Gustav Klimt’s ‘Women’ Serves Up a Refreshing Reminder of Artistic Freedom

When did art galleries stop calling themselves art galleries? Having visited one or other outpost of Barbara Gladstone Gallery for close to four decades, I was taken aback to learn that its current branches, three in Manhattan, the others in Belgium and the Republic of Korea, are to be referred to, if you please, by the last name and last name only of its late founder. Given the general drift of elite culture, one suspects banishing the word “gallery” is an attempt to fudge the barest intimation that boo! hiss! capitalist doings may be afoot.A gallery by any other name is still a gallery, and they can provide valuable services, aesthetic delectation being one of them. Take the Upper East Side branch of Gladstone which is presenting an austere but provocative survey of drawings by the Austrian painter, Gustav Klimt (1862-1918). Mounted in conjunction with a London-based concern, Richard Nagy Ltd., “Gustav Klimt: Women” seeks to underscore how Klimt’s drawings embody “a modernity that transcends their era and speaks to us in a contemporary voice.”Arguing that Klimt’s art is capable of appealing to audiences in the here-and-now is protesting a bit much. For those who keep an eye on the bottom line, Klimt has been a player at the auction houses. Forget the $135 million doled out by business magnate Ronald Lauder for “Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer” (1907). The mainstay of the Neue Galerie has since been outdone at the auction block by the same artist’s “Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer” (1914-16) and “Water Serpents II” (1904-07). There’s money to be had in them thar Klimts.‘Standing Woman in Large Hat (Study for Portrait of Adele Bloch),’ by Gustav Klimt, 1910. Courtesy of Richard Nagy Ltd and GladstoneForget the “Almighty Dollar.” The cultural fortunes of the Austrian artist have proved amenable to shifting tastes in fashion, fame and, in its own way, globalism. Klimt was not above promiscuously appropriating decorative motifs from non-Western cultures. Exquisite handicraft holds an increasing appeal in an age of AI, particularly when it’s keyed to a signature use of materials. Gold is good, in so many words, and the flouting of it can be as memorable as it is eye-catching.Nor should we forget a scintillating frisson that can be sparked by the transgression of conventions. Klimt bristled under the constraints of academic taste and was condemned as a pornographer and heretic when the good citizens of Vienna took a gander at a suite of murals intended to adorn the city university’s Great Hall. But let’s not kid ourselves; Klimt cultivated a bourgeois clientele that was keen to see itself depicted and, more often than not, flattered in a manner that was markedly different from the portraiture of their parents’ generation.‘Seated Woman from the Front (Study for Judith II),’ by Gustav Klimt, c. 1908. Richard Nagy Ltd and Gladstone.The artist did well financially during his lifetime, managing to locate a finely-tuned medium between the rigorous strictures of naturalism and the rarified stylizations of Art Nouveau. Klimt was a supple draftsman attuned not only to anatomical detail but the sensuality inherent to the human form. “I am drawn to other people,” he stated, “especially women.” Klimt liked the ladies. So how come his legacy has proven relatively impervious to the slings-and-arrows of ideological revisionism?It’s a question worth mulling as one takes in the invariably sinuous, unfailingly elegant and often explicit drawings at Gladstone. Of the twenty or so pictures on display some of them are saucy indeed with titles like “Reclining Nude with Splayed Legs” (c. 1913) and “Masturbating Woman” (c. 1917). Unlike his protege, Egon Schiele, Klimt saw the body not as an outlet for psychological distress, but as a manifestation of erotic energy that wasn’t necessarily his alone.Moritz Naehr, ‘Gustav Klimt,’ 1910. Richard Nagy Ltd and GladstoneWhich means, perhaps, that some male gazes are less egregious than others. Even at their rudest or most wiry, the models here are dignified by a strain of self-possession. Perhaps that’s why Klimt has been spared the controversies that have dogged the work of Pierre-August Renoir, Edvard Munch, and Pierre Bonnard. Whatever the case, “Gustav Klimt: Women” is a rewarding glimpse of an artist working for his own edification and his own pleasure — history, mores and the critics be damned. There’s freedom to be experienced at Gladstone, and it is bracing.

Gustav Klimt’s ‘Women’ Serves Up a Refreshing Reminder of Artistic Freedom

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