, into more
muted, impressionistic characters. Even then, Klimt’s style
did not yet portray the inner turmoil he was feeling. Through
the use of the female figure, he was able to portray the future
and femininity, which was his answer to the tension between
patriarchal culture and chaos.
Der Küss
In Der Küss (The Kiss), Klimt’s most famous work, he used the
same decorative elements of geometric shapes and flowers on
gold background as in his Beethovenfrieze. He avoids any sense
of depth, putting the emphasis on ornamental structure and
rendering the body abstractly. The meaning, therefore, is seen
in form and material rather than content. Der Küss is the model
for the Jugendstil philosophy; the lovers are shown as ‘universal,
cosmogonal and in tune with nature’.Egon Schiele (1890–1918)
Schiele’s work was initially influenced by Klimt and
Jugendstil. He paid Klimt an unconcealed homage in both the
Watersprites and Zug der Toten (Procession of the Dead). The
themes that chiefly concerned him were love, life and death.
Schiele was often accused of drawing pornography, and in
fact did live at one time off his more explicit drawings. He
also went to jail for 24 days for supposedly seducing a minor.
Like Klimt, he used nudity as a source of inspiration. Unlike
Klimt, his nudes, and people in general, expressed ugliness,
misery and pain. Toward the end of his life, he married and
his work changed. Gone were the emaciated nudes; in their
stead, feelings of belonging and security were expressed, as
in the painting The Family.