Lesson #1: Klimt

This is something I dug out of my computer. It’s part of a long letter I wrote to Kiwi years ago, at the beginning of our relationship, to explain to him some of my feelings and how important it was for me to be loved as I was. As it happened, he didn’t understand anything and most of our relationship was cursed by his crusade to make me lose weight. But he did it for me. Oh, yes.

But that’s not what I want to talk about. And to be clear, I don't have those issues anymore. That's another gift realizing my homosexuality gave me.

I decided to translate it and put it here (it was in Italian), because it’s just one of the many things of my past I sometimes stumble upon that make me think: how in the bloody hell could I NOT understand that I’m homosexual? Why did it take me 23 years to get it? In Italian, when someone doesn’t see something obvious, we say they have ham slices on their eyes. I probably had several pig’s worth of ham, dammit.

So, this is a ‘lesson’ about Klimt.

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Klimt was born in 1862 in Wien and died in 1918. He was part of a movement called ‘Wiener Sezession’, which is another way of saying that he was part of a group that strove to paint in a new, different way.

Initially, he was influenced by the pre-Raphaelites, if anything for the attention to the details, the classical subjects, etc, but he never was an actual pre-Raphaelite. Know why? Because pre-Raphaelites represented the angelic woman, and for Klimt that was out of the question.

Anyway, around 1890 K answers the symbolist ‘call’. What symbolism is in literature, when applied to art starts being a little bit more complicated and wide concept, and goes under the name of “Decadent movement”. The works of art that come from it are extremely refined, there is a total lack of action, because all the passion and the tension is lived in the dimension of the dream. The symbolists seek to represent dreams, or to be more specific what’s between reality and dreams [it just occurred to me as I was translating, but that’s just SO Annenskij!].

Another important moment for K is 1901, when he paints a beautiful picture: Judith I, and starts a long series of bidimensional paintings, linear, rich in geometric details and, especially, in gold: golden backgrounds, gold everywhere.

This period ends in 1909 (guess what?) with the painting Judith II. It is followed by a crisis that brings him towards a new style, more vividly colourful. In this stage K is influenced by the expressionists, you know, Munch and such.

Now, why do I like K? The answer to this question is another question. What was K’s favourite subject? The answer is: women.

K drew and painted women, continuously. He was fascinated by female sexuality, so intriguing and mysterious, and firmly believed women were sexually superior to men.

Now, I don’t want to just copy and paste a wikipedia page, so I’ll keep it simple. K painted every possible type of woman: cruel assassins, mothers, pregnant women, priestesses, sirens. Women for him were the idea of sexuality itself, that could be destructive, but that he considered an antidote of sorts in a world that was growing shapeless and shapeless (1st World War was approaching, and everyone in Europe could feel the looming catastrophe), a world that seemed to force men to a meaningless, alienating bond. In this context, the secret of the ‘superior’ female sexuality could destroy these alienating rules, managing even to blur the line between life and death.

I love K, because at the apex of my frustrated adolescence, I used his paintings to convince myself that I, too, possessed this secret, this endless power of seduction. But there’s more. Because K’s women are all different, but in those paintings that show sexuality at its finest, the most sensual and somewhat disturbing mystery, his women are curvaceous and soft, like me.

There are two paintings that marked my adolescence. You see, I was (or am?) so desperately different from the mainstream ideals of beauty [meaning: I’m 5ft1 and wear a size 12/14… my BMI is perfect but apparently I should be ashamed of myself. Bah]. We desire what we see, and if I see only tall, thin women, with sleek and firm shapes, my eye convinces itself that that is the only possible beauty, and facing the mirror becomes alienating, because the only image that do not correspond with the ‘idea of woman’ is mine [yeah, or maybe, just maybe, I ‘wanted’ to ‘have’ those bodies, only in a different way].

So, I have to look for alternative models, models in which a sexuality like mine is exalted, almost made holy, thus creating a new ‘idea of woman’, an idea I can identify with.

The first painting is Goldfische.

It was painted in 1904, and it created a scandal. That siren, sensual, disturbing; that naked white body so similar to mine, and the look in her eyes, her smile, as if she knew something only she can grasp. How do I love that siren. Because I’ve always wanted to be the one who has the secrets everybody wants to discover. And if you look at her position, it’s like she’s holding her secret tight in her bosom, and you naturally want to touch her, make her turn around and unveil her secret. I’ve always wanted to trigger with my body something similar: the sight of that naked body catches the eye (you see only her, not the fish, not the other sirens… are they even there?). You follow the spirals of her hair and find her eyes, and she takes you, she catches you and you want to discover her, to touch her.

The second painting is Danae, painted in 1907-8.

[side note… I think it’s finally clear where I got my obsession with redheads. Heh]

That’s exactly a painting about the power of female sexuality that can ultimately save the world. Danae was a Greek princess who is impregnated by Zeus, who sneaks in her room turned into rain of gold. The rain is a clear symbol for the male seed. This woman, too, has a secret. You can read it in the relaxed and yet ecstatic expression of her flushed face. What is she doing, with her hand hidden between her thighs? She’s imprisoned in a tower, but her erotic power is so great that even the father of all the gods has to be with her. The strange thing is that Zeus chooses to turn into an ambiguous element such as water. Because it may be a symbol for sperm, but in the ancient religions water (and rain, lakes, rivers, waterfalls, springs...) were all symbols of the feminine and ruled by goddesses.

How could I not love a painter who represents the apotheosis of femininity and eroticism with a woman so similar to me?

Everything in the painting is feminine, everything is round shapes, apart from a little black rectangle, the only, bone-dry symbol of masculinity.

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And with that, still shaking my head in wonder at my blindness, I go to dinner.