Klimt Inspired by Van Gogh, Rodin, Matisse ed. by Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam and Belvedere Museum (review)

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• Klimt Inspired by Van Gogh, Rodin, Matisse ed. by Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam and Belvedere Museum
• Beret Norman

Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam and Belvedere Museum, eds., Klimt Inspired by Van Gogh, Rodin, Matisse. Munich: Hirmer, 2022. 240 pp.

This substantial and beautiful book and its corresponding exhibition celebrate the three-hundredth anniversary of the Belvedere and form a prelude to the fifty-year jubilee marking the Van Gogh Museum's opening. With the placement of works by Klimt next to so many famous works, the curators insightfully display their case for the influence of prominent Western European artists on Gustav Klimt. Starting in Amsterdam (October 7, 2022–January 8, 2023) with the title "Golden Boy Gustav Klimt: Inspired by Van Gogh, Rodin, Matisse …," the exhibition moved to Vienna's Belvedere Museum (February 7–May 29, 2023) with a shortened title: "Klimt. Inspired by Van Gogh, Rodin, Matisse…." With research consisting of letters from Klimt and others and contemporaneous art criticism by Hermann Bahr, Ludwig Hevesi, and Berta Zuckerkandl, the authors uniquely place Klimt at specific exhibitions and in private homes with art collections. These new insights into where Klimt would have seen European art undergird this exhibition's claim: that many European artists' works influenced Klimt's own paintings.

Following an eight-page chronological history, "Klimt and his Time," nine pages of artworks follow and visually present how Klimt's oeuvre reflects the styles of other major Western artists. Each side of the fold presents a painting by Klimt juxtaposed with one by another European artist; in addition to Van Gogh, the works set next to Klimt's are by American expatriate portraitist John Singer Sargent, French painters Edmond Aman-Jean and Claude Monet, Scottish artist Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, American painter James Abbott McNeil Whistler, French artists Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Henri Matisse, and another Dutch painter, Kees van Dongen. After these images, seven articles about Klimt make up the rest of the book.

A team from the Van Gogh Museum—Lisa Smit, Renske Suijver, and Edwin Becker—pens the first article, "Shaking Viennese Art from its Slumber," which points out how very few established Western European artists visited Vienna. Indeed, a commonly heard criticism at the end of the nineteenth century was that "Vienna was deprived of the latest developments" (59).

The Belvedere's Markus Fellinger writes the second and third articles. In the second, "Klimt's Engagement with International Art," Fellinger recounts Klimt's limited exposure before 1903 and then an onslaught of exposures to [End Page 111] modern artworks, including Klimt's first trip to Berlin in 1905, then to London and Brussels in 1906, and his stay in Paris in 1909. In the third, "Klimt's Early Work," Fellinger suggests that Klimt had insufficient knowledge of Western European modern art's developments, and thus Klimt was late to transform from an academic salon painter to an avant-garde artist (107). Edwin Becker of the Van Gogh Museum pens the short fourth article, "Art with a Soul: Klimt's Fascination for Inner Beauty." Detailed comparisons of more than nine works by Klimt that resemble works by Anglo-Dutch artist Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Khnopff, Sargent, and Whistler provide a worthwhile read, especially about aspects of subjectivity, harmony in lines, and even the dreamlike atmospheres.

The last three articles are perhaps the best, as each provides well-researched context and particular and thought-provoking discussions of the Western influences on Klimt. Marian Bisanz-Prakken (previously a curator at the Albertina in Vienna) focuses on the human condition and on Klimt's "Monumentalkunst" in her article "Klimt and International Art around 1900." Especially worthwhile are descriptions of varying works by Dutch-Indonesian painter Jan Toorop, Belgian artist George Minne, British artist Margaret Macdonald-Mackintosh, and Swiss artist Ferdinand Hodler. Bisanz-Prakken states that Klimt "distilled the essence of each of these artists" (144) as he created the monumental Beethoven Frieze (1901–02). "Stylized Landscapes" by Renske Suijver (Van Gogh Museum) discusses Klimt's landscapes in their square format as "windows onto nature" (190). Suijver points out the influences of Van Gogh on Klimt's landscapes after 1909; Klimt used "proven stylistic devices [and] converted the inner energy...